A Travel Agent s Guide To Using

Size: px

Start display at page:

Download "A Travel Agent s Guide To Using"

Andrew Reynolds
6 years ago
Views:

1 A Travel Agent s Guide To Using

2 Using Your Photography To Sell More Travel Steve Crowhurst, CTC Page 1

3 Using Your Photography To Sell More Travel - Copyright 2014 Steve Crowhurst, SMP Training Co. All rights reserved. Printed in Canada. No part of this book may be used or reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise whatsoever without written permission or authorization through payment of a Permission to Copy fee (except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews). For information please contact SMP Training Co. steve@smptraining.com or call Protected by the Canadian Copyright Act. For general information on SMP publications and services please steve@smptraining.com Illustrations by Steve Crowhurst unless otherwise sourced and credited. Limit of liability/disclaimer of warranty: SMP Training Co., publisher and the author make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this work and specifically disclaim all warranties, including without limitation, warranties of fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales or promotional materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for every situation. This work is sold with the understanding that the publisher and author is not engaged in rendering legal or other professional services. If professional assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising here from. The fact that an organisation or website is referred to in this work as a citation and / or potential source of further information does not mean that the author or the publisher endorses the information, the organisation or website may provide or recommendations it may make. Further, readers should be aware that Internet websites listed in this work may have changed or disappeared between when this work was written and when it is read. Page 2

4 CONTENTS 1. Extraordinary Traveller & Photographer 2. Sister Industries 3. Get A Logo Get A Website 4. Selling Travel In A Digital World 5. Take Your Best Shot 6. Creating The Storyline 7. The Travel Colour Palette 8. Ordinary To Extreme 9. Get In The Picture The Selfie and MORE! 10. Where and How to Use Your Photography to Sell More Travel 11. An Image is Worth 12. ing Images The Professional Way 13. Recap 14. Photo Editing Software 15. Adding Text To Your Image 16. The Photo Book 17. Selling Your Photographs 18. The Photographer s Life 19. Your Own Photography Tours 20. Photographic Graphics 21. Women Only Tours 22. iphoneography 23. I to Eye Travel Photography Social Sites 24. Time to Plan 25. About The Author PAGE Page 3

5 Introduction and Welcome As you know, everyone is or can be a photographer today. So many gadgets and devices can snap a photo and record that special moment in an instant. But then there are not too many photographers who are travel agents that can access the world as you can - and as many times as you can either, and at a cost other photographers can only dream about. What s all this is leading to you ask? Here s the scoop: you have every opportunity to be out in the world, travelling and recording your experiences in both still images and video to bring home and use those images as eye-candy. Enticing your clients and prospects to contact you for help in arranging a trip to that place featured in your glorious photographs. That s the goal. Selling more travel by using your photography as the lure. As you will read in a moment, your photography can also lead you to publishing ebooks, soft and hardcover books too. Once published your books will lead you on another path and that could be as a speaker, presenter and yet another path could be to lead a group tour made up of casual photographers. Keep moving along this same path and you could arrange tours for professional photographers. You don t have to match their expertise of course. Just maintain that interest and basic knowledge, but exude confidence in planning your tours to suit your client s generic and customized needs. At the lowest level, your average traveller will ooh and ah after your photography and that is all you need to happen. It will nudge them to book that package, that flight, that cruise and when you say I took that shot the sale is usually closed. The been-there-took-that close works. Using your own photography to sell more travel is an exciting concept and one you will enjoy too much! Keep your camera focused on selling travel and all things will work as they are intended. Shoot and sell more travel! Steve Crowhurst THE TRAVEL AGENT S STORE COACHING PROGRAM To help you get the maximum benefit from your purchase The Travel Agent s Store offers a free coaching session with the author of the e-guide. The coaching sessions last for up to one-hour and are conducted via Skype. Once you have read through and studied this e-guide jot down any questions, challenges you have, then to steve@thetravelagentsstore.com to arrange a coaching date and time. Be sure to take advantage of this offer! Page 4

If Thomas Cook is the father of the retail travel trade we know and love today, then Burton Holmes is the father of travel photography both still and video.

The book shown here is in my library and it could be in yours too. Most large bookstores sell it and of course you can find it online. What a treat it is.

