DeNureTours' Teresa Lirette, BDM - Western Ontario; Andrea Mendelsohn; and Mary Kay McGuinness, Tour Director
CTC Travel Group's Mel Fishman & Deana Fishman
Sears Travel's Vera Kolahal & Bernardine D'Souza
Worldlink Travel's Maryam Safarpour; Travel Tyme's Sossy Avakian; Uniglobe's Ethel Hansen Davey; and New Wave Travel's Marilyn Shalma
DeNureTours is wrapping up its Ontario roadshow, bringing agents and consumers together for their training presentations. I caught up with Andrea Mendelsohn, DeNure’s Director of Sales, National Accounts, at their recent Toronto session as the team was prepping to host 25 local travel agents and an overwhelming number of 90 consumer guests.
“We’re encouraging agents to invite their clients to the events. If they don’t have existing DeNure clients, they can potentially meet new customers here,” said Mendelsohn. “For instance, an agent met a couple at our St. Catharines event, made an appointment and booked the 2 guests on DeNure later that afternoon.” Now that’s what we like to hear!
Since Mendelsohn joined the DeNure team last year, she’s made significant headway in building the company’s trade relationships. “We didn’t have the trade contact or networking ability until we had Andrea,” said Jill Brett, President of DeNureTours. “Because of Andrea’s involvement at the head office level, we are now seeing progress in both the west and east coast.” (DeNure had previously focused on the Ontario market.)
“The trade has been all embracing and we’ve been working closer with consortiums, and cultivating our preferred relationships,” said Mendelsohn. “Of course, we intend to do more. We’re always suggesting agencies when we receive certain consumer inquiries and trying to turn the sales over to our agent partners.”
Although a majority of Denure’s sales are still coming direct from consumers, 2013 saw a 10% increase of agent sales over the year before. “We want to see this number double by the end of 2014,” said Mendelsohn. “It’s just a matter of training. Making sure agents get to know our product and how we differ ourselves from other mainstream tour operators.”
And how does DeNure set themselves apart? To name a few, the tour operator specifically caters to clients aged 65+ (a clear choice for your clients who are “young at heart”); they own their own fleet of motorcoachescancellation protection plan protects both the traveller’s investment and the agent’s commission; and because their tours include more (activities, meals etc.), agents earn more commission.
DeNure’s brochure is scheduled to launch this September, but here’s a sneak preview of some of their new 2015 tours.
- Christmas in Pennsylvania or Christmas in Cape Cod: “The Christmas tours are great for single travellers or for people who have no plans,” said Mendelsohn. “They can spend the holidays with the DeNure family.”
- DeNure will offer a tour revolving around the Philadelphia Flower Show in March 2015
- And for country music fans, the Country Classics Tour will include stops in Nashville; Louisville, Kentucky; and Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.
