Roaming Boomers Travel Services: 2016 TravelAge West Trendsetter Award-winners

For 2 1/2 years now, our clients have been awarding our young travel agency with a vote of confidence by their continued support, referrals, and following us closely on our website and social media channels.

In fact, Carol and I quickly launched into the top 10% of all travel advisors in our first full year as clearly folks have enjoyed and received benefits from our service. And beyond our wildest dreams, it looks like we might just double last year’s phenomenal performance in 2016.

Carol and I have been business owners for 25 years, and we clearly understand that a successful business is built by earning the trust of our clients and to have that trust so deep that they also refer their friends and family.  We’ve been working very hard on that.

But, what has equally surprised us is that this summer our success has also been noticed by our peers and Carol and I were awarded a national travel agency award: the TravelAge West Trendsetter Award.

To say we were astonished by this is quite the understatement.

As it turns out, our TravelAge West Trendsetter Award was awarded to us because of our social media influence.  Here’s what they had to say in the article:

“Baby boomers and social media might not immediately seem like the most likely pairing, but David and Carol Porter are proving that the two can go hand in hand. The owners of Roaming Boomers Travel Services completed their second year in business as an agency with $1 million in sales, and as of January had booked nearly $230,000 in sales and projected $2 million overall for 2016 — and they attribute their utilization of social media as a large part of their success.

“Most of our business is coming from folks that we’ve known for years, referrals and a social media strategy that features a large blog audience, 20,000 folks on our Facebook page, more than 5,000 folks in our weekly email newsletter and more than 5,000 folks following us on Twitter, as well as consistent sharing on LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest and Google+,” David said.

After starting The Roaming Boomers luxury travel blog in 2010, the Porters amassed a large following of boomers who were requesting travel guidance but overwhelmed with the abundance of information available on the internet. The couple decided to expand into a travel agency in 2014 to serve as trusted advisors.

“It’s quite amazing to realize that a great deal of our business is coming from our social media efforts,” David said.”

Now, lest you think that we now have heads in the clouds, please know that from a day-to-day perspective, nothing has changed.  Our continued success will only happen if our clients find value in our service and reward us with their continued support and referrals. 

Yes, it is true that we’ve accomplished remarkable results with our social media efforts, but the client relationship and referrals are the true test of a successful and mature business.

Thank you to our clients for rewarding us with your business.  And a thank you to the folks and judges at TravelAge West for noticing our travel agency and its unique niche. We really appreciate it.

Lastly, in the immortal words of Sally Fields, “you like me, you really like me”.  Hah.  Had to say that! 😀

Links: Award Announcement, Magazine Article
 
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