Our profit tomorrow depends on what we learned today.

Our profit tomorrow depends on what we learned today.

Interview with the deputy CEO of Profi.Travel by Olesya Oleinikova

Наша прибыль завтра зависит от того, что мы узнали сегодня

There is very little time left before the start of the OTM online exhibition, which will help travel agents successfully prepare for the 2025 summer season: in just three weeks, the intensive Profi will begin.Travel, which this time is called “Product, sales, promotion”. Olesya Oleinikova, the company’s deputy general director, told the agents about which questions it will help them find answers, whether it will be paid again and why. As a bonus, she shared her secret of success in today’s market.

— Olesya, tell me how the Profi team’s experiment went.Travel: should I provide paid access to the OTM exhibition, which the market is used to perceiving as a free event?

— To be honest, we ourselves did not expect that the experiment would be so successful. But the bottom line is that we didn’t just start taking money for access to a free exhibition, but reformatted the OTM into a cool intensive to upgrade the skills of travel agents. And not only in the product area. We focused on the topic of increasing the average customer’s check — our experts shared their experience on how to start earning more.

For those who are with us for the first time, a brief history tour: Profi media portal.Travel launched the Online Travel Mart (OTM) exhibition on foreign travel products 10 years ago. Initially, we came up with it so that tour operators and hotels could tell travel agents about product features, new products, prices and discounts before the start of the season, and give them guidelines on what to look for this time. Since then, the OTM has been held twice a year: in February, agents learn what to sell in summer, and in September, what to recommend to tourists in winter.

OTM has replaced offline exhibitions with those who have decided to stop wasting their time visiting them. With us, the market receives all the necessary information for successful sales, professionals manage to communicate with potential partners, as well as win prizes. And our regular listeners already know that the best way to upgrade your product knowledge for the winter or summer season is to attend our 2-3—week training and get all the latest news and explore new products. Every year, on average, up to 3 thousand travel companies from Russia and the CIS countries.

As at any other exhibition, in addition to webinars on the product of tour operators, hotels and other suppliers, at some point we had sessions with experts on the most pressing topics for the tourism industry. But it was only in the fall of 2024 that we were ready to conduct our own full-fledged intensive courses within the framework of OTM, in parallel with the clients’ webinars, combining the product stream with applied knowledge. Which travel agency specialists need no less. That was the first time we made the exhibition paid for our audience (for the exhibitors, of course, the event was always paid, just like any other offline exhibition).

— Last year, when OTM became paid for listeners, did attendance decrease?

— Total — slightly, up to 1-1.5 thousand users. But for each individual webinar, it has grown: if we used to have 150-180 travel agents online, now we have 200-300. No one just registered anymore — those who really needed it for work came.

This way, we and our clients have gained a much more motivated, high-quality audience. Trained agents came to us, aimed at obtaining information, because they clearly understood why they were here. They had a goal: to make sales more efficient in the new season, to increase their profits.

Moreover, we had the opportunity to pay for access to the exhibition with points (though only for agents of the Loyalty Profi community.Travel), save on webinar entries by paying half as much, and also get a 50% discount by making an early booking. We were sure that most people would choose a more economical basic package and rush to buy it at a discount. But that was not the case. A significant part preferred to pay extra for the recording option, and besides, the “tickets” were on sale until the very day of the start of the exhibition, the full price did not scare anyone away.

In short, the experiment turned out to be even more successful than we expected. Of course, we assumed that we would motivate the audience and increase webinar attendance, but no one could say in advance that everything would work out 100%. It is clear that if the audience needs and is interested in the product, it will come for a fee. And if you don’t need it… In short, the agents voted for our product in rubles, and we made sure that the content we make is ready to buy. This, of course, motivates us to continue working on it and make the exhibition even more useful and relevant year after year.

Наша прибыль завтра зависит от того, что мы узнали сегодня

— Were there any other surprises? Discoveries?

— Yes, they were. At the end of our first paid exhibition, we asked the audience: what did you like, and what should I change? It turned out that it is quite difficult for travel agents to spend every day in training for 2-3 weeks — when to sell? They asked for a more compact way to provide information so that they could still have time to work. It makes sense, we decided. And we conducted a vote to identify the most convenient time for webinars. Most chose the first half of the day, from 10 a.m. to lunch.

