OSSN Conference Opens New Doors
By Melody Fee

The OSSN Regional Conference, held May 12-13 in Ft Lauderdale, provided a great venue for agents and suppliers to network about many industry topics that affect the Home-Based Agency and the Independent Contractor. Preceding the Cruise Tour World by one day, the OSSN full-day conference event brought together over 150 OSSN member agents and 25 travel suppliers to share ideas, product information and training sessions geared toward the home-based travel professional.

The event began with a welcome reception hosted by Travel Safe Insurance and Royal Caribbean International. Travel Safe's president Scott Perfetto, Vice President Cynthia Perry and Sales Exec. Dave Randon joined the group during the evening to welcome them to the Embassy Suites and sunny Florida! Agents from across the US were in attendance including OSSN directors from over 10 regions across the country.

Directors in attendance included Anita Balamane, OSSN Western Regional Manager and San Jose Chapter Director; Peggy McMiller, East Bay, CA Chapter Director; Ruth Vitale, Southern New Jersey Chapter Director; Dolores Samms, Miami Chapter Director, Sharon Lasater, Ft. Worth, TX Chapter Director; Nancy Baxter, St. Louis Chapter Director; Pricilla Powers, Boston Area Chapter Director; Chris Morse, Northern New Jersey Chapter Director; Pat Saizan, Orlando, FL Chapter Director, and Melody Fee, OSSN VP and Palm Beach County Chapter Director.

As the action-packed conference agenda began on the morning of May 13, OSSN President Gary Fee opened with some keynote remarks referring to the level of professionalism that home-based professional has achieved. He applauded our supplier members, as well, for recognizing this emerging phenomenon in our industry and embracing the home-based agent by developing more tools to accommodate their sales and marketing needs. Discussing the widely accepted TRUE IATA identification codes that have been used successfully by OSSN Agency members for the last three years, he relayed to the audience that IATA is very excited to see how well this ID system for NON ARC agencies is working in establishing a universal identity for the home-based seller of travel with suppliers across the US and internationally, as well.

The next four hours of the morning were devoted to excellent panel discussions offered by expert suppliers and professionals with tools to offer to OSSN members. First was the technology panel with its main discussion focusing on web-based marketing success. Mickey Smith. president of Primary Hub, Scottdale, AZ, discussed creating a professional website that really identifies your "niche" in the marketplace. He emphasized that agents have to sell themselves to their audience, creating a website that sizzles, but is still personal enough to really identify your services as unique to the potential buyer. Co-panelist Randy Goodrich, president of Passport Online, showed some fabulous tools available to all OSSN members on our website which allow agents to completely customize great supplier travel offers, and send them out by email within seconds to your preferred and potential new clients, with just a few seconds work! Both companies have been involved with creating tools that are helping OSSN members to market more successfully over the last several years. If you have not tried the new agent portal on the OSSN website to create these special offers for your own clients, don't delay! As discussed during this event, there is no time to loose in building a professional presence on the web. Amadeus' Rob Lowry also discussed the new products that Amadeus has developed to assist the home-based agent during this first interesting panel of the morning, including their Agenta program.

Following the technology experts was the panel focused on Host Agencies. Panelists, including Pam Miller of Magellan 360 in Glen Ellyn, IL , Kim Sherrett of Travel Planners Int'l in Altamonte Springs, FL, and Anita Balamane of Ticket to Travel, San Jose, CA, all discussed the benefits and services of the various host agencies that they operate. Each of the agencies have a different "business model" with various levels of commission from 70% to 100% commission in some cases. The focus on training for the home-based agent was an important one to all of the panelists. In many cases, that training may have to be done remotely as not all home-based agents live in the same locality as their host agency. On the other hand, smaller host agencies such as Ticket to Travel, who works with many local IC's in their area, discussed the opportunity to bring suppliers into the main office to offer local training with the IC's that are affiliated with the agency. In fact, the emergence of the "Home-Based" Host Agency is a strong trend in our industry, while at the same time the "brick and mortar" host agencies are still seeing a great upsurge in their ability to build successful outside agent sales forces, based upon being able to also offer great benefits and services on a national level.

The third panel of cruise executives had a lot of great information to offer home-based agents. Panelists including Kristin Karst of Amadeus Waterways, Cris DeSouza of Royal Caribbean; Anthony Viciana of Carnival Cruise Lines and James Rodriguez of Oceania Cruises all noted that their companies are really working hard to identify the needs of the home-based agencies and to offer more professional marketing tools to help the agent capture a greater number of sales through the use of the tools they can provide. The discussion included the use of new online tools for creating unique marketing pieces and also included ideas as to how the home-based agent can work more effectively with the representatives ( District Sales Managers or DSM's) of the cruise lines to market "perishable" cruise products more effectively. When asked about the "trends" in the marketplace, all panelists on the Cruise Panel agreed that "Family Travel" is a strong selling trend in their segment of the industry. Multigenerational family travel, including grandparent and grandchildren traveling together, even on an international level such as Amadeus Waterways' river cruising was highlighted. RCI's appointment of Ms. DeSouza as the "Manager of Home-Based Agency Channel Strategy" is strong statement of how the cruise lines are really trying to appoint executives to examine the needs of the home-based agency and move forward to improve the tools and communication between supplier and agent. Similar positions are being created by many major suppliers in our industry today.

