Agents exploring wedding and honeymoon niche

With the rise in popularity of destination weddings, more home-based travel agents are considering the potential of this specialty market, said Lisa Sheldon, a trainer with the Destination Wedding and Honeymoon Association and the owner of I Do Island Weddings in Milwaukee, Wis.

“It can be very lucrative, as couples will spend more money on their honeymoon than they would a normal vacation,” she said. “Many destination weddings are small to sometimes very large groups; therefore, commission is increased with group bookings.”

And it’s a stable and relatively recession-proof niche, she said. 

“Weddings, honeymoons [and] vow renewals take place all year long, so the book of business is stretched throughout the year. Even after 9/11 the romance travel niche continued to grow, and it still does today.”

One of the primary questions agents ask during Sheldon’s training is how to deal with couples who shop the Internet for wedding and honeymoon travel and find what they consider to be better deals.

That question is addressed in role-playing exercises that highlight the benefits of using a travel agent. The discussion also comes into play with another retailer concern: how to get members of the Millennial generation, who are the majority of engaged couples today, to see the value of using an agent.

“The Millennials have grown up with Google and smartphones, and they book online,” Sheldon said. It’s a challenge and a necessary step to demonstrate the value of using an agent and cover the particular services that an agent can offer that, perhaps, an online booking can’t match.

Sheldon’s training received high ratings from agents who attended ASTA’s Destination Expo in Merida, Mexico, last month, according to Ann van Leeuwen, president of the National Association of Career Travel Agents (Nacta).

As a result, Nacta asked Sheldon to provide similar training at its annual conference, scheduled for Oct. 30 to Nov. 3 in Phoenix.

After attending the Destination Expo, van Leeuwen said she was “inspired” to make destination wedding and honeymoon a specialty-travel focus of the Nacta conference. “It was a natural fit with our preferred destinations of Hawaii, Caribbean and Mexico.”

According to Nacta research, 22% of its members sell destination wedding and honeymoon travel.

Meanwhile, more training is available for agents considering the market. The Travel Institute last week updated its destination wedding and honeymoon specialist course.

(Next week: an interview with Sheldon about how she built her destination wedding and honeymoon specialty and marketing tips.)