An agent acquaintance of mine on Facebook posted an interesting comment yesterday, one that I’m sure all of you agents have experienced:
“Client learned hard lesson today. We told them to book their Alaska cruise weeks ago. They wanted to see if the rates would go down. We told them it probably would not get any lower than it was. They finally decided to book…price is now more than double! When we tell you to book…BOOK! If you’re thinking cruise, now is the time to book!”
Just how does an agent get their clients to listen? You are the experts, you know the pricing, timing and booking patterns yet somehow customers always think they can get a better deal by waiting it out. In a case like the above, the clients were surely disappointed in their final fare but hopefully they learned something from it. That’s the kind of anecdote that every travel agent has by the trunk full, and it probably wouldn’t hurt to share those stories with your clients who are slow to commit. At least the warning will have been issued so that if and when the client gets slammed with a higher fare, they can’t complain to you. They’ll have no one to blame but themselves.
That’s small comfort for the agent with an unhappy client, but on the bright side you’ll have established your experience and know-how and, who knows, maybe next time your client will actually listen.