Jamie Biesiada
Scott and Sally Kertes of Vacations by Design are not short on creative ways to drive new business to their agency, which specializes in small-ship, luxury cruising.
The agency, a member of Ensemble (Scott was a longtime member of its board of directors before its 2022 acquisition by Navigatr Group), had an office in Garden City, N.Y., for years, but during the pandemic became home-based. Scott's father founded the agency in 1975.
I met with Scott and Sally during Ensemble's Horizons event last week, and they shared two interesting, out-of-the-box strategies for client acquisition.
The first takes advantage of when cruise ships are in port. For years, Scott said, cruise lines have used time in domestic ports to welcome travel advisors onboard for lunch and to tour the ship.
"We recognized it as an opportunity to showcase a ship to potential customers, especially considering the fact that for better or worse the way the cruise industry has been organized for years is you have to pay for your cruise vacation before you've ever seen it — which is crazy," Scott said.
Years ago, he coined a term for Vacations by Design's shipboard lunches: "Take your ship for a test drive."
The Kertes invite clients to bring along friends who could also be potential Vacations by Design customers. They're careful in the way they word their invitations: It's not just a free lunch, Scott said, they let invitees know they'll hear a presentation and get an offer to buy a cruise.
"Our end game is we don't care whether they book that cruise line or any cruise line, as long as we get to build a relationship with them," Scott said.
Many of the potential clients do then become clients of Vacations by Design, Sally said.
Tapping into the power of Facebook
Sally was behind another creative driver of clients to Vacations by Design: the Magical Christmas Markets of Europe Facebook group.
She started the group about two years ago.
"I saw other agencies creating groups for river cruising," Sally said, "and many of them are successful, but they were small and I wanted to grow the numbers."
Grow the numbers she did: As of last week, the group had more than 409,000 members.
In the first six months of the group, she ran a few ads on Facebook to grow awareness, but she hasn't advertised since.
Many of the members are already river cruisers, Sally said. And she's garnered a lot of bookings from the site, which she carefully moderates to keep out spam and non-Vacations by Design advisors.
She recently joined Viking on an executive retreat and posted about it in the group.
"I got 200 requests. Like, not 200 comments — 200 emails and private messages from people who want to book Viking. Two hundred," Sally said.
In addition to Scott and Sally, Vacations by Design is home to four frontline salespeople. Three are independent contractors and the other is a salaried employee.