We’ve been thinking for a long time: how to implement this? After all, we have a lot of training webinars, and if we just limit them to the first half of the day, the exhibition will last for two months. However, it became obvious: in the age of clip—based thinking, we really need to change the presentation of information – to leave only the most important, even if it seems to us that everything is interesting and useful. We began to negotiate with partners and clients, work with speakers, setting them up for a shorter and more succinct presentation. This is how hour-long webinars became 30-minute webinars. So in the end, this time we have an experiment again: let’s try to keep up with the program — from 10 a.m. to two p.m. And I think we’ll get a better turnout in the end.

— OTM is coming soon. What to expect this time?

— The most important thing in our new exhibition, as it seems to me, is the very theme of the intensive course. This time, in three weeks of OTM, we are not only pumping knowledge for the summer of 2025, but also giving agents the answer to the main question: where to get tourists for this summer season?

This is the first time we are doing this exhibition in collaboration with Elena Belousova, a really cool specialist in digital marketing in tourism. Lena has selected very cool speakers for us on how travel companies can build proper online promotion. Every Tuesday and Thursday for three weeks, she and her colleagues will “chew” the audience through the entire methodology of promotion in all top channels in Russia today.

There’s just a lot of new information. I sincerely believe that this is definitely not to be missed: instead of a hundred different courses, one course in 3 weeks, every day from 10 to 14, and you are fully prepared for the season and savvy. Not only are you aware of new hotels and tour operator programs, but you will also fully determine your digital promotion, identify the right channels for yourself and create a strategy that suits you. And all this is for the price of a cup of coffee. I sincerely believe that if there were no such program on the market, it would be worth inventing it (laughs).

— Speaking of the price of a cup of coffee. Will the cost of access to the exhibition’s webinars increase?

Today, everyone is raising prices for everything because of inflation. But we still try to be very democratic. The basic package can still be purchased for 500 rubles. for the early booking promotion, until January 30th. After that, it will cost 1,000 rubles. According to him, all webinars will be available online only, just like last time.

But then the differences from the previous exhibition begin. The full package includes access to the archive of webinars, but only grocery ones. The customer engagement training course will be available online only. According to the Republic of Belarus, this option will cost 2 thousand rubles, and after that — 3 thousand rubles.

And we have introduced another package: “Full Plus” — absolutely all entries are available for it, as well as a telegram channel where experts will answer questions on attracting tourists. In other words, the theoretical knowledge that agents will receive at webinars can be supported by practice: discuss specific situations with the promotion professionals, find solutions that suit you directly. Under the early booking promotion, the Full Plus package can be purchased for 4 thousand rubles, after that — for 5 thousand rubles.

That is, we still do not aim to raise a lot of money from the audience – all product webinars and training courses can be viewed here, as I said, for the price of a cup of coffee in Moscow. It’s not about these 500 rubles, but the fact that when making a choice for yourself, whether you are ready to give money for this event, you answer the question: do you need it or not. And we are interested in such motivated listeners. At the same time, it is logical that there are always those who are willing to pay more, but also get more. This time, they have every opportunity to do so.

By the way, after the last exhibition, the agents rightly noted that those who bought a more expensive package should have access to the entire prize pool, while those who are cheaper should have limited access. It seemed logical to us. And this time, participants who bought the Basic package can win 6 nights in Thailand: 3 nights at The Oriental Beach Pearl Resort and 3 nights at The Beach Village Resort. Those who pay for more expensive packages, in addition to Thailand, will be able to claim 3 nights in the Maldives, at the Holiday Inn Resort Kandooma Maldives, 3 nights in the UAE, at the Fujairah Rotana Resort & Spa, and 2 nights at the Sofitel Al Hamra Beach Resort.

What else is new? We have improved the registration system — now it signs up a participant for all webinars, and you can manually opt out of those that you want to watch on the record. In addition, networking works in the new mode: only the business card collection option is available in it, as the most popular one.

Наша прибыль завтра зависит от того, что мы узнали сегодня

— Olesya, why was this topic chosen for the training course — customer engagement? Do you think there’s a problem finding a tourist right now?

