Small Business Big World
Marketing Your Business to Travel Agents & Influencers
Join us as we chat with Eric Hrubant from CIRE Travel for a practical discussion on the evolving role of travel agents in today's industry. Discover strategies for attracting both agents and influencers to your business, along with tips for curating exceptional travel experiences and standing out in the market.
We'll debunk myths about influencers overshadowing traditional consultants, explore social media tactics, and offer insights on online reputation management. Plus, learn about the importance of building strong relationships and deep knowledge to enhance your travel services.
Join us as we chat with Eric Hrubant from CIRE Travel for a practical discussion on the evolving role of travel agents in today's industry. Discover strategies for attracting both agents and influencers to your business, along with tips for curating exceptional travel experiences and standing out in the market.
We'll debunk myths about influencers overshadowing traditional consultants, explore social media tactics, and offer insights on online reputation management. Plus, learn about the importance of building strong relationships and deep knowledge to enhance your travel services.
This is Small Business Big World, our weekly podcast prepared by the team at Paper Trails. Owning and running a small business is hard. Each week we'll dive into the challenges, headaches, trends, fun and excitement of running a small business. After all, small businesses are the heartbeat of America and our team is here to keep them beating. Welcome to another episode of Small Business Big World. Welcome Today, eric Rubin is here from Sire Travel. Thanks for joining me. Thank you, chris. Good to be here, excellent, excellent.
Speaker 1:So today we're going to talk about kind of how to attract travel agents to your business and influencers and kind of some business travel stuff, which I think is a really exciting part of being in business anyway, right? So a little housekeeping before we get going, be sure to like, follow, subscribe, share. We are all over the place Instagram, facebook, tiktok, youtube, apple Podcasts, spotify. The list goes on and on and on. Be sure to visit us at smallbusinessbigworldcom and if you have any questions, certainly feel free to email us at podcast, at papertrailscom, We'll get those questions answered for you. If we need an intro to one of our guests, we're always happy to do that. So, all right, travel agents they still exist. You are one, right? Yeah, I am one my favorite question.
Speaker 1:All right, tell me about it so obviously. You know I remember as a kid my mother used to go to AAA and we used to get plane tickets and you know they used to come in the little envelopes and there was traveler's checks and all that stuff. What's it look like today?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So you know, travel agents in this day, like, for instance, I'm the owner of Sire Travel and I say that I own a service business, the service that we provide is travel. So you know, in this day and age, there is a lack of service in travel. There's no one to have your back, there's no one to call. So the modern day travel agent is not only alive but thriving. You know, at the moment I turn more business away than I take on. That's awesome, it really is kind of.
Speaker 2:You know, we are the advisors to our clients, so you travel a lot. I'm sure you have sat on a plane, got comfortable, if you're like me, you've opened your bottle of water like a Snickers bar and you're like, oh, I get to like rest, and you know, have a hopefully rest or work on the plane, right, and then the captain comes on and is like we're so sorry but we've had to cancel this flight. You know everyone exhales or sighs rather For our clients. You know, at that point I'm emailing or texting or calling them saying, hey, chris, you know the blanks hit the fan. Your flight's canceled. We booked you on the next one or the one tomorrow morning. Here's your hotel. Go find the bar, go find the club. You know you're not having to scramble to figure out. How the hell am I going to get home on your app or with you know a human at the?
Speaker 1:check-in desk Calling the 800 number or whatever.
Speaker 2:Hoping for the best.
Speaker 1:It's basically it's handled, which is the tagline I've sold from the show Scandal. So if you're an Olivia Pope fan out there, I did steal it. So when, obviously that's the you know, the bad time service. But the good time service is you're still making lots of recommendations, right? It's not like you know? Hey, I want to go on an amazing Hawaiian vacation. Where do I start? Right, you guys are making those recommendations right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I do both travel for small to medium-sized companies, and then we do luxury leisure vacations. So on the luxury leisure vacation side, we do a consultation with every new client or existing client before a trip. 90% of that is a psychology call. The other 10% is the actual like where do you want to go and everything else. But it really is planning the perfect trip. And even seasoned travelers sometimes have an idea of something but it's not actually what they want. Or you know they want to go and say to overwork a bungalow somewhere and they're like you know we want to do that in Turks and Caicos. Well, they don't exist there. So it's it's again trying to figure out. You know, plan the perfect vacation I mean on average, the stuff that we're doing is a thousand dollars a day, minimum before flights or anything else. So if you're spending, you know, well over 10 grand for a vacation and most times you not only want it to be curated perfectly, you want something there to hold your hand, white glove service from door to door.
