Travel Advisor Changed Course During Pandemic
Ragan Stone parlayed a degree in supply chain management into routing clients to luxury vacations around the world. As client advisor at Ragan Stone Travel in Birmingham, the 2013 Harbert College graduate is a liaison for experiential expeditions and desired destinations such as Paris, Rome and Southeast Asia.
“What I almost always find on every person’s bucket list or what they want to do in the next 20 years is ‘I want to travel more,’ or ‘I want to see this,’ or ‘I want to experience that,’” Stone said.
COVID-19, however, changed where travelers could visit and how they could get there, and led to restrictions that often continue today. Stone quickly had to pivot.
First, she shied away from traditional travel marketing. Then she focused on the hotel industry’s drive market — travelers who live near specific cities or destinations — and turned attention to getaways families could reasonably take in the middle of a global pandemic.
“This strategy meant fewer custom itineraries and full-service trips, and more basic hotel service for my clients,” Stone said.
It worked.
“A hotel manager in Savannah, Georgia, emailed me at one point during the pandemic and said, ‘You have our most bookings of any agent in the country right now.’ Why? Because I utilized what was in the drive market for my clients, and what would allow them to have a vacation experience.
“Marketing this way won me new clients and I think created some loyalty. It wasn’t the most attractive business model, but I ended up having some really productive months.”
Utilizing simple, targeted strategies for clients closer to their homes not only earned Stone business during the pandemic, but also gained her further trust among those clients who have the opportunity to expand their travel plans abroad moving forward.
“Some of those clients have come back now with some much, much larger trips — the destinations that I get excited about,” she said. “But during all of this, one of the main things I learned is regardless of the dollar amount of the trip, how clients value your relationship has a lot to do with how productive the outcome is going to be.”
