The Benefits of Working with a Travel Agency for Group Travel
If you’ve been to this website before or have had the pleasure of traveling with us, you probably know that we specialize in group travel. For those of you that don’t really know what we mean by specializing in “group” travel, here’s the deal…
When we first started this business, the inspiration came from a group fundraiser we attended that just so happened to be a group cruise. The goal of the cruise was to raise money for a non-profit organization that was hosting the cruise. The group was medium in size (roughly 20-30 people) and the ages ranged from early twenties to people in their fifties. That might sound like a huge age range but everybody was super cool, easy-going, and just wanted to have fun and enjoy their vacation.
When we returned home from the cruise, we thought “Man, we can probably get about 20 people to go on a cruise and host it ourselves!” That was the genesis of what has now become Travelitis LLC!
The next year, we planned our first cruise (a group cruise to a few Caribbean islands) and it was a hit! After that trip we decided to find out how to incorporate and make this vision we had into a business. Fast-forward a couple more cruises as “coordinators/hosts” and we finally incorporated in 2013 as Travelitis LLC. With that milestone achieved, we began marketing ourselves as a travel agency. And that’s where we had to make a quick decision on our direction.
We were not aware at the time, but planning group travel and planning individual or couples travel has some similarities but lots of differences as well. Group travel typically means you have a group of people that all want to go to the same place and at pretty much the same time, although they may be coming from different places. Single travelers and couples that travel usually know where they want to go but dates can be flexible based on cost, flight timing, work schedules, etc. With that in mind, we decided 2 things early:
- We wanted to specialize in groups because, based on our experience, we found that having a group (let’s say a group is at least 10 people) allows people to travel with others they feel comfortable around. Or, in the case of a mixed group (people that don’t all know each other), it allows people to make new friends. That latter example is WHAT WE STRIVE TO ENABLE.
- We wanted to not only plan group travel for our clients but we also wanted to plan and host trips ourselves. If you take a look at our website you will see that we plan about 3-5 group trips per year at a minimum. The goal is to give our current and past clients the opportunity to meet new people and also to have the same great vacation experiences we’ve always aimed to provide.
We’ve always felt like these two decisions have helped us differentiate ourselves from other travel agencies in that we want to provide people with memorable vacations around good people whether they know everyone or not.
The 3rd thing that we decided back in 2013 was that we would leverage technology to provide our clients with the most seamless experience from booking travelers, to payment installments, and group communication up until their departure. With that goal in mind, we make it a point to offer all of our clients webpages that include all the information about their group trip, allows travelers to make payments securely online (without having to provide us with their credit card information), and serves as a place for travelers within their group to communicate about their trip.
We’ve always known that the excitement about a group trip is heightened when travelers in the group are chatting it up leading up to the trip. We want to enable this camaraderie and excitement and we want our travelers to be able to do this in a modern way, ONLINE!
This post went the long way to explaning part of our mission. We want to provide great group travel experiences in a modern and seamless way that facilitates and encourages relationship-building, world discovery, and lifelong memories!