Speaker 1:So when you're, you know, someone says, you know, hey, I want to go to, I want to go on the African safari, right? Or I want to go to, you know, to come to Maine, right? How are you finding the places, our businesses, hotels, you know, restaurants. How are people standing out, you know, in your eyes, how are they getting in front of you guys?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So you know I've been this year. I've been working in travel for 27 years. I'll be 47 next week. I started when I was 20. So it's pretty much easy math for me, I think. Hopefully it's that right Sounds right, but basically I know everyone.
Speaker 2:I have cultivated the last 20. I've spent the last 27 years cultivating my contacts. So our clients leverage our time, our experience and our contacts. So if you're going to Necker Island, chris, and I'm booking that for you, I'm just not booking the hotel and saying here's your confirmation. I mean, I'm sending you your confirmation. But then you know my Virgin Hotels rep, shannon. I'm emailing Shannon, who's a good friend of mine. Shannon, chris is coming. I know it's already going to be perfect, but we need to make sure every last detail is perfect, you know, and that's not necessarily costing you anything extra than paying whatever my professional fee is for booking your vacation.
Speaker 2:And right here in Maine, the White Barn Inn is part of Auberge Hotels. I have a fantastic rep, sam, who I've known for 20 years, who reps all of the Auberge Hotels. Whether I'm booking someone at the White Barn or someone in Napa Valley, sam is the person who makes everything perfect for me. So again. The modern day travel consultant is very well connected. They're really your person for wherever you want to go and I have salespeople call me, email me. I travel a lot to trade shows, so I'm always meeting people. The one week a month I have to spend in New York, it's meeting vendors which become friends usually.
Speaker 1:So that's really neat. So if I'm again, so I can come back to, if I'm a small business, right, and I want to attract, I want to get in front of you, I want to get in front of an influencer, right, what's the best way to do this? To go to those trade shows and try to make those connections.
Speaker 2:Yeah, again, I call her my micro influencer. She is an ideal client of mine who also just travels well, is a great photographer, great writer. She does a lot of like marketing stuff for me, a lot of referral based business for me, but again, she is my ideal client who happens to also be a friend and works for me on a part-time basis. I don't feel like I answered your question.
Speaker 1:That's okay. No, I'm just thinking so hey, you're the hotel here in Kennebunkport. How do I get in front of people If I want to grow my business through channels? Like yours right, if I want to get in front of those people. I know that sometimes do you guys participate in fam tours like the?
Speaker 2:familiarization tours? Yeah, of course. So I mean, if you're a hotel anywhere in the world, the first thing you want to do is figure out, you know where do travel agents live. So in our industry there. So there's a few organizations. There's a company called ASTA, the American Society of Travel Advisors. They are basically a lobbyist in DC, but they really are a one-stop shop to kind of vet and find travel agencies. That's one way to start. There's also two big consortias kind of like these not quite private clubs, but organizations that most travel companies subscribe to. One is called Virtuoso, which I belong to. Another one is called Signature. That's really where you'd want to go. You'd want to go to the Virtuoso, to the Signature, because they have access to hundreds of thousands of travel consultants all over the world to get your product out there.
Speaker 1:So that's a great network, and my guess is it's not expensive, right, it's not inexpensive, it depends.
Speaker 2:Yeah, For like a small mom and pop it's probably prohibitively expensive. But there's also a lot of really fantastic smaller representation companies out there which are also small businesses. I have a great friend, Suzanne Goldberg, from the Art of Hospitality, based in Massachusetts, and she represents about 20 different smaller hotels. These hotels wouldn't have the budget for a virtuoso, but Suzanne knows everyone in travel.
Speaker 1:And she's kind of your agent to the agents.
Speaker 2:She's your representative.
