How vacation agency VIP Holidays discovered achievements all through the pandemic: Vacation Weekly

Jamie Biesiada

Jamie Biesiada

How has a vacation agency managed to book a document selection of spot weddings and teams in the course of a pandemic? For the advisors at VIP Vacations in Bethlehem, Pa., it was the best mix of positivity, setting up and putting up.

VIP president Jennifer Doncsecz talked over her agency’s technique to offering location weddings in the time of Covid-19 on episode four of Trade Strategies, a podcast by Vacation Weekly and TravelAge West. VIP’s file-breaking bookings trend has continued from the summer time of 2020 to the very first months of 2021.

Interaction was a important part of VIP’s technique.

“I feel the pandemic impacted far too many persons,” Doncsecz said. “They all experienced their have story to share, regardless of whether someone couldn’t go to a graduation, someone couldn’t have a newborn shower. A relative bought unwell, or died and folks couldn’t go to funerals. Individuals lost jobs.

“Our field, journey, shut down,” she additional. “Places to eat were closing. There was a whole lot of sympathy and empathy heading out there, but that intended that a bride wasn’t really getting the focus that she may have felt she deserved when her total wedding ceremony experienced to tumble aside, since there ended up so numerous other things crumbling.”

In advance of the pandemic, VIP largely communicated with marriage ceremony partners by means of e-mail. Occasionally they texted, far too, Doncsecz mentioned. But that transformed all through the pandemic, with numerous doing work from residence and experience isolated. They required to talk on the cellphone or by way of Zoom.

Doncsecz capitalized on that. VIP has generally had a connection for clients to make an appointment in the signature of emails, but she switched that up: The extremely first sentence VIP agents would use when replying to wedding day inquiries requested if the potential customer needed to discuss.

It labored like clockwork, she claimed. Advisors would hit mail on an electronic mail, and the possible client would e book an appointment.

“We went back to the skill of interaction,” she explained.

She also believes VIP benefitted from the truth that quite a few domestic marriage ceremony venues were being restricting the dimension of the wedding ceremony, and destination weddings are inclined to be less expensive.

VIP also shared results. Just about every time a marriage booked, the employees at VIP popped a confetti-filled balloon and took a pleasurable online video of it. They shared it by way of social media.

“I believe that resonated with other men and women,” Doncsecz mentioned. “If you see businesses closing down, storefronts closing down, you surprise, are they continue to all-around? Are they still suitable? But in this article we were, continue to opened.”

Positivity was also component of the equation. VIP stayed beneficial in its posts. Not constructive as in, “Everything is Ok,” she mentioned, but as in, “We consider points will get better.”

That also resonated with shoppers.

“There is a stage through a pandemic where by people essentially gravitated towards a very little little bit much more optimism,” she claimed. “Would you fairly dangle out with someone who’s, like, an Eeyore and complains, or would you instead hang out with any person who’s pleasurable and who’s optimistic about the long run?”

In the course of the pandemic, Doncsecz never ever dialed again on marketing. That was a lesson uncovered after 9/11, she claimed, when so lots of corporations stopped advertising and marketing and went out of small business. Alternatively, she even booked a new billboard advertisement for VIP when the Caribbean opened up. It explained, “The Caribbean is open up, and so are we.”

“What we desired to do was keep marketing, maintain doing what we were performing, and I think that just paid out,” she reported.