Long gone are the days where travel agents make straight commission on sales. This post explains a little more about how the industry works today, how we operate as a Canadian destination wedding agency and what we do with the industry incentives offered to us.
These days, industry suppliers often reward agencies with free products in addition to commission on sales. This is great for us travel professionals but more often than not, it doesn’t help clients. Many travel agents allow this industry reward system to sway their judgment and recommendations on destinations and hotels.
Hmm… and some travel agents wonder why people trust peer-reviewed websites more than the professionals?
We know honesty is the best policy. The internet is driving change in how businesses operate as customers now have the opportunity to publically condemn or condone a product or service based on their experience and opinion. We fully support this evolution because it’s forcing companies to be transparent or suffer the consequences in profits.
How Weddings By Oceans Does Business
Here are a few things you should know about us and how we’ve chosen to do business:
- Integrity. Rather than selling products and services based on what we receive in return, we choose to make recommendations based on what YOU get in return. Our recommendations for properties are made with your best interest in mind.
- Criteria. We are a well-rounded team of travel professionals who work with you to determine the best hotels suited to your wedding wishes, group needs and individual budgets. All of our destination wedding specialists use these 3 very important deciding factors when working with every couple.
- No Service Fees. One of the biggest challenges brides and grooms face when planning a destination wedding is cost. (We found this out by doing an online survey about improving destination weddings). While many Canadian destination wedding agencies charge you an initial consulting fee as well as charge you for destination wedding services (starting from $499 and up), we do not! Here’s a short list of complimentary destination wedding services we offer so you can see that we’re offering the same services (and more!) as other agencies who charge.
- Your Price & Our Compensation. Regardless of the negotiated group rate for your trip, our agency adds the same minimal mark-up on every package. Whether your package price is $1,000 per person or $2,000 per person, we are paid the same amount of money by the tour operator. This allows us to provide you added value and savings while removing any enticement for us on larger packages.
- Preferred Partners. Instead of allowing industry suppliers to woo us with compliments and gifts, we demand complete satisfaction for our clients. That’s why we’ve developed a preferred industry partner program so that we may fully develop relationships with the suppliers who consistently deliver high value for money and go above and beyond required service levels.
- Incentives. When we’re rewarded industry incentives by our suppliers, most of the time we turn around and offer them to YOU as a thank you gift for working with us. Or we may use them to fly our destination wedding specialists to a destination so they can review a property firsthand and pass their experience onto you. Very, very rarely do we ever use these incentives personally.
- Patience, Understanding & (when needed) Tough Love. We refuse to push couples into making decisions before they are ready. Choosing a property for your destination wedding is a huge decision and we understand how you might want to weigh your options before jumping the gun. On the flipside, our gentle encouragements to book early are for your benefit. Hotels often book up to one year in advance so if we feel you’re procrastinating in making a decision, we’ll kindly remind you that early booking allows you to get the best rate and secure the wedding date, time and space you require for your group.
This is just some of how the destination wedding industry works and how we’ve chosen to operate within it. Our clients like how we do business and they love how our industry knowledge and service makes it easier and less stressful for them to plan their destination wedding.
Do you have any experience with destination weddings or destination wedding agencies? If you have any questions or comments, please write them in the comment section below or contact us.
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