Speaker 1:So that's interesting. We talk a lot about we've already talked a lot about on the podcast the value of traders, organizations and those kinds of things, and I think this I didn't think about this and I thought in terms of lobbying and those kinds of efforts, but I think in this situation, certainly there's organizations like virtuoso and these smaller agents that it makes sense to be a part of. Right, that's really neat. So what if you know? I guess you know, everyone wants to be an influencer. Right, everyone wants to be on that beach in Mauritius and, you know, take the videos and get a million Instagram likes. Right, that's what we all want. But now, what are you seeing in terms of impact in your industry? Right, that's what we all want. Now, what are you seeing in terms of impact in your industry? Right? So the modern day travel consultant, you know, are these influencers competing with you? Are people coming to you and saying, gosh, I saw this. You know, I saw so-and-so did this. How do you book that for me? Right? Is that how people are coming to you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's so many different ways. First of all, I'm going to say something very controversial that only I believe, but I believe it to be truer there is no competition in travel. Really. It is a huge, enormous industry. If you know what lane you're in, stay in your lane, do what you got to do. But I kind of don't think there's a lot of competition. So I personally find my industry and my job and my company easy Again, controversial, but I don't think it's controversial, I think know your business choose your niche and do it well, right?
Speaker 1:I think that's in any industry, that's not anything unique to you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I don't worry about others really. I worry about kind of like myself and what I do. So again, I internet. I'm like no, no, if you want to go to see your ant bath in Miami for two bucks, go to Orbitz. Don't come to me for that. But if you want a person to help you, by all means come to me. Travel influencers are basically the pretty picture takers. My ideal client probably isn't a 22-year-old in a beach, in a bikini or a Speedo Not bad to look at but again, they're probably not my ideal client. You know like my ideal client would be someone from 40 to 65 for the most part.
Speaker 1:Well, that can afford that vacation, right, exactly. And I think you know, if I took a look in terms of you know ideal clients for you know most hotels and restaurants and things like that, that's what they want, right, throw the MX down, doesn't matter the cost, we're coming in for the $500 dinner, right? Yeah, exactly, that's the client that most of these night's restaurants want, right. So I think that's a great lane to be in. Of course, it's interesting. You know those influencers I think I kind of got you off there, but you know you're right. The influencers are, you know, the 20, 30 something, generally speaking, but I think there are other lanes of that right there. There probably are folks that are in that older, you know, you know more affluent. You know I don't see them on my Instagram, but you know I'm sure they're out there. Um, that are are certainly making those recommendations. Right, it's probably staying in the nicer, you know more luxurious place. That's not the party place right and that's probably you know.
Speaker 1:There's that out there too. I don't know where I'm going with this. Graham, you might want to just cut this out.
Speaker 2:No, no Also, but I mean to kind of further answer your question though. So you know, we have a very big following on Instagram and Facebook. Again, I don't feel like I'm getting my ideal clients from there. A lot of my ideal clients come from LinkedIn. However, a said friend in DC, who is Jamie Edwards, who has an amazing website called I Am Lost and Found Anyone listening here, go find that website. It really is an amazing blog. Her daughter is going to be my summer intern focusing on TikTok.
Speaker 2:So, for me, TikTok is I'm on my phone enough. I do not need one more social media platform to be my summer intern focusing on TikTok. So for me, TikTok is I'm on my phone enough. I do not need one more social media platform to waste my life away with. But going back to the 20-year-olds, I kind of want to plant the seeds now, when people are in their 20s and late 20s, as they're making money, as they're getting ready to do honeymoons or other things that, oh crap, yeah, again, I can go to Florida for a dollar and plan that myself, but for a really big vacation that I want curated, you need a professional. So again, I'm trying to even work with a 20-year-old now who's going to see how we can somehow promote the use of a really great travel consultant.
Speaker 2:Everybody gets the idea of needing a person right, Whether that's a bookkeeper or a lawyer or your barber or your hair person. But you want people, you want someone to make a fuss over you, and that's what a really great travel advisor does. They make a fuss over you and they help you and get you what you want. So people get that. But it's kind of like, how do you take it one step further and start planting the seeds. You know, when people are younger.
