By August 7, 2010 Read More →

Can We Get Your Opinion?

Allow me to think and type for a moment…

This past year, we have done more and more individual trips than in years past. We understand that our group trips do not always coincide with your school, camps, work schedule, combative ex spouse, etc. So, we want to try and do something about it and want your opinion.

Last year we sent people to Africa, Costa Rica, Southern California, Mexico, Peru, Jamaica, Europe, Canada and Alaska on their own. Of course we provided the advice and guidance to locate a suitable destination and property for single parents–that’s what we do.

Every day, we are bombarded from our preferred suppliers with fantastic savings on cruises, individual trips, packaged trips and more.  We have not been passing these on to you in our monthly newsletters since they are time sensitive, but if there is an interest, a weekly newsletter would work.

We are competitive on price and can usually beat or at least match any other price out there–so I am not too worried about being underpriced.  In fact, I am considering developing a Travel Reward Club where if you book a trip with us outside of our organized groups, we will offer some sort of discount or gift card upon your return with a premium incentive if you choose to apply it to a future booking.  Does this hold any interest for everyone? You are not obligated, but if you find we are the best value for your travel dollar, you will be eligible for some sort of discount or gift card.

Would you be willing to consider us for your other leisure travels? Would you be interested in getting a weekly “Oh to dream….” listing of travel specials?  Let’s talk about this and see what we can develop!

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9 Comments on "Can We Get Your Opinion?"

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  1. Lainie says:

    I would love to have a weekly newsletter with special offers. I am in the process of planning a trip for myself and my son and that would be a huge help.

  2. jim says:

    A weekly newletter would be fine,
    Also maybe 1 liner off to your RSS feed (as a seperate feed.) For the time critical ones.
    Another thing that would be cool, is a secured group (membership logon of sometype) were Parents could post that they are looking for travel partners durring some period of time, and Sex/Age of there kid(s). Where they are going or would like to go with other Single parents as small group or just 2 families.

  3. Jennifer says:

    A weekly newsletter is a great idea…just having planned a trip for my 8-year-old son and me, I would have welcomed both last-minute offers and new places to travel to.

    I also like Jim’s idea (the last post here) of a secure group in which to post travel partners.

  4. John says:

    This needs to be thunk out some more, but my idea is to aggregate the appropriate deals and have them sent out weekly. It likely would be a one to two liner description with the basic info. Where, when , price.

    We have tried forums in the past and held off on re-implementing them, but may try again. The only caution I offer is that no matter how secure we make it, it still is the Internet and nothing is truly private. The only way I can see to eliminate that is to maybe require an annual fee $1 or $2 (nothing severe) where someone woudl be forced to enter a CC and we could verify addresses. Call it an abundance of caution.

    As for the incentive, my initial thought is to tie in a cash (or gift card) back offer for trips valued at X to Y, a different amount for Y to Z. But if you are a traveler, the incentive could be banked at 125% of value to a future trip with us.

    That’s my thinking now!

  5. Ivy says:

    I would be interested in a weekly newsletter! Plus, I’ve often thought the same thing about what Jim describes. There are other sites out there (like http://globetrooper.com/), but it would REALLY be nice to have a site that JUST focuses on single parents who want to travel with their kids and other single parents who may have similar aged kids too.

  6. denise walters says:

    I am not getting any e-mails-HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  7. John says:

    Hi Denise–

    Your email is in the system. But, we have been under a technology demon for a few weeks and the last newsletter that went out was in early August. I am planning on sending another one later this week. Stay tunedd!

    Thakns

  8. Alex says:

    Well,

    This sounds interesting…I travel a lot with my children and I would love to have the opportunity to go with other single parents. This summer I am planning a trip to Costa Rica.
    I have to say, however, that I am not so sure about “the competitive prices”, I was in Hawaii for a much lower price that you offered (without going into a cheaper hotel).

  9. John says:

    Hi Alex–
    We have never marketed ourselves as the cheapest vacation. Value includes much more than dollars. I have often said how bad does a cheap vacation need to be to make it worthwhile?

    To get a fair comparison, you need to go apples to apples. If the days, hotels, flights, and inclusions are not exactly the same, there is no real way to quantify it.

    For example, if you arrived a day earlier for our Turks trip this year, it woudl have cost an additional $600 because it was still in their very high rate season for a single night. Also, had you gone the week after (when most are in school and it makes no sense for most of the single parents) the price woudl have been lower than ours. And when we travel as a group, there are typically inclusions that do add a cost to the trip–private parties, an off property tour or shore excursion, etc.

    We are competitive. Very often we are equal to the lowest price out there. And like anything in life, sometimes we are just unable to compete with certain products–if a hotel wants to offer a steeply discounted rate to their frequent guest members and not offer the rate to anyone else, there is not much we can do.

    John

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