6 If Thomas Cook is the father of the retail travel trade we know and love today, then Burton Holmes is the father of travel photography both still and video. You owe it to yourself to read about both men and other travel photography pioneers too, but I have to say that Mr. Holmes was a click apart during his time behind the camera. The book shown here is in my library and it could be in yours too. Most large bookstores sell it and of course you can find it online. What a treat it is. Burton Holmes invented the word Travelogue and it came to represent what we would call today, a consumer night or event where you stand up front of your invited audience and talk about your recent travels, supported by still images and supplier videos. When Burton Holmes put on a consumer event (he was not selling travel, he was selling his travel books) he filled Carnegie hall with a black tie crowd. Although he "retired" from the stage in 1949, he continued to present shows until health problems forced him to stop, aged 81. By this point he had delivered more than 8000 travelogues! Imagine that. He looked the part and he was eloquent in his description of the places he visited. His story is one to read and admire and apply. He pulled off a number of firsts. He mixed with royalty. He filmed where no man or woman had filmed until he pressed the shutter. The Burton Holmes Lectures, based on the slides and his narrations for them, were reorganized into a series of books, originally published in 1901 in ten volumes. In following years he added more volumes, and they remained in print under the name The Burton Holmes Travelogues. More than 40,000 copies of these sets were sold. Imagine selling that many! Start here and read about this man. Explore the rest of the Burton Holmes website here: Page 5

7 What a great time to be selling travel. So much technology and most of it can help you project your travel expertise through so many channels featuring photographs. The sequence below is typical. Shoot, post and . Then there s shoot and upload to your social photo platform such as a Flickr, Pinterest, Instagram and many others. The skill comes in choosing the right channel for your style of travel image. You do not want your work to get lost in the shuffle. Eventually it will be your photography that will attract existing and new customers to buy their travel from you. For this to happen the best location for your travel photography is your website. Then it really is ALL ABOUT YOU and that s the focus you want. No need to do battle with the millions of images on Flickr for instance. But worthwhile being on that site eventually. Titles and Notes Try to include a title, a slogan or a note on each image or just below it if your software allows this. In this way the visitor to your website is not guessing where the image was taken. Even if you have text around the image always title it and always add your name to the image. Sell the sizzle: use exciting words and phrases as descriptors. Sell the feeling of standing on the edge, entering the building, touching that cold, stone floor. Page 9 Be careful where you add your title. Try not to obscure your image. Perhaps add the title outside of the image in the white band or just below it.

8 It s not always possible but when it is, think about the story or message you want your photograph to deliver. When you are shooting quickly this may be a tough order, however when you can, you should plan what you intend to photograph around the destination or tour you intend to promote. For those images shot from the hip as they happened you can always think about them later to create the message. The image below is one of mine and it s been turned into a watercolour, using a filter in Photoshop Elements. To do that is as simple as a click. Nothing fancy. The eagle resides in the left two-thirds of the image with enough space on the right to tell a story. One of the most important tips to remember is NOT to center the subject dead center. Best to crop accordingly so that the subject (building, person, wave, tree ) is seeming to be involved in something going on around it. The eagle is looking at something in the water, its eyes are fixed. Any minute now this magnificent bird will launch into space and soar high before it swoops down to grab its dinner from the ocean. The red arrows indicate the energy and flow of the subject and image. This is very important to consider as you manipulate the image to show off a pathway, a church spire, a glorious view from a mountaintop or your tour group joining in on a festive event. Anyone looking at this image of the eagle will wonder, What s he looking at? and that there is the story unfolding and that s where you would pick up the storyline, tell and sell what you witnessed, and mention your next tour. Page 13

9 You have a lot to work with. Every colour and colour combination can be found in nature. You may not see it or witness it, but it is there. The pigments used in the painting of art from cave drawings to Monet all come from our planet and the natural world. What does all this mean to you? It means you can change your imagery to suit the mood and destination or tour you are trying to sell. Where black and white delivers the mood you want make the change. Going for old style adventure trips change to a Sepia tone. Your world, your colour. The colour landscape shown here can be changed to suit the mood as mentioned and below it is rendered in Gray Scale and not quite black and white. The options are endless as are the Hues and Saturation levels. The main thing here is to get to grips with image colouring. You can also get fancy dancy by using the filters in your photo editing program. By combining black & white and colour within the same image you would see this result This works wonderfully well for let s say when you want to have a certain building stand out in your e-flyer. You can remove the colour from the entire image except that building, or that flag, or that person. Very dramatic and just a few clicks will do it. Page 15

10 Where and How To Use Your Photography to Sell More Travel Are you ready? Do you have your Selfie shots ready? Your sunsets, sunrises, landscapes, people shots? Okay this is good. Now let s go sell some travel using your images. Page 19

RECAP Okay, let s review where YOU are and what needs to be done: Read and learn about past and present travel photographers Realize that travel and photography go hand in hand Create a good looking

to do with it Study the Travel Colour Palette and match text colours to your images Keep your images light in terms of content consumers like happy not sad.

If you want to go deeper than the one-click edit then you have more than enough tools to use. GIMP is the best-known free photo-editing software.

