The Art Of Selling Travel Podcast

Glenda Beagle

Fueling travel agents' success: Crush objections, & convert curiosity to bookings. Helping Travel Advisors grow their sales with practical action steps and tips.

  1. Sep 23

    How to Ask Clients About Accessible Travel With Karen Morales, Head of Accessibility at Fora |Ep 179

    Karen Morales rolled up to a five-star hotel in Hawaii, ready to be pampered, and they handed her a room with stairs. She's a wheelchair user, an accessibility advocate, the Head of Accessibility at Fora, and the founder of Joyward Travel. She had sent the emails. She had confirmed the room. It still happened. And that moment is exactly why this conversation matters for every travel advisor, not just the ones who think they specialize in accessible travel. In this episode of The Art of Selling Travel Podcast, Karen and I dig into why accessible travel is one of the most underserved and most lucrative parts of the market. One in four people globally lives with some kind of condition. Multi-generational trips are the biggest bookings out there right now, and almost every one of them has at least one accommodation baked in. Yet only about 30 percent of accessible rooms are even bookable online, and hoteliers will raise their hands when asked if they've hosted a guest with special needs but go silent when asked if it's in their marketing. The rooms exist. The money exists. The conversation is what's missing. Karen shares what she's learned from travelling to nearly 50 countries, six of those years in a wheelchair. You'll hear about the hotel in Okinawa that sent her a photo of the bathroom and the shower chair before she arrived, the Sicilian beach club owner who bought a beach wheelchair and assigned two lifeguards to get her in the water, and the morning in Japan when her chair died on day one of a two-week trip and a DMC with boots on the ground saved the entire vacation. That last one is the reminder every advisor needs. There are moments in travel that no amount of research and no AI is ever going to fix. A human with a relationship in market will. We also get practical. Karen walks through the questions that actually work, like asking whether a client can comfortably climb into a Sprinter van instead of asking if they need an accessible room, or reframing a flat shower with a railing as risk reduction instead of a disability accommodation. I share the story of a family who kept insisting on room service for years until I finally asked why, learned their son was autistic, and completely changed how I planned for them. The lesson in both cases is the same. Ask better questions, ask them with hospitality, and stop leaving things at the surface. If you're a travel advisor who wants to serve an aging client base, land more multi-generational bookings, and be the person your clients trust when things go sideways, this one is for you. Find Karen at ForaTravel.com on the accessibility page, or through her own brand, Joyward Travel. Additional Links:  Our Building An Audience Workshop: Marketing Workshop Download the Essential Lessons PDF: Essential Lessons PDF Join the priority list for our upcoming groups workshop: Groups Workshop Join the priority list for upcoming sales workshops: Workshop Priority List Join the Facebook Group: Facebook Group Connect with Glenda on Facebook or Instagram

  2. Sep 16

    Words Are Words, The Intent Is Everything | EP 178

    Ever heard "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all"? Turns out that's pretty solid marketing advice too. In this episode of The Art of Selling Travel Podcast, Glenda Beagle gets real about why the exact same words can land as supportive, sarcastic, or straight-up angry depending on the energy behind them, and why that matters more than most travel advisors realize when they sit down to write an email, record a video, or post on social. She also breaks down why knowing your audience changes everything, with a story about writing a roast for her dad and uncle's 75th birthday while her cousin wrote a toast. Both worked, because both of them knew exactly who they were talking to and what they were there to do. Your marketing needs the same clarity. Who is it for? What's the intent? What do you want them to feel? If you can't answer those, no amount of money thrown at ads, agencies, or courses is going to fix it. And if you're paying someone to do your marketing and they've never asked you those questions, they're just taking your money. What to do when your energy's off: gut check, wait a day if you need to, go for a walk, have a dance party, shake it out. Get to a place where you're focused on the who, the what, the intent, and the outcome before you create anything. That's how you make messaging that actually lands. Additional Links:  Our Building An Audience Workshop: Marketing Workshop Download the Essential Lessons PDF: Essential Lessons PDF Join the priority list for our upcoming groups workshop: Groups Workshop Join the priority list for upcoming sales workshops: Workshop Priority List Join the Facebook Group: Facebook Group Connect with Glenda on Facebook or Instagram

