On Friday, November 14 we (Penney and I) flew to Florida to attend the Travel Trade Leisure Conference.
The Conference includes many educational seminars, ship inspections as well as several days of networking with other travel professionals.
On Saturday morning CLIA held a seminar, Negotiating to Win, by Tom Cogan.
Then we departed for our first ship inspection, the beautiful new Holland America Eurodam. This ship is elegant with its rich woods, beautiful fresh cut flowers and of course the staff was so wonderful and welcoming.
Below are a few photo graphs of my visit, my friend Mr. Moose also accompanied us.
Let me explain about Mr. Moose, Penney had introduced me to Dave Stockert, from Holland America, he took an instant shining to me. Then in October when we were visiting my home town of Dubrovnik, Penney found Mr. Moose and brought him back for Dave.
Here is a picture of Mr. Moose and Dave meeting at the conference.
The afternoon was full of seminars, the first session Penney attended was by Keith Powell. He is the original Business Revivalist. in his session he discussed the importance of always having business cards with you... no matter if you are in the grocery store or the middle of the ocean. Also discussed were group ideas, where to find them, how to promote and finding your niche.
The next session was a technology panel moderated by Alan Gerstner, The Travel Doctor. On the panel was Revelex, Trams, Mailpound, Triology, .travel, and Amadeus North America. They all had good information to share with the agents, they discussed their products that will help in running a travel office.
Then we attended the Opening General Session, we were welcomed by Ian and Seth Gittitz, whom own and operate Travel Trade. They put together the Travel Leisure Show. Terry Dale, President and CEO of CLIA also spoke.
We then had the Travel Agent and Travel Executive of the Year Awards. Travel Agent of the year is Les-Lee Roland and Executive of the year is Maurice Zarmati, President of Costa.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
This morning we had a lovely breakfast sponsored by Sandals and then several featured speakers before departing for the ship inspections.
Penney and I visited the Carnival Valor today, but silly her she forgot to change the batteries in the camera so you will just have to trust us that the ship is beautiful. We had a very nice lunch and met some wonderful travel agents to network with. Of course Penney didn't share the famous Carnival chocolate dessert... the melting cake.
This afternoon I decided to take a nap but Penney, as the good travel professional she is, attended more classes.
Penney went to the one titled The Travel Agent Guide to Travel Technology and Increasing Your Bottom Line by The Travel Doctor. He shared cost effective websites and software programs that can be used in the travel business. At the end of the session, a light nearly fell from the ceiling, right over Penney's head...
The next session she attended was Excel at Retail by Scott Koepf, President of NACTA. Penney has taken this and many of his classes before but he always has so many great ideas and is so motivating that she continues to go over and over again. Always coming away a better agent!
This evening Jungle Island hosted a reception for us. It was dark so we didn't get any good pictures, but walking around and seeing the cute animals was a lot of fun.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Avalon Waterways hosted our breakfast and gave us a great presentation on River cruising. After we had several more featured speakers before attending a tour operators panel.
We then boarded the buses and departed for the pier where we had a tour of the Norwegian Sky. What a nice ship, so many dining options and things to do and see. Remember NCL is all about Freestyle Cruising!
Here is me visiting the ship
More to follow...
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