With travel slowing down I decided to look for new efforts to market my business and being internet-only is a bit difficult. I’ve tried online advertising, newspapers, magazines and more … all with very little results. This brought me to Tripology.com, the website touted as matching travelers with agents specialized in their area of travel. A match made in Heaven!
I load up my account with $50, not knowing how much it would cost me to purchase each lead and surprisingly Tripology doubled my credit to $100 – always good to get something for free, right?
The leads started coming in via email and I would look them over quickly, quickly skipping those that didn’t fit my area of expertise… after all, this site is to be specialists who know where you want to travel and include special planning. Dozens of requests went by and finally Ireland popped up here and there.
These requests were studied in detail before accepting and although the cost was only $5 each, I would be competing against other travel agents for one person’s business – this had to count. A total of four requests were accepted for Ireland and I started noticing a pattern… each person wanted the absolute cheapest vacation available and they their budget was pretty unreasonable. As I started looking into each one as they came over I realized that those requesting prices are delusional when it comes to pricing… $600 for airfare to Europe during the summer? Seriously now.
The minimum information is listed including airfare, hotels, trains, cars, approximate dates and length of stay. It’s quite generic so interaction with the actual requester is essential.
I accepted my requests within minutes, paying my $5.00 for each and utilizing the online email application to introduce myself and obtain more information on the vacation due to the lack of detail collected by Tripology. My emails went out within minutes and I waited… and waited… and waited. I emailed again and finally one person responded, indicating they had already purchased a vacation within two days of entering their request. Did the purchase from a Tripology agent? I don’t know but I doubt it from the minimal response that I received back. Goodbye $5.00 – that wasn’t a qualified lead and there was no potential for selling a vacation there.
I still didn’t hear from the others so I decided to call them to ensure they did receive my email. One guy did answer and we went over the specifics of his vacation, at my insistence … again, I paid for the lead and I expect to be able to price it out. The second was an answering machine so I left a message and followed up with email. The follow-up email indicated that they didn’t really have specifics on their vacation just yet but that they would contact me if they need me. Yes, I paid $5.00 for someone to say they never really wanted my services but perhaps they’ll be in touch. I couldn’t let that go so I emailed back to advise that we are charged for each lead and that we simply want to help them and the response back was that Tripology simply puts them in contact with three agents who specialize in their destination of choice.
What have I gotten myself into? Who are these people requesting trips through Tripology and what qualifies them as leads?
Looking at Tripology’s home page you’ll see a very simplistic approach for those looking to travel… enter a bit of information and instantly Tripology will connect you with three qualified travel agents. Simple enough… but what about the agents on the other end?
We receive those requests without identifying information, the basic travel details, and approximate budget and if we want to accept the lead we must pay $5.00 each, regardless if the person is serious about purchasing a trip or just seeing how the system works. I have to admit, I’ve done the later in some situations and honestly believe many of those requests coming through are people playing to see if they can get a vacation for a ridiculously low price. $500 - $1000 for 3-5 nights in Puerto Rico including airfare and 4-star hotel… total, not per person. I’m serious, this was a request just a few minutes ago which makes me think someone is just seeing if they’ll get a response for that.
Another type of request I surmise is the person who already has their plans with an agent but they want to try one last avenue to see if they can get it cheaper. They enter their Tripology request with notes detailing their plans and hope that someone will swoop in and take the wind out of their travel agent’s sail – and it will happen. Unfortunately you have three agents each paying $5.00 for the lead and two, possible three, out of the three will lose their money again.
Needless to say I think the concept is a good idea but without full disclosure to both the traveler and the agent, the business model isn’t fair and I hope other agents band together and refuse to use their services.
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