During the last 20 days I started the commercial part of my mission, in direction of B2B. Firstly we defined a strategical approach on how the enterprise should present itself, to look like a partner and not a concurrent. For travels and B2B we decided to present ourselves as Vivo Experience, which is the travel branch (travel agency) of VivoVenetia. Instead, for the B2C we’ll present ourselves as Vivo Venetia. As I decided before for the strategic approach to the French market, we’ll present ourselves before all as a network with a focus on our responsible tourism mission, our sustainability and our exclusive partnership with the regional Art-craft men confederation. It took me almost one week to prepare a presentation brochure of the agency that you can see on this sway following this link https://sway.com/3WhVbVGumiDLtSzE?ref=Link or in pdf presentation on this website https://issuu.com/vivoexperience/docs/vivo_experience___brochure_web. After what, I contacted various French travel agencies and tour operator, starting by the biggest on the market, to propose them to work together, being their referent on the Veneto territory. For others, it was to ask them to sell our offer on their agencies. I also pointed the fact that I wanted to create product with them, so they could have a unique offer compared to the concurrent. It wasn’t easy because I’m not used to sale and I must improve on convincing people. Anyway, I learn fast and get how to catch their interest. I also noticed that big agency already works for years with local partners and often they don’t want to “betray” them and orientate us to them. I contacted one of them, a big group with 25 years of experience and working with most of the French travel agencies. I fixed an appointment and went to meet them with Cécile. They weren’t close to a collaboration and on the next week I have to conceive and present them an “original” product, if they like, they sell. The problem is that they have an important commission fee, in addition with ours it’s too much. They also risk to “take” for them our own offer, contacting directly our service provider.
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This period and firsts contacts were rich in conclusion. First, I understood that big agencies already have their own network and a tendency to eat smaller realities. To work with them we should convince to work with us in specialized fields as Art craft and trekking. We should get the niche’s tourism we’ve access too because we’re on the place. Then, we conclude with Cécile that we should stop searching for huge agencies and focuses on specific areas. Actually, if we really want to aim at responsible tourism, we should point at agency working in, and small realities as ours. We should really focus on niche tourism. That’s why I started to work on B2C for senior, schools, association, enterprises, etc. We think it would be better to win people’s loyalty with a direct contact, taking advantage of being French.
In parallel to this commercial activity, I’m working with Cécile for the design of the office. I help her to choose how to decorate, giving my ideas, selecting pictures, medias and searching for cost estimation and printers. I also went in excursion with her to meet various new partners. We went in a little village in the Dolomite mountains where a new hotel recently opened and want to work with us for the promotion of their area and to be integrated in our packages. We did meet the hotel manager, visit the hotel and had lunch there with him. Then we visit the village and its amenities and evaluated the potential and the targets. Then we went in the valley for a 4 hour “canoe” excursion on the Sile river. It’s a new partner which is organizing a lot of immersive naturalistic activities in Treviso area and in Dolomite. We are very interested in their offer and philosophy. This day has been very interesting to understand more about the territory and understand the process and interests of creating a new partnership.
Now I’m preparing a plan to contact specific target and I also preparing for the next creation product. I also go on with contacting travel agencies and blog.