Richard Turen
When you stock your store shelves with destinations, ships, highly organized tour products catering to every travel proclivity and the world's hotel room inventory, you have taken on a fair bit of work and self-education. Now add the world's airlines to your shop. No one else manages what we manage; no one else represents the breadth of who we represent. The economic health of more than a few countries rests on our sagging shoulders.
At our little mom-and-pop emporium, we also produce what I feel are the world's most researched, ad-free, honest reviews of the world's top 10 cruise lines. Some might think we're crazy to do it; to those people, I plead insanity. I suggest that you consider offering the same kind of service for your valued clients.
For our part, we do it because we know that there are precious few professionally documented reviews of cruise lines available to the general public. Surveys and reviews sell in the publishing world, so everyone does them. And no publication wants to antagonize a current or potential advertiser. So what do they do?
In virtually every case, the major consumer magazines and cruise-oriented websites break down the best of the best into many subcategories. They do it by size of the ship, destinations, etc. This results in a multitude of awards, which usually manage to cover and include all advertisers.
Worse: They publish reviews. I am not talking about the largely purchased reviews that populate social media; I am talking about beautiful, glossy magazines that include the experiences of a quite literate travel writer with an excellent resume or, increasingly, a so-called influencer with a not-so-impressive resume. They cruise all over the world and write about their experiences.
But do the vast majority of travel writers and bloggers pay full fare? I am afraid that the economic realities of publishing make that impossible. The New York Times does not accept free travel for its traveling staff, but few publications can afford to take that stance. (The Times has won 132 Pulitzer Prizes, so be careful what you say about the paper when I am in the room.)
So virtually everything we read about cruising is largely "payback" for a free trip.
Travel marketing is done with smoke and mirrors and flights of rhetorical fancy. Words like "inclusive" or "luxury" lose their meaning, and data is dismissed and replaced by "sales," "deals" and "awards."
If you work in the auto industry, everyone knows the difference between a Ferrari and a Ford. Dollar Tree does not pretend to be Nordstrom. But in the travel industry, all bets are off.
So back to my original point: Why do we spend the time to create honest rankings based on real research? Why do we give awards based solely on merit and performance? It boils down to the fact that we think the consumer is always owed the truth within our ability to provide it. That is why there is no advertising related to our agency's rankings.
The best advisors in the best travel firms should consider producing honest, in-house reviews of the top-tier products in every category. Own it and circulate it but never let a supplier influence your research or your data collection.
It is, I believe, factual and correct to say that a sample of 1,000 random consumers will produce no more than two or three who can accurately name the world's top-ranked luxury cruise line. As we have so little to occupy our time, perhaps it falls to us to correct misconceptions created by an avalanche of marketing hype.