Speaker 1:It's really interesting. So we've we've talked on this podcast a lot about, you know, different marketing and social media marketing, and you know I've said many times, you know I'm not, we don't want to be Greg Cardone, we don't want to be that sensational TikToker, right? But I think it's interesting that you're trying to, you know, and we do. You know we're trying to capture that younger audience, to cultivate it, and that may be something to look at right. I mean a lot of. I guess if you looked at the TikTok audience, it's not my ideal client either. I don't want 20-something people running a business by themselves. I want people that are a little more mature in their business, and I think that's certainly again, planting the seeds is not a bad thing, which is a neat idea, a good way of thinking about using that resource, I think. So you've obviously traveled a lot, but you've also lived in the two most different places in the world, I would say right you lived in New York City.
Speaker 1:Now you live here in Maine. How does that play into the travel world and travel planning and all that? I'm sure? Planning trips out of New York where there are 40 flights a day to pretty much wherever you want to go around the world, right To coming to Maine where it's you have to drive to Boston to get 10 flights to wherever you want. You know whatever, but you know what. How does that change? How has that changed your view as a travel advisor and for you know, for business and things like that?
Speaker 2:Yeah it's. It's kind of funny. I was born and raised in Queens, new York, and then I lived in New Jersey. I always worked in New York. Then I found Maine and vacations here and wound up moving here part-time. And then COVID comes and moving here full-time. But I didn't realize how diverse New York was, I mean in every sense of the word. In every word it's like you move somewhere where it's not so quite diverse, which is both a blessing and curse of Maine, I find I also lived within 20 minutes of LaGuardia or 20 minutes of Newark all throughout my life.
Speaker 2:So now, thank God for the Portland jet port, which I love. But you know, aside from going to New York or Chicago, I'm schlepping to Boston for 75 minutes, usually staying at the Hilton overnight for an early morning flight, especially after a long flight. You come home and you're in Boston. You're like, oh, I still have to drive back to Kennebunk or wherever. It's just different Again in New York and New Jersey the whole tri-state area there's so many options.
Speaker 2:Everyone flies out of one of the three New York airports. There is a lot more service up here in New England. I mean, delta just did a great job with their new lounge and everything that they're doing in Boston. The Chase Sapphire Lounge is coming there now Portland Jetport. I'm surprised, but there's more and more nonstop flights. So there's less choice up here, which is good and bad. I find that people don't like too much choice. It's too confusing, but if your flight's canceled, you know you may not have another choice to go that day. So again, it's not to keep bringing it back to myself here, but having someone who knows the ins and outs to know what you can and cannot do.
Speaker 1:Well, that's fair. I mean, I, as a frequent traveler myself, I don't mind making that trip to Boston because I know if something happens. You know, for example, I own a home in Florida and, if I need, there's five flights a day on JetBlue to Fort Myers and if I missed the 6am, there's the 8am and then there's the 11 and the four and the eight o'clock at night, like I know the schedule cause I've done it enough.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Um, so certainly. Uh, you know there's that flexibility with using a bigger market, but again, it's 20 minutes to Portland. It's four minutes through security and you're at the gate right.
Speaker 2:It's not. For those of you who have never been to the Portland airport, it's delightful. If there's a long line, it's maybe five minutes. You know, not the four minutes.
Speaker 1:That's interesting. I mean, that's you know, and certainly I think you know. When we look at again, we talk about small business all the time. New York doesn't necessarily have a lot. Well, there are a lot of small business in New York, but most of the hotels and travel type things are big corporate owned, whereas I think if you look at our market they are not so corporate owned. It's family owned hotels and inns and restaurants and there isn't that big corporate feel other than a few groups here and there. How does that play into your planning? Do you is there? I mean, I know you have a great, you're a great network of consultants, your advisors at each kind of big hotel chain, whatever. But how do you say, hey, I, we stumbled across this phenomenal inn or this phenomenal restaurant in Maine and we need to send people there, right? I mean, how do you? How do you find that stuff? I guess, how do you find those people, those independents?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So here is when I started my business 11 years ago, I took out a loan to basically create a really great website. Once the website was created, the creative agency was like now you have to do something called SEO search engine optimization and I had no clue what that was and it took years for me to realize that SEO is just pleasing the Google gods. If you do everything right behind the scenes, people will come to you and they will find you. So one of the big lessons or one of the big tools that I use that I don't like using it's like going to the dentist for me every month when I pay the bill but Yelp so Yelp really drives a lot of people to your website.
