You might have more questions... here are more answers
Question: What kind of traveler do you deal with? Or, what kind of hotels do you do business with?
Answer:
We deal with the independent “do it yourself”, soft adventure, I don’t want to stay at the “Hyatt”, I don’t want to go on a guided tour kind of traveler…
Many of our clients want to go snorkeling, go bird watching, scuba diving, go wine tasting, take cultural adventures, go hiking to a tropical waterfall or rainforest, go fishing etc.
We have found the internet is a great way to help independent travelers find, research and book out of the way hotels and resorts that most traditional travel agents don’t know about. That’s our specialty. We simply help these independent travelers with their mission of finding that perfect get-a-way spot.
Some of our clients are looking for budget to medium priced rooms, while others are looking to stay in a wonderful suite or villa and pay top dollar. We offer a range of hotel and accommodation types.
Most of our properties are small to medium sized (40 – 100 rooms) unique hotels, resorts, villas, inns and bed & breakfasts. We also work with a few select larger resorts and all-inclusive properties to give our clientele the options they want. We work with many sizes of properties from 10 rooms to 200, size is not a factor in working with us…being unique is.
Question: Are you a travel agency or a wholesaler?
Answer:
We work like a wholesaler and a travel agent combined.
We are not a traditional travel agency by any means. We only work in selective areas/regions worldwide that we personally visit and want to send our customers to. We have a booking agreement with each property we work with. You could not call are office and just request a place or hotel to go to…We don’t do that! We work with a select number of hotels in a specific destination. We market most of properties via regional travel guides: DiscoverMexico.com, DiscoverItaly.com, Caribbeancoast.com, DiscoverCozumel.net.
We have recently begun to work with other travel agencies. Because we offer such a unique property base, (95% of our hotels are not part of a GDS or CRS system), we receive many requests from travel agents to resell our hotels to there clients.
We also visit each of our properties that we book for so we understand what the property and area are like. Because we take the extra effort visit each location and hotel, we feel we provide a better service to our customers and our hotel partners. We have a very...very low dissatisfaction rate from our clients because we let them know exactly what they are getting (nice, excellent, first class, budget, no beach, close to beach, rocky beach, cheap but nice, nice hotel - far from beach, etc.)
Question: Are we required to allocate inventory to you or Do you buy inventory from our hotel?
Answer:
At this time no. We take reservation requests from our clients and site visitors (each request comes with a credit card number that is “verified” but not charged at the moment of submission of the request). We confirm each reservation request from our clients with you on an as available basis.
Question: How do you handle correspondence between our hotel and clients?
Answer:
We do everything via email when possible and at times we utilize the fax machine as well. We try and use email for all confirmations with your hotel.
Question: What commission rate do you charge?
Answer:
We charge a minimum base commission of 20%. We also offer a marketing / advertising program for those properties which offer 25% + commissions. We can create banner ads and run your property in our subscriber newsletters. Your site also gets listed near the top of the list. This is simply a way for you to get additional traffic to your site.
Question: Why do you charge a base 20% commission?
Answer: As it is stated above, we work like a hybrid of a wholesaler and travel agency. We only work with a few selected properties in each destination we work in. We provide a higher level of service both to our clients and hotel partners. This is worth a premium.
We handle all the customer service questions, collect the customers deposit online and handle the credit card processing for any reservation that comes through your site.
We also “resell” our hotel properties to other agents and pay them commissions. We also have marketing agreements in place with other Internet partners. They advertise / display our hotel properties on there site(s). When a reservation is made through a partner site we share the commission with them (just like a wholesaler does with a travel agent). It’s a matter of perspective. It’s important to understand we are creating an Internet sales channel…not a traditional wholesaler/agent channel.
We also try and visit each of our properties that we book for, so we understand what your property and area are like. Because we take the extra effort visit locations and hotels, we feel we provide a better service to our customers and our hotel partners. We have a very...very low dissatisfaction rate from our clients because we let them know exactly what they are getting and are able to share our first hand experiences with them. If we were to sign a booking agreement with you, one of our sales agents would try and visit your property personally (usually within 6 - 18 months).
Another reason we ask for the higher commission is because of the technology costs we incur to host and promoting your property’s' web presence and pages. Our travel guide sites receive over 1,000,000 pages views per month, which means we are able to sell our properties quite effectively. Our technology is on the cutting edge of the Internet. We run a fully interactive reservations database and publishing system that is on par with some of the biggest travel sites on the Internet.
Question: How do you handle the client’s deposit and payment to our hotel?
