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Identifying a gap in the travel market has meant personal Travel Manager, Karen Christie, has secured a role-call of clients from a near-zero starting position.
“I joined TravelManagers in March 2009 with no client base at all. While I had been in retail travel; 12 years in New Zealand, Canada and Australia, I was in a training role with a well-known travel company for the last couple of years,” says Christie. “I looked at two mobile consulting companies and I chose TravelManagers because I liked the fact that it was a young company and felt I would get the best support from their partnership team. I knew that if I was given the tools to be a success, and that I was able to be in charge of my destiny, so to speak – all would be okay. Never once have I regretted my decision.” Christie is based at Woody Point in Queensland, she has carved a niche for her own business out of adventure travel to Fiji, which she markets as ‘Fun in Fiji’. “When I visited Uprising Beach Resort in Fiji, July last year, as soon as I walked in I knew it was something special. When I learnt about the activities that were around I was amazed. When I came home and started asking people, ‘When I say Fiji, what do you think of?”, their response was always white sand, cocktails… I told them about the activities available and they couldn’t believe it. No one was pushing that sort of travel in Fiji. “So, I built Fun in Fiji and came up with some suggested itineraries that were affordable and great value for money. They’ve been really well received so far.” Christie recently took her travel packages to Travel Expos in Melbourne and Brisbane, which featured Adventure Tourism alongside R&R Holidays. “The Expos had a huge cross-section of people,” says Christie. “ At Melbourne alone there were 10,200 people through the door. I got people to sign up to my database by entering a competition for two which included five nights at Uprising Beach Resort and a day’s whitewater rafting or kayaking, sponsored by Rivers Fiji.” Christie says she hadn’t expected people to sign up straight away and so she created a long-lead in time for her Expo deals. “There were specials of a stay seven nights, pay for five or stay 10, pay for seven at the resort if you booked by 31 July. I decided to give a long lead in time so we can continue the marketing of this deal through emails for everyone who signed up to the database. I thought this way we were likely to capture more business. The bookings are still coming in and they’ve confirmed for me that my packages are what many people are after when they go to Fiji.” Photo caption: |
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