Speaker 2:If you Google Sire Travel or whatever you Google, or any hotel, yelp's almost always going to either have like a paid position or going to be one of the following positions. So I pay roughly $1,800 a month for a Google listing in New York and DC, but I cannot tell you how it pays for itself month after month. So really understanding a little bit about SEO and about where to advertise. So if you're a small business, advertising on Yelp technically costs nothing, but you can throw some money at it every month. It doesn't have to be $1,800. It could be a couple of hundred dollars.
Speaker 2:Having your Google listing up to date is really important. So really, you know, knowing all about the free tools that are out there and then deciding if you want to throw money at something is a whole nother thing. And you know, I know there's a lot of smaller creative agencies in Maine. The one that I've used for all of these years is in Kansas City. They're not even in New York. So again, for a small business owner getting in front of people, you need to really kind of take a shortcut in SEO. I mean, right now I know our chamber of commerce has been doing these really great um webinar like live webinars or live seminars about different facets of SEO, and I would love to kind of eventually talk more and more about it because it's this big scary beast, but it's really not that scary once you kind of know a little bit about it.
Speaker 1:So quick plug. We're going to have a full episode on SEO here in a few weeks. So there's, there's a lot more to come on that for sure. But uh, you know, we've in our business, we spend a lot of time on that SEO and I think for a lot of our clients you know the Yelp and the Google reviews and everyone's scared, right of course I tell them don't be afraid, you should just address it.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Just go in. I mean, gosh, you always. You want people, of course, to be enjoying their time in your business, right? You're never nobody's perfect, of course. Right, things happen.
Speaker 1:There's where we are business owners that have great teams, but something might fall down. The process might fall down. Someone's having having a bad day, whatever, address it, deal with it. Turn that negative into a positive right. And I think you know, as folks are seeing, that they're going to say, wow, that business owner, okay, they had a bad day and but they turned it around and they, you know they made right by it. Right, that's those are the people that I want to buy from. I think humans yeah, we're humans, right, and that's and that's friendly with our competitors. And I tell folks, if someone calls me that uses one of our competitors, I say why Pick up the phone and call them? If you have a problem, pick up the phone and call them. They're real people too. I mean, certainly there are competitors we take plenty of business from, but in a local sense, I don't want people taking business from my friends. If there's something wrong, address it, of course.
Speaker 2:And right, if there's something wrong, address it. You know and that's the two that people always hide behind their computer. But businesses are even big corporations are run by humans. Everyone has a bad day. Um, you know, I basically fought uh, yelp for the first two years of having sire travel and then a crazy pants not even a client, a prospective client wrote this like scathing review, um, and I basically it was the biggest blessing because from that I'm like aha, I get it now and I basically made sure that my Yelp listings, my Google listings, were all really fantastic with good reviews.
Speaker 2:And you know, getting reviews is a lot easier than people think. Getting good reviews. You know we get complimented all day long at work Like, oh my God, thank you, oh my God, you're a rock star, you saved the day. The minute someone compliments you on anything, that's when you're like, hey, would you go to Yelp or Google and write that down, because in that moment people want to help others. I mean that's why TripAdvisor and all of those and Yelp are so big, because everyone has an opinion Good, bad or ugly, yes, but people also want to genuinely help.
Speaker 2:So, especially if you're a small business, you know, like you know, I have 12 employees. You know which I have to pay. I have four cats to feed, so you know people want to help other people. You know it goes back to the Barbra Streisand song. You know people need people, as corny as it sounds, but you know, again, leveraging the different review websites like Google and Yelp and everything else are a necessary evil, for sure, but it's. You know it could be a free way for a lot of smaller inns and hotels to get in front of their ideal client.