  3. Sep 9

    Going Viral Might Actually Hurt Your Travel Business| Ep 177

    Going viral is not the point. In fact, it might actually hurt your travel business, and in this episode Glenda explains exactly why. She breaks down the four ways people actually make money on social media (view revenue, collaborations, affiliates, and selling your own product) and why only some of those matters for a travel advisor. If you are not grinding out ten videos a day for ad revenue, then vanity numbers are a distraction from the KPIs that actually move your business.  She shares the story of a bakery that hired a "go viral" consultant and ended up posting content that is off-brand, uncomfortable, and makes you question their food handling, while other bakeries go viral simply because people love watching cake decorating. She also calls out the business coach who went viral once with a chin-up video and is now selling a course on how to do it (yet hasn't repeated it herself). The lesson in both cases is the same. When your focus becomes going viral, you lose sight of who you are creating for, why you are creating, and what you are actually selling. You end up attracting the wrong audience and pushing away the people who would have bought from you. Then comes the reframe that changes everything. That video with 100 views? That's 100 humans in a room, silent, giving you their full attention while you tell them a story. How often do you get that chance? On social media, you get it every single day. Captivate those 100 and the algorithm brings you 100 more. Glenda challenges you to stop asking "how do I go viral" and start asking "how can I connect with even one person so they know without question they are in the right place." This is exactly what the Building an Audience workshop is about. Glenda is flipping the traditional awareness, evaluation, sales funnel into community, connection, conversion, and tackling the gremlins that tell you nobody wants to hear your voice. Join us September 22, 23, and 24, 2026 at artofsellingtravel.com/grow. Additional Links:  Our Building An Audience Workshop: Marketing Workshop Download the Essential Lessons PDF: Essential Lessons PDF Join the priority list for our upcoming groups workshop: Groups Workshop Join the priority list for upcoming sales workshops: Workshop Priority List Join the Facebook Group: Facebook Group Connect with Glenda on Facebook or Instagram

  4. Aug 12

    Don't Send Emails Pissed Off | EP173

    Glenda opens with the mantra of the episode: never hit send while you're angry. It comes out of a TASS coaching call, where an advisor did everything right on a river cruise inquiry (fast turnaround, custom research, a proposal built around what the clients actually wanted) only to find out they'd booked elsewhere. Stung by the loss, she fired off an email listing everything she'd done for them. It didn't land the way she hoped. Glenda unpacks what happened next: how to repair a client relationship after an emotional reaction, why the word "disappointed" does more work than anger ever will, and why the fix isn't about being right, it's about being the adult in the room. Key takeaways: The genie doesn't go back in the bottle. What you do next is what counts. Lead with disappointment about the relationship, not the lost transaction. Clients can feel the difference. No response is required within the hour. Professional services don't work that way, and neither should you. Before you send anything written in anger, run it through a filter: a trusted business bestie, or even AI, asked point-blank, "Does this match my values, and what tone does this actually read in?" Ask what you could've done better. Not all feedback will feel good, but it's the most useful kind you'll get. Don't take the bait from difficult clients. Disengaging is a completely valid response. Additional Links:  Our Building An Audience Workshop: Marketing Workshop Download the Essential Lessons PDF: Essential Lessons PDF Join the priority list for our upcoming groups workshop: Groups Workshop Join the priority list for upcoming sales workshops: Workshop Priority List Join the Facebook Group: Facebook Group Connect with Glenda on Facebook or Instagram

5
out of 5
30 Ratings

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Fueling travel agents' success: Crush objections, & convert curiosity to bookings. Helping Travel Advisors grow their sales with practical action steps and tips.

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