“What a thing! We conducted a casting call, and we found out that this is the most painful and acute topic for the market. The world around us has changed dramatically: if earlier it was possible to simply open a travel agency in a passageway, and the influx of tourists was ensured, now this is absolutely not enough. Now we all “live” online, and any tourist’s journey also begins on the Internet. And there are completely different methods and ways to attract customers.

It’s easy to despair without even getting to work. Because the constant maintenance of social networks, the promotion of a personal brand, high—quality PR – all this is inaccessible to most normal people in real life. If you’re not a blogger, and you have some other job besides writing reels, that’s what you’re doing in the first place. And for the rest, most of the time and effort is no longer enough. Publicity is generally a very difficult job, for which it simply will not be possible to allocate less than half a day. So? This psychological moment is very important to understand and reflect. Because now we all live in such psychological frustration: everyone has already created their own blog, but I haven’t. Okay, I created it, but I still don’t have 10,000 subscribers, 100,000 subscribers, and so on ad infinitum. By and large, this state of affairs does not help business development and customer acquisition. It just gets in the way.

That’s why we chose the main topic of our training course “Product, sales, promotion” not the promotion of blogs, personal brand, etc., but the answer to the question: what should an ordinary travel agent do to attract customers? Here’s what I can do as a non-public person? If I don’t have the opportunity to endlessly shoot all these reels, tell and show my life to the audience every day in a way that’s really interesting? Is there anything I can do? It turns out that there are a lot of them.

For example, there are Vkontakte tactics and strategies suitable for agents, there is a strategy for attracting tourists through the telegram channel, through Google Maps and other tools – there are quite a lot of them. These methods are not complicated, they need to be implemented once, and they will work for you. But to do this, you need to understand them: be able to study the appropriate ones and make yourself a so-called correct split, as marketers say, that is, choose the optimal set of channels.

Our course will last three weeks: every Tuesday and Thursday, the best promotion experts will teach you how to work with the most promising tools to attract an audience. In seven lessons, you will thoroughly understand which channels are available for a travel agency and how to choose those that do not require huge time costs, but at the same time will be effective. How to stay on 1-2 channels, but they should be conducted with maximum efficiency. How to figure out what to assign to your employees, what to give to freelancers, and what to do yourself. I recommend the course to everyone: both those who have been promoting themselves for a long time, and those who are just starting out — everyone will find something useful and important for themselves here.

— Who are the people who will teach agents how to find clients and approach them?

— We are with Elena Belousova was invited only to practitioners. Who themselves work every day to get customers online, or interact with agents, helping them to establish a constant influx of tourists. This:

Elena Belousova herself, travel marketer, promotion specialist, author of the Travel Marketing project. She will tell you which customer search strategy to choose for a travel agency, which communication channels to use in 2025, and how to evaluate the effectiveness of the promotion.

Dmitry Potapov, co-Founder of the project TurMarketing.ru. It will help create a stable flow of requests and armor for VK agents through advertising, chatbot, and mailing lists.

Diana Ferdman, author of the community “The Country of Tourism”, CEO of the travel agency “Bellemare”. It will give you a choice of more than a dozen unobvious methods of promoting a travel agency and free ways to attract tourists.

Alla Malafeeva, founder of the niche agency for Internet promotion in tourism ADSTravel. This is a Telegram expert who will clearly explain to agents the rules of labeling and the principles of finding profitable subscribers.

Daria Loseva, Director of Development of Russian Express Holding, CEO of Sequoia Travel School. This is the person who can “turn up the volume” on your “word of mouth” — he will teach you how to increase the loyalty of tourists so that they return on their own and bring friends.

— Natalia Nedbai, owner of the travel agencies Pegas Touristik and Anex Tour (Krasnoyarsk). She will work on the mistakes of travel agents who do not sell through social networks. And with it, everyone can make the best reels for successful sales.

You probably know some of our speakers well, for example, Diana Ferdman or maybe Elena Belousova, who gathers a huge audience wherever she delivers her courses and lectures. I listen to her with great pleasure every time, because I know that there will be mega-useful material here, without “water”, 100% applicable in practice and already tested by her on clients. If you don’t know any of our speakers yet, it’s because you haven’t delved into the topic yet.

