Home Based Travel Agent Podcast: 302 - A Down to Earth Tour of Hawaii

Podcast Number 302

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COHOSTED SEGMENT

In today's show we talk about very untypical tours of Hawaii. Earth Bound Tourswill give your clients a glimpse of the Hawaiian agricultural and culinary community. The tours are a learning experience that take

clients to interesting places like a sustainable mushroom farm, lavender farms, abalone farms and much more. Your clients engage in true learning experiences from the people who run the farms. The tours end with a meal that is a culinary experience linked to the farms. Jim Reddekopp, the founder of Earth Bound Tours, encourages travel agents and tour operators to contact him to arrange an unforgettable experience for your clients.

Jim and his family own the Hawaiian Vanilla Company that is the family's vanilla farm. The Hawaiian Vanilla Company has a great gift shop for your clients to browse through when they tour the vanilla farm. If you would like to get a flavor for the gift shop without going to Hawaii, the shop is on line and accessed at www.hawaiianvanilla.com. You will find culinary delights and recipes at the on line gift shop.

Join us on the show and learn more about Earth Bound Tours and the Hawaiian Vanilla Company.

Travel News

Today in the travel news segment I depart from hard news and talk about a Google service that measures the public's interest in travel. The service is Google's Domestic Trends. There are several trends that are tracked including travel, luxury goods, air travel, mortgages, jobs and many others. Within the travel trends graph, Google tracks queries related to such terms as Las Vegas, hotels, airlines, car rental, flights and other travel related terms. The tracking is graphed over time so you can see patterns of when people are interested in travel. With this service you can overlay other trends on the travel trend graph and compare interest in travel to the rise and fall of the S&P 500, other major indexes or individual stocks.

One interesting trend I noted was that interest in travel drops significantly from October through December. This drop has occurred every year for the past five years. On the other hand, the searches for travel significantly increase beginning in May and continues through July. My guess is that people are traveling in the last half of the year and looking to book their vacations in May, June, July and August. This Google service is an interesting device that may help you time your advertising campaign to peak times of the year or to increase your advertising efforts based on other factors affecting travel.

Visit us on Facebook –

Barry at http://www.facebook.com/barry.kantz

Lorene at http://www.facebook.com/lorener

Gary at http://www.facebook.com/gary.ebels.

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On Twitter

Lorene’s Twitter name is lorener

Barry’s Twitter name is kantzb

Gary's Twitter name is gary222

Check out Lorenes travel agent website at www.sharptonguedconsulting.com.

Thank you for listening to the Home Based Travel Agent Podcast. You can email me at barry@hometravelagent.net or email Lorene at sharptongued@mac.com and Gary at wdwgary@gmail.com.