11 RECAP Okay, let s review where YOU are and what needs to be done: Read and learn about past and present travel photographers Realize that travel and photography go hand in hand Create a good looking functional website Design a new logo that includes YOU and one of your images and a camera Study how best to use your images throughout the world of social networks Take your best shot and plan what to do with it Study the Travel Colour Palette and match text colours to your images Keep your images light in terms of content consumers like happy not sad. Use colour, B&W and sepia for the appropriate promotion. PHOTO EDITING SOFTWARE PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS GIMP Elements is relatively easy to use especially with its AUTO buttons. Just click and it s done. If you want to go deeper than the one-click edit then you have more than enough tools to use. GIMP is the best-known free photo-editing software. Designed to work like Photoshop, GIMP is a very powerful tool... and might feel complicated if you're looking for simplicity. But, on the other hand, it's free and prides itself on ease of use. Turn your image into a canvas, a watercolour, a sketch and move this and that, blur it, reduce the size and so on. For the price ranging from $70 on sale to $99 it s worth every penny. Picasa has been around for quite some time now and does a good job. Like everything else you must practice. Page 25

12 Here s one more idea that will keep you focused and could even generate fame and fortune as you chase down those travel bookings. Talking about YOU putting together a book that features your best of best travel photographs. This idea is not new. Done so many times as you well know. BUT we re talking an ebook, not a physical huge coffee table book. Unless that is you have thousands of dollars to invest. Joking aside, if you do, then you could most certainly self-publish your best travel images. You have more than enough competition here, however most of these travel book authors are trying to sell their books. You are selling travel. Your book is a means to an end. Mind you, you could have a dual revenue generator if your book sells more travel AND it sells itself too. Make a few notes here: If you did publish your own travel photo book what would it be about, focus on, show, tell, explain? Page 27

YOUR OWN PHOTOGRAPHY TOURS Work with your preferred suppliers, your adventure niche suppliers and in fact any of your supplier s group departments who can build a photography tour to your

13 YOUR OWN PHOTOGRAPHY TOURS Work with your preferred suppliers, your adventure niche suppliers and in fact any of your supplier s group departments who can build a photography tour to your specifications. Next: if you wish you can sell such products as National Geographic s photography tours they pay travel agents between 8-10%. Page 30 Then again you can focus on your own niche and develop a photography tour around it, ask a photographic instructor to come along building his / her fees into your tour costs and promote a series of excellent off the beaten track tours.

14 TIME TO PLAN Okay. We re done. Make your notes below as you review this eguide and try to capture those fleeting what-if thoughts and ideas. If you have any questions on anything at all related to the topic of his Guide don t forget to use your one hour coaching time with me. SHOOT AND SELL MORE TRAVEL. ENJOY! Page 35

About The Author Steve Crowhurst Travel trade keynote speaker, trainer, author & publisher.

trade training and consulting firms and has worked from a home office for over 20 years.

Travel magazine, this was followed by Travel Agency Manager and Travel Trade Supplier magazines in early 2013.

Steve is now turning all of his workshops and webinars into easy to read, street savvy eguides. Check back often at www.thetravelagentsstore.com for new titles.

15 About The Author Steve Crowhurst Travel trade keynote speaker, trainer, author & publisher. Steve entered the retail travel industry in 1965 and has worked from the front line to the executive floor, owned and operated his own travel agencies, travel trade training and consulting firms and has worked from a home office for over 20 years. In 2010 he published his 412 page book 273 No Fluff - No Theory Marketing Ideas for Travel Agents; in June 2011 he published the first digital issue of Selling Travel magazine, this was followed by Travel Agency Manager and Travel Trade Supplier magazines in early In October 2013 Steve published the first issue of IC Travel Agent a digital magazine targeting the home-based travel agent, ICs and OSRs. Steve is now turning all of his workshops and webinars into easy to read, street savvy eguides. Check back often at for new titles. If you would like Steve to speak at your conference or convention, deliver management level webinars or work with your executive team please him directly: steve@smptraining.com A complete bio can be read here. JOIN THE STORE MAILING LIST, BE FIRST TO KNOW ABOUT NEW TITLES AND ENJOY A STORE MEMBER DISCOUNT TOO. Click here to join The Travel Agent s Store member list. Page 36

16 PUBLISHED BY Page 37

BUILDING A MINECRAFT. City by Sarah Guthals, PhD

BUILDING A MINECRAFT. City by Sarah Guthals, PhD BUILDING A MINECRAFT City by Sarah Guthals, PhD ii BUILDING A MINECRAFT CITY Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030 5774, www.wiley.com Copyright 2016 by John Wiley