Speaker 1:So you mentioned the Google listing, you mentioned the SEO, you mentioned you know all that kind of stuff. The Google listing, I think, is probably the one of the most powerful things people can do and it's totally free, right? Can you explain kind of how that works and what it is? Oh geez, Not so well known because I have someone who does that for me, but essentially it's a profile for your business on Google, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, correct. And wherever you have a location too. So my business has multiple locations, so for every location we have a listing. Obviously, if you're a small in or B&B up here, you're just going to have the one listing, but make sure that you have great photos on there. You start asking clients or your friends to write reviews on there for you. Again, google responds to people looking for you and finding you. So the more clicks you have, the more clicks you have.
Speaker 2:Also, the other thing I've learned too, which I find amazing, is link backs. So if you're a small business owner, try to get in as much media as you can. You have to actually put yourself out there. You don't need to hire a PR person, but be part of the chamber, because the chamber is going to backlink to you. Right, a backlink is really important because it tells Google that you're legit. So the more qualified backlinks you have. So again, to kind of like dumb down the backlink thing, if the New York Times backlinks to me, google's going to be like well, if the New York Times is backlinking to Sire Travel, they must be a reputable business. And if the Wall Street Journal does it, and Time or whoever the Portland Herald, the more backlinks you have, the better. So get out there. You can literally call up news stations and talk to reporters and say here's what I do have your friends interview, you Put it on your website. Sure, all of those things.
Speaker 1:Have you heard of Help a Reporter Out?
Speaker 2:Yeah, HARO.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that's one thing we just found right. So, essentially what that is is there's this repository where reporters from all over the country can post questions, right, hey, I'm looking for a really high end travel consultant to interview about, you know, trips to, you know, saudi Arabia, I don't know, right, you know, and you can respond and say, hey, that's what I do, right, and this is the expertise, and. And then you're quoted in LinkedIn and all that stuff, and that builds your brand authority, right, right, which obviously builds you know all that fun stuff. So it's very important more to come on seo, local marketing.
Speaker 1:That's gonna be a whole episode because there's a lot that goes into that. Yeah, a lot. We've learned about that. A lot. Every business has had to learn about that. I think you know we all talk about these algorithms across the internet. We're trying to figure out and I think just a second, we kind of figure them out, they change themselves.
Speaker 2:And the one thing as a business owner you know, as a business owner even myself even though I have a great team and I'm able to hire a creative agency to help me, it's still exhausting, right? I mean, I work 14 hours a day and I still don't get everything done. So, again, it seems overwhelming. So a word that I use all the time now which keeps me sane is curious. So rather than being intimidated by Google or Yelp or something I just kind of like, let me just be curious about it. Sometimes, just changing your mindset gently makes the world of difference. Right, rather than necessarily go after something, just be like well, I don't know anything about Yelp, but I could be curious about it. Sure, again, self-talk is very important as a business owner or anyone else.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, we all have a million things going on, right? Yeah, I mean, and I think it's important that we learn you know, we have to manage. We have to prioritize.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I'm sure, as you've grown your business just as I've grown my business we have to farm some things out. We have curious about that, but it's always. I always love going to John, who's my marketing guy, and saying, okay, I saw this on TikTok or Instagram, whatever. How do we translate that? How do we? You know, are we doing this right? Are we doing this? Are we not doing this? And that's. You know he tried, you know he's like. He dragged me crazy on Sunday afternoon because you're laying on the couch watching reels and you know it's ding, ding, ding, ding ding. But you know you have to be curious about those things so you can learn and improve and certainly getting yourself out there, yep, okay. So the fun part, right. So what's out there? Where's everyone going? What's the hot travel spots? Where's everyone looking to go? Where are you sending people?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Saudi Arabia has been on some people's market.
Speaker 1:That was a terrible example.
Speaker 2:I don't know, that is a terrible example. That's one example. We can't send people to Saudi Arabia. Maybe Dubai, dubai is a little more fun, I think. But again, this is March. 1st is Friday. I don't know when this is going to air, but we're already approaching spring, so getting people's summer plans ready are really high right now. Again, since COVID, greece and Italy has been crazy this year. France with the Olympics is especially crazy. Japan right now is off the hook. We literally will not even help people plan Japan for this calendar year because everything's overpriced or not available and you're just not going to get a good experience.
Speaker 1:Interesting, yeah, and you know honey, but that's a huge, that's a huge value right there, right, saying gosh, don't go this year, yeah Right, there's time, go somewhere else.
