Department stores, car dealers, jewelry shops, spas, styling salons, etc. are expert product merchandisers, masters at subliminal influencers such as particular smells, colors, displays, music, lighting, etc. Realtors bake cookies just prior to an open house. To these sales professionals, the message is clear – customers can and will be stimulated subliminally one way or the other.
What are the subliminal influencers in your business? They can work for you or against you.
For example, many of my peers in the retail travel industry are still trying to leverage the same old supplier provided promotional materials as differentiators – brochures on a rack, travel posters on the wall and a scale model of the Queen Mary in the window.
Personally, when it comes to subliminal travel persuaders, nothing makes me want to pack a bag and jump a train, a plane or a ship quicker than discovering a well written book about travel. I'm not talking about southernmost point of the continental us “How to” travel guides like “Paris on $7,561.37 a Day” but rather one by a gifted travel journalist…someone who has a talent for actually immersing you in the experience.
This year happens to be the 100th anniversary of the death of the greatest travel journalist of all time – Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain. He single handedly created the genre. Reading “Life on the Mississippi” instantly filled me with a burning desire to board a river boat and head downstream to New Orleans – not too difficult to do from here in Memphis.
Reading Twain's “Roughing It” had me longing for an authentic stagecoach ride across the plains to the High Sierra gold and silver mining country of Nevada and California of the 1860s…to visit the very location that inspired the hilarious “Jumping Frog of Calaveras County”.
In the same book I loved reading Twain's description of the long, arduous hike up to the pristine unexplored shores of Lake Tahoe from his mining camp in Nevada (there were no roads there in 1863). On one trip he accidentally set the forest on fire due to some sloppy campsite construction. But there was no need to panic or to even attempt to contain the blaze. Why? Because there was not another human being within 100 miles to even notice! (Except maybe for a few inebriated roulette players at the original Harrah's at South Shore – that casino has been there since the Stone Age.)
Agents with Hawaii bound clients would do well to suggest the chapters in Roughing It about his newspaper sponsored trip to what was then called the Sandwich Islands in 1865. I guarantee they will want to visit the locales of his encounters with Kamehameha.
Innocents Abroadis the chronicle of his 1867 steamship voyage to Europe and the Holy Lands on a side wheeler named Quaker City. Twain's passage was paid by a newspaper in return for keeping a journal of the trip. His vivid descriptions and satirical insights proved so popular that these notes became his first full length book. In reading his characterizations of the faults and foibles of his cruising companions, it struck me that some things never change!
While Mark Twain is the granddaddy of them all, there are many excellent contemporary travel journalists. Anthony Bourdain (Yes, the food guy with the ‘No Reservations' food show on the Travel Channel) has compiled an excellent book titled The Best American Travel Writing 2008 – a very good travel themed read. This book will provide leads to many other superb travel writers.
Meanwhile, back at the traditional travel agency office – I'd like to see some of those brochures shoved aside and the shelves stocked with the work of a few great travel writers – both classic and contemporary. A storefront agency could function as a lending library of books that plant seeds for the next trip. Loaning them out to customers would set the hook. When they come back to return the book, the agent recommends another.
Agencies should give away great travel books as bon voyage gifts to loyal customers – stamping the agency name and contact info all over the inside cover – with the suggestion that the book be passed along to a fellow traveler, if the reader is so inclined.
Promoting good travel journals would be a good distinguisher of the agency website as well – and maybe generate a little extra income to boot. Creating affiliate relationships with online book sellers such as Amazon.com is a piece of cake.
0
0