Answer:
Usually, we take 2 nights prepayment for all reservations under 8 nights OR 25% of the total reservation if 8 nights or more. Balance of payment & tax is due from the client upon arrival at your hotel. We forward the balance minus our fee's once a month to your hotel.
Monthly, we will e-mail (fax) an activity accounting sheet for the month, including reservations, names of guests, arrival and departure dates, the number of the party and any special requests, amount of deposit collected, fees deducted and amount being sent to the hotel.
The reservation cycle runs from the 26th day through the 25th day of each month checks for reservations processed in this time period are cut and sent by the 1st of each month.
Example: All reservations processed between July 26 – August 25: the check will be mailed out by the 1st of September.
This may be modified on a case-by-case basis and must be approved by both parties.
Question: What kind of results can our hotel expect?
Answer:
Good question but slightly hard for us to answer. Here is a vague answer in two parts.
1.) To start (first 3 - 9 months) not many, maybe 1 or 2 reservations per month (on average) - could be more or less. This is the time frame where we get your site live on our travel guide sites, get your site registered with the search engines and begin to promote your hotel. Also, it is during this time that we usually send down our customer service people to visit your hotel and learn more about the area. Once our agents have first hand knowledge of your hotel and area sales usually go up. It is not like “turning on a switch” and everyone just shows up and says I want to stay here.
As time goes by (9 – 18 months) sales usually go up, our agents know your property better to sell it, we also have travelers who have rated your hotel and our marketing efforts begin to pay off. During this time frame there could be several/many reservations per month.
Historically with 'most' of our properties as time passes more reservations come in. There are a number of properties that receive 10 - 15 + reservations per month (average stay is 5 nights). Ideally, we would love to provide each of our properties with several reservations per month. There is no guarantee from WorldLinks/WorldVacations what results you may get. For reasons, some unknown, some properties become very popular while others do not. If you feel you are not getting the maximum result from our relationship contact your Account Manager to see if there is anything we can do to help promote and sell your property better.
Again, this is not an easy question to answer… If your property is not selling ask yourself: Does my hotel have a good customer service reputation (people talk). Did you provide us with lots of good quality photos to work with when we built your site? If your site does not have good pictures and descriptions it will be 10 times harder to sell your property.
Tip on getting better results:
On your hotels property page we build for, we provide you with an interactive message board where our site visitors post questions and answers about travel to your area or to your hotel. Feel free to answer questions posted on your board. This goes a long way is answering questions from potential travelers.
2.) Another factor to consider when answering this question is weather we are established in your destination or if we are just beginning to open up a new market in your area. Whenever we start working in a new destination it takes us some time to gain market position. Sometimes it is just a matter of time, 6 – 18 months, before we become really effective in booking your destination and your hotel.
Question: Do you provide airline tickets or travel insurance to your clients?
Answer:
Yes, We provide airline tickets and travel insurance to customers who request these services as well as car rental and airport transfers.
Question: Exactly how does it work again?
Answer: (step by step…!)
- We get on plane and go travel to places… if we like what we see we decide to open up a new market to do reservations.
- Then we build a destination travel guide online to promote the country, island, city, region or area. We include all kinds of articles, travel tips, reviews, pictures and general travel information on the guide. This is the backbone of our online selling tool. Example Guides: discovermexico.com, discoveritaly.com, discovercozumel.net and caribbeancoast.com.
- Then we look for hotel partners to do business with. Usually we start with a select few and put a booking agreement together and build your hotels property pages online. We handle all the customer service questions, the deposit and the credit card processing for any reservation that comes through your site.
- Next, your Account Manager will jump on a plane and go visit your destination and each hotel. We take pictures. We tour hotel properties. We visit the local attractions. We learn about local customs and events. We do some business and we enjoy ourselves while we work. Then we come back and put all that information on our travel guide for your area.
- Now we start to market your hotel: search engines, guides, links and banners.
- Hopefully, we start to book a few reservations for your hotel. When we get a reservation request for your hotel, we get in touch with your front office to confirm availability and the rate. If confirmed, we take the travelers deposit and they pay you the balance at the hotel. We forward you the deposit monthly minus our commission.
- At some point in the first 6 – 9 months of our relationship we send our travel agents down to tour the destination and hotel properties.
- There after each 9 – 12 months we rotate our travel agents through each destination so everyone knows and can sell your destination and property.
- We continue to work together happily ever after.
Please let us know if you have any additional questions.
Department Contacts:
Reservations: reservations@worldvacations.com
Customer Service: customersupport@worldvacations.com
Hotel Representation: marketing@worldvacations.com
