The clock is ticking…. Just two months left before the number one travel trade show in North America kicks off—THETRADESHOW, running Sept. 13-15 at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
Jam-packed with a wide selection of educational seminars, THETRADESHOW—the Travel Retailing and Destination Expo—offers comprehensive education and training to enrich your career and increase your sales. Covering technology, cruise, home-based and niche markets, these educational seminars are the perfect vehicle to help you enhance your areas of expertise and capture more sales opportunities.
“This year, THETRADESHOW’s educational format has been reconfigured to provide travel buyers with even more highly focused seminars, all designed to help them strategically grow their business and make the most of today’s ever-expanding technology,” says Bill Maloney, CTC, CEO of ASTA, one of the 16 partners of THETRADESHOW. “Now, with everyone looking for ways to strengthen their business and make themselves more profitable, THETRADESHOW is the ideal place for travel agents and suppliers alike to take advantage of a host of educational offerings and networking opportunities.”
In the technology arena, for instance, Blogging for Business: Using Weblogs as Part of Your Company Marketing Plan—presented by writer and blogger Bryan Alaspa—will touch upon the importance of blogging as a way to develop and showcase your expertise in a given area and network with customers. Alaspa will explain how to create a company blog, what articles to write, how to build and maintain an audience and even how to earn some extra income through the blog. The Formula for Email Success-Unveiling 34 Indispensable Tips That Get a Reply session will show you how to send effective emails that get clients and colleagues to read your messages and reply to your requests. Kate Koziol will present Mastering Social Networking for Business: The Next Frontier in Reaching Your Audience, which will teach you what to do online from a corporate perspective and what not to do. You’ll hear first-hand accounts of great wins and huge blunders so that you can navigate these new waters with ease and success. Other technology sessions include CRM-Customer Relationship Management 2.0 and Twitter and Your Twavel Business—both presented by Chelle Honiker Yarbrough, CTC—as well as Google Docs Deliver!, presented by Carol Fullmer.
When it comes to the cruise market, CLIA is presenting several seminars, including Creating a Cruise Marketing Plan, presented by Tom Cogan, MCC, CTC. While earning 15 credits toward ACC, MCC, ECC and ECCS certification requirements, you’ll learn how all the pieces fit into the marketing puzzle while identifying the essential components in a successful yet simple marketing plan and how to apply them. John Bateman, MCC, is presenting three seminars: Better Listening Skills for Better Business—10 credits toward ACC and MCC certification requirements—Local Public Relations Techniques: How to Maximize Your Agency’s Visibility—15 credits toward ACC, MCC, ECC and ECCS certification requirements—and Who Are You? An Exploration of Your Abilities, Skills and Strengths, with 15 credits toward ACC, MCC, ECC and ECCS certification requirements. In the latter, Batemen will take you through a series of exercises that will assess your professional skills and provide insights on how to excel in all that you do. Additionally, Cogan will present the Psychology of Selling, with 15 credits toward ACC, MCC, ECC and ECCS certification requirements. Please note that agents can receive only up to 40 CLIA points, since these five sessions do run up against one another.
The four sessions under the home-based banner run the gamut from Marvelous Marketing, presented by Scott Koepf, CTC, MCC, and in which participants, through an interactive process, will discover the vision for their business, their brand and position in the marketplace, their goals and the strategies and tactics to reach them. Two other sessions presented by Koepf include The Top Ten Decisions and Actions that Home Based and Independent Agents Need for Success! and The Ultimate Sales Seminar, in which Koepf offers a new and totally unique look at selling that will significantly impact results. In Tool Box for Making a Small Fortune as a Home-Based Agent, presenters Gary Fee and Anita Pagliasso will cover the following topics: understanding the tools that are needed for a professional home-based agent; legal issues for home-based agents; industry ID codes; e-commerce and database tools; how to build business through networking; the home-based agency host; selling and managing groups and much more.
The five niche sessions, meanwhile, include Fundamentals of Business Travel Management, the NBTA’s starter course that focuses on the basics of business travel management. This 2-day workshop presented by Donna Watson is designed as a guide to the primary components of managed travel. The aforementioned Fullmer will present Shoppers + Fees = Profitability, in which you’ll learn to value those “shopper” phone calls and turn them into new clients. Agents who want to learn more about selling India should make a note to attend India-It’s More than Incredible India, It’s Rewarding As Well. Brought to THETRADESHOW by India Tourism and presented by Rajeev Kohli, you’ll gain knowledge on what this destination has to offer and learn how it can be a truly profitable and rewarding destination to sell. Seasoned sales professional Mike Marchev is presenting two programs: How to Grow Your Business by Effectively Selling Yourself and Sales and Marketing Planning for Young Professionals, a fast-paced session in which Marchev will walk participants through the planning process designed to clarify the young professional’s future career strategy.