Наша прибыль завтра зависит от того, что мы узнали сегодня

— And in the product content, what is planned this time?

— There are many hotels here that will tell you about all the novelties of the season, what has changed, what tourists should prepare for, and also answer the main questions of travel agents. We have three days planned for the UAE, a destination that has already become year—round and competes quite successfully with Turkey in summer (February 10, 11 and 12). Agents will be able to find out everything they are interested in from representatives of the Westin, Avani+ Palm View Dubai, First Collection, NH collection Dubai the palm, Dukes The Palm, Barcelo, Sofitel Al Hamra Beach Resort, Occidental Sharjah and ABundance tourism. Gulf air will tell you about the details of the flight program. We devoted two days (February 13 and 14) to the main summer destination, Turkey. During this time, you will be able to find out the latest news from hotels such as Sherwood, Megasaray Hotels, Barut Hotels, CVK Bosphorus Hotel, and DMC — Carthage. Two more days of Maldives (February 20th and 21st) — it’s necessary to raise the average check in the summer! Representatives of Marriott Mauritius, Holiday Inn Kandooma Maldives, Dhigufaru Maldives, Fushifaru Maldives will bring the latest information to the agents.

This time we will have hotels in Greece, where it will be easier for Russian tourists to get to this summer (Miraggio Thermal Spa Resort), and Thailand, which has also become a year-round destination for Russians (Oriental Beach Pearl Resort + The Beach Village Resort), as well as Egypt, Tunisia and Belarus, where the tourist flow from Russia is growing annually.

The specialists of the Space Travel tour operator will tell you about the main trends of the coming season and what you should bet on in the summer of 2025.

— Olesya, do you pay for any courses, do you take courses and intensive courses? Or are you just selling them?

— That’s all I do (laughs). Last year, 2024, was a turning point for me, when I overestimated and understood a lot. For a long time, I lived in my own information bubble – I knew everything about the tourism industry, but not much about anything else. At some point, I began to consciously broaden my horizons, read a lot more, and not only on the topic of tourism or marketing, met a variety of people, went through a midlife crisis and began to look at things differently.

As a result, what I see in modern reality genuinely fascinates me. Epochal historical events are unfolding before our eyes today, but it seems to me that no less significant changes are now taking place in the field of sociology: real tectonic shifts in what is happening to man and society as a whole. Probably, never before has a person lived in a time when absolutely everything was available to him. So, now everyone can earn a lot of money — all you need to do is clearly know the laws of business and constantly receive up-to-date information. And vice versa: if we don’t improve our skills in what we do for at least a year or two, we objectively start to cost less.

It seems to me that there has never been such a rigid bundle of knowledge and money in the world. Right now, how much income we get directly depends on what knowledge we have, whether we keep track of all the changes, and whether we are constantly improving our skills. That’s why I’ve completed about 5 paid courses over the past year. For several months now, I have been studying systemic digital marketing from Roman Kumar Vyas on his “Ninja Marketing”. I also learned how the life of a blogger works in order to understand how to get really great coverage — in a blogging course with Sasha Mitroshina. My team and I are currently undergoing Telegram training from Pavel Rumyantsev. I went to serious personal growth programs a couple of times, and if I had enough time, I would have gone to 2-3 more courses. Because I see how much these programs enrich me, how many changes I bring to the business, how it drives the whole company, and how it all translates into real money.

On New Year’s Eve, I was playing a game with my family, and I had this question: “If you had the opportunity to write anything to people on a huge billboard that could be seen from anywhere, what kind of inscription would it be?” I answered without hesitation: Never give up. Never stop, especially when it comes to your knowledge — this is the only way to achieve your goal.

And since this is my first interview of the new year, I would like to wish the agents exactly that: never stop. Keep track of all the changes and get the necessary knowledge in time, because this is what determines what your life will be like tomorrow. Today, training for every taste is available to you — find your model, approach it systematically, understand exactly what you want to improve your skills, and you will see the result very soon.

The OTM exhibition will be held at Profi.Travel from February 10 to February 28. Sales are already open: packages at early booking prices are available until January 30th.

 

 

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