by John Frenaye
Monday October 19, 2015

Over the years, accepting credit cards has been fraught with liabilities. With the Airlines Reporting Corporation, to be absolved of liability, you needed to have a manual imprint of the card—despite the fact that your client might be miles away and all transactions were processed electronically. This was more of a way for ARC to push liability away from themselves than anything else. Then came the PCI compliance issue where even if we were passing along credit card information to a supplier for processing, we were still liable. Today’s liability is the chip card compliance issue that requires merchants to have a special terminal to read the chips that will standard by the end of 2015. If not, then the merchant is responsible for any fraudulent charges. This does not even begin to address the transactional costs of accepting a credit card. But on that front, there is some great news…

I was reminded recently (twice) how the sine wave of life actually works. This curve has been mentioned in my live programs for years and it made the headlines recently.

The first example comes by way of a horse. A very fast horse. A very beautiful and elegant four-legged creature who goes by the name of American Pharoah. (Spelled wrong, correctly.)

American Pharoah overcame incredible odds earlier this year by winning the Triple Crown. This was the first time this has happened since Affirmed won it in…

by Richard Earls
Sunday October 18, 2015

If you believe that travel consulting is primarily a business of establishing and maintaining relationships, then you probably also place a high value on the role of trust in the relationship. Loyalty is founded on trust and will often convince a client to work with you over any alternative. It is trust that induces a client to take your suggestion over their own initial impulse or to try something just because you indicate you think they should. Trust is a powerful motivator for a client. So how do we build trust into our marketing plan?

First, understand what trust is. When a client has trust, they possess a belief in your integrity, reliability, honesty, and competence. Wow. Those…

Danielle van der Kwartel, originally Dutch, arrived over 24 years ago to Mexico where she started working at Hyatt International Hotels in Puerto Vallarta. She started as a Corporate Trainee and within a year, she moved up to Director of Sales.

After her tenure as Director of Sales & Marketing of several renowned hotels, including Camino Real and the Acapulco Plaza Hotel, she worked at the All-Inclusive chain Blue Bay Hotels. During her time at Blue Bay Hotels, she opened nine representation offices in South America and was part of the St. Martin Hotel pre-opening team.

In 2000 she returned to the Hyatt International corporate office as Director of Sales & Marketing of five Mexican properties…