“I mandate that all staff include a Country Guide for all countries that clients are visiting in their final handover. When we show clients, we always “sell” ourselves a little at the same line, something along the lines of “this is our new toy that we love. We subscribe to this service and it’s updated weekly so the information is always current and relevant, we just feel the information is extremely useful and it’s something that sets us apart from our competition”. We then oh and ah over it together.
Just this morning a client rang in asking voltage information and I just logged into the Country Guides to give them the details. In particular the clients appreciate the emergency phone contacts, voltage, public holidays, currency info – probably in that order. I also love how it’s personalised and shows the date at the top.
So in summary, it makes us more professional, knowledgeable and just adds to the IP that we already possess. Even seasoned travellers learn a thing or two from it. We don’t include it in our quotes but let them know that we subscribe and if they want it before the handover we can just email it to them – I think it’s great that you can email straight from your system – another great time saver.”