The final panel of the morning featured executives from the leisure tour and land based travel segment of the travel industry including Margaret Forton of CIE Tours, Shaun Malay of Tauck World Discovery, Jackie Rudd of Grand Bahama Vacations and Stephen Matise of GoGo Worldwide Vacations. With all four unique suppliers discussing the upswing in this "Family Travel" market, just as in the earlier cruise panel, it was interesting to note that, overall, this was one of the most noted trends from such a diverse group of industry suppliers. Each also emphasized that their companies are very eager to build more successful sales relationships with OSSN members and they have all embraced the TRUE IATA codes for home-based agencies that are operating with these OSSN/ IATA issued codes. Also discussed was the idea that the "baby boomer" generation are still looking for the cultural travel experiences and are not afraid to travel internationally to have these types of educational opportunities fulfilled.

During the OSSN conference luncheon, hosted by CCRA, OSSN members learned more about CCRA's excellent hotel booking engine which is also available to all members at no cost. Their program offers many ways to book hotels worldwide for your clients. Geof Cahoon, Vice President of Customer Care, presented a great PowerPoint presentation that detailed the 70,000 plus hotels that CCRA offers to agents and how an agent can by rooms at net cost or earn various levels of commission. In addition Geof provided OSSN members with information about CCRA's 24/7 after hours reservation service that allows your clients never to be out of reach with your agency.

The conference resumed in the afternoon including three excellent presentations, starting off with a CLIA program entitiled "Special Interest" Marketing. All participants received 10 points if they completed the exam and sent it in to CLIA . Ann Karr, CLIA instructor, offered much insight in identifying the specific interests of your clients and learning how to place them on the correct cruise product every time. As always, CLIA's observations are very educational and really work to identify emerging trends in the cruise industry. Following CLIA's presentation, Royal Caribbean's Cris Desouza and John Diulus, Director of Channel Strategy Managers at RCI and Celebrity, discussed at length the ways that Royal Caribbean is identifying the home-based agency and how they are working diligently to provide better support for this status of travel seller during their afternoon presentation. And the final workshop was surely one of great importance to the audience, as the presentation by Travel Safe Insurance went into great detail about the real need to promote the right insurance product to your traveling client. The discussion included Travel Safe's policy on supplier default coverage, their waiver for pre-existing conditions of your clients and many more important details about the need to sell the best coverage available to protect your clients, overall.

As the conference ended, OSSN members moved around the corner to the Ft Lauderdale Convention Center to take part in activities planned by CLIA and the Travel Institute in conjunction with the well attended Cruise Tour World Trade Show. This major trade show featured over 225 suppliers, excellent seminars and workshops including OSSN's panel discussion, titled "Building a Successful Home-Based Agency to Market and Sell Leisure Travel." The OSSN panel discussion was a "standing room only" workshop with over 250 agents in attendance. It included great information on the legalities of working as a Home-Based Agency across the US, great sales and marketing ideas to build your business and discussed the various ways that home-based professionals are succeeding in the industry today. The panel was moderated by OSSN VP Melody Fee who addressed both panelists, OSSN President Gary Fee and OSSN Western Regional Manager, Anita Balamane. Many other interesting panels and workshops took place and the exhibitor trade floor that followed during the next two days was buzzing as agents met and negotiated with suppliers from around the world.

The next big tradeshow co-hosted by "Travel Industry Shows" and OSSN promises

To be even MORE exciting as OSSN teams up with the Honeymoon and Romance Trade Show and Exhibition in Long Beach, CA on October 29 and 30, 2004. This "First of It's Kind" trade show offers agents the opportunity to attend Two Shows in One!! Click here to register: http://www.homebasedagentshow.com/ossn.pdf

The Home-Based Agent Show and Honeymoon and Romance Show will be held simultaneously and OSSN members can attend both in the same convention center for a VERY special rate of 2-for-1 rate of $49 for both!! This trade floor will offer so many special opportunities for the home based agent that they will not want to miss it! Seminars and exhibitors will include suppliers that are focusing on trying to build their sales opportunities by working more directly with the home based agents in the industry. Agents will see what tools are being developed to help them be more successful from a home-based environment, learn what suppliers are creating these tools for them and how to build their earning potential with these innovative suppliers in the travel industry! At the same time, you can also learn more about this fun and fascinating market of honeymoon and romance travel, including cruise sales, all-inclusive resorts, exotic honeymoon locations and so much more! So join OSSN and " Travel Industry Shows" ( producers of the Cruise Tour World) as we team up to bring OSSN members one of the most unique shows in the travel business! Contact OSSN at 800 b771 7327 or email info@ossn.com for more details. OSSN agent members and OSSN Allied Supplier members will be offered the best rates available with special discounts for attendance and exhibitor booths for this excellent opportunity.

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