Ruthanne Terrero

Airlift: We flew Finnair via Helskinki. While St. Petersburg has wide, European-style boulevards, many of its side streets are narrow (the entire city is a UNESCO World Heritage Site). This means traffic is a constant issue, so allow extra time when driving (here, one drives on the left).

The brightness of this city's future is palpable as you watch its young population walk along its streets, coming of age in a city that has seen revolutions, sieges and an endless era of communism.

Peter Rasmussen has hit the ground running in his new role as general manager of Travel Counsellors USA. We caught up with Rasmussen, who is the former senior vice president, sales and marketing of Auto Europe, on his first full day in the company's Lake Mary, FL office. While just a few days...more >>

Do you find you're always trying to grow your client list as a way to increase your sales? How about taking your existing list of customers and trying to grow the quality of business that you exact from them? Here are some best practices for doing exactly that, which I've learned through...more >>

A man and a woman in their 50s walk into your agency, looking to book a cruise to the Bahamas. They're first-time cruisers and have established a spending limit of $3,000, including airfare. How can you convince them to spend a little more on upgrades, thereby increasing the value of their...more >>

It's been a week of tooling around New York, visiting with industry colleagues to see what they've been up to.

Peter Rasmussen has hit the ground running in his new role as general manager of Travel Counsellors USA. Travel Agent caught up with Rasmussen, who is the former senior vice president, sales and marketing of Auto Europe, on his first full day in the company's Lake Mary, FL office. While just a...more >>

The news coming out of the CLIA cruise3sixty conference in Fort Lauderdale late last month was overwhelmingly inspiring for the 1,200 travel agents who attended. Dan Hanrahan, chairman of CLIA's marketing committee and president of Celebrity Cruises, pointed to research showing that 68 percent...more >>

It takes a lot for members of a family to be able to work together, because there are so many dynamics that come into play. But as Debbie Strong conveys in her cover story "Family-Run Travel Businesses," those that keep their working relationships professional are those who are the most...more >>

Did you ever hire an assistant agent you thought would work out really well, but they just never meshed with the office environment? Perhaps they even quit after a few weeks, and no one in the office could quite pinpoint the problem.