Speaker 2:Even if you were richer, even if you're Beyonce traveling right, I still wouldn't suggest going to Japan because it's Taylor Swift figured it out.
Speaker 2:So, anyway, there's really knowing the ins and outs and not wasting your time and knowing if you really want to go to Greece or Italy or France. There's times where you can go and ways you can do it where it's not going to be overwhelming. The other thing that we do a lot of on the honeymoon side of things are what I call contrasting honeymoons, where if you have two people who can't decide where they want to go, it's really great. I want to go on safari, I want to go to the beach, so you can go to Africa for safari and then go to Mauritius for the beach, and again you can go to Dubai for fun and then go to the Seychelles for a beach. It's like three hours away. So all of these fun contrasting vacations where you kind of get two for the price of one or two for the time of one, has been big for us. That's awesome.
Speaker 1:Those are great ideas. I've met with your team. I still haven't planned the safari yet.
Speaker 2:That's still on the list, I got to get going on that.
Speaker 1:So how's business travel? Is it back? Are we feeling back to normal from a business travel perspective? I mean, for me it is, but I don't know about you. How about you and your clients?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I read every day that business travel is not back, but that's lost on me. Business travel came back very quickly for us. Again, I'm turning away more business than I'm taking on right now because I also want to make sure that I'm taking on the right sort of business. But business travel is definitely back and COVID was this great MBA for me in a way.
Speaker 2:But COVID made people realize that they need people again. So people who had travel booked before COVID and then had to somehow chase down their refunds or credits and on hold with Delta or any airline for four hours, they realized there has to be a better way to do this. So my business is already I think it's like 25% higher than it was before COVID. So thank you, mark Pizza, my CFO, for showing me all of those numbers. But no, corporate travel is back for me and meetings are really huge right now for me. So whether it's a 20-person President's Club or a 400-person boondoggle, with everyone working remote, people are wanting to meet up once or twice a year and have some sort of offsite meeting Interesting.
Speaker 1:That's good. So, is it? I mean, is it still the commuting stuff? Are people still going from New York to DC every week? Is that still happening?
Speaker 2:Yeah, All of that's. You know, I would say that again, this is I'm only speaking for myself, but I would say the travel has expanded since COVID, where you still have the normal travel, but then you have all of these other variations of it because of people moved and working from home, or hybrid working, or people actually maybe having boundaries saying like you know, no, I'm going to stop working at six o'clock and I'm going to actually use my PTO and go on vacation. So that's awesome.
Speaker 1:Well, good, well, thank you so much. We covered a lot today. I hope this was helpful to everybody. I learned a few nuggets. I think that was really good for me. So how can folks find you If people want to get in touch with you, learn more, ask you a question how do people get in touch with you? Instagram, all that stuff?
Speaker 2:So siretravelcom Sire is Sirecom, siretravelcom. Go to our website again, instagram, facebook again. There's no other Sire Travel out there so that's good SEO yes, and I'm also the only Eric Rubant H-R-U-B-A-N-T in the entire world, so it's very easy to find the only person, so name just like our town, right?
Speaker 1:That's there we go. Well, good, well, thank you so much. Really appreciate that. So don't forget to like, follow, share, subscribe, rate, review, all of those fun things. I've got to get that down, that, uh, that cadence down. But we're everywhere TikTok, instagram, spotify, apple podcasts anywhere you want to watch or listen, we are there. I promise bigworldcom or email us any questions. If you have them podcast at papertrailscom, we're happy to get back to you, get you introduced to whoever. If there's something you want to hear on a future episode, we'd be happy to talk about it. So thank you so much and we'll see you next week.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to this week's episode of a small business big world. This podcast is a production of paper trails. We are a payroll and hr company based in kennybunk, maine, and we serve small and mid-sized businesses across New England and the country. If you found this podcast helpful, don't forget to follow us at at Paper Trails Payroll across all social media platforms and check us out at papertrailscom for more information. As a reminder, the views, opinions and thoughts expressed by the hosts and guests alone. The material presented in this podcast is for general information purposes only and should not be considered legal or financial advice. By inviting this guest to our podcast Paper Trails does not imply endorse