By Kate Rice | Agent@Home June 2007 - Brownell Travel has been in business since 1887, making it the oldest continuously operating agency in the United States. It has used many business models over the years, and one of the latest is its recently revamped host operation.

That program began as an entirely separate entity, Personal Travel Consultants, in Cleveland, Tenn. Rebecca Wilson, now a vice president with Brownell, started Personal Travel Consultants because, as a consultant for a number of travel companies, she’d seen the trend toward independent consultants. She converted her employees into independent contractors and developed a program that, with some fine-tuning, remains today.

Wilson merged her company with Sterling Travel in Atlanta in Jan. 2002. Sterling was the leading upscale agency in Atlanta and a leading Virtuoso agency. In 2004, Brownell acquired Sterling. The combination of Birmingham based Brownell with Sterling, both Virtuoso agencies, created the upscale leisure powerhouse of the South, Wilson says. Sterling was rebranded as Sterling Brownell, and the hosting program continues today under that brand.

There are about 45 consultants in the Sterling Brownell hosting program (there are more agents at home who work separately under the Brownell brand, although all new at-home agents who enter the program fall under the Sterling Brownell umbrella) and another seven in the recently introduced mentoring program.

All agents have access to the fabled Virtuoso tools. These include training, direct-mail marketing, added-value arrangements with Virtuoso vendors, educational travel opportunities and participation in Virtuoso's annual Travel Mart. They also have access to Virtuoso. net, the password-protected Intranet for all members and Virtuoso preferred vendors. Virtuoso.net features news, information from all vendors, sales training, the management of direct marketing, client sales management, and a variety of offers and training exclusive to Virtuoso members.

Agents at home have access to the institutional memory of all Brownell and Sterling Brownell agents. They formed a Yahoo! group open only to employees and independent contractors work mailing for Brownell and Sterling Brownell. Agents can visit this online community to share information, ask questions, give advice and download updates to Sterling Brownell's IC Handbook.

"It's a fabulous online community that is open 24/7," says Wilson. This is the place where agents-be they full-fledged agents at home, employees, or participants in the mentoring program-can go to find out such detailed information as the name of a particular restaurant in Florence or how to find a condominium in Hawaii for clients who can't climb stairs.

A staff of more than a half-dozen people is devoted solely to catering to agents working from home. In addition to this staff, other members of the agency, such as the director of marketing, the director of technology and tech support team, work with at-home agent.

Travel agents in the host and mentoring divisions also attend the Brownell Annual Company Meeting, held over a January weekend for all employees, independent contractors and participants in the mentoring program. One entire day is devoted specifically to independent contractors and mentoring participants. Agents can network face-to-face with one another to supplement the online and telephone networking they do on a daily basis. There are educational seminars, guest speakers and an awards banquet.

Wilson introduced the mentoring program last summer. She'd been disturbed by the fact that she was turning away applicants who had been very successful in other fields and clearly had the potential to become great travel consultants. (Wilson prefers the term "consultant" over "agent," which she considers "oh so '70s.")

To accommodate these aspiring consultants, she created her mentoring program. Program participants are new to the travel industry, but they've probably been planning a lot of their own and their family's vacations, and they are interested in selling upscale products.

Wilson works with all of the participants, which is one reason she is keeping the group limited number to a maximum of eight. The first three will graduate in August.

"If you Google 'travel schools,' they'll teach you about the GDS and cruise lines, but they are not going to give you a toolbox full of tools to help you be successful," says Wilson, who had envisioned a formal instructional program. "You're going to need to know how to do marketing, how to do sales, how to have an online presence, how to create, develop, manage and run a successful business."

Wilson found what she needed in The Travel Institute and has incorporated its training into her mentoring program. In addition, those in the mentoring program participate in the Virtuoso Institute, which offers a full slate of training sessions, generally through Webex. These sessions include Virtuoso. net training, vendor training and destination training. All agents at home, be they in the mentoring program or experienced sellers of travel, participate in this training. Participants in the mentoring program must complete four to eight Webex training sessions a week.

"I am basically their mother hen," says Wilson, who talks with the students often, working with them to create a marketing plan, which they must submit within a month of enrolling.

She also helps them determine their specialty, as she believes that specialties are what differentiate travel consultants in the marketplace. "I wouldn't even do my own daughter's honeymoon," she says.

Program participants also learn about sales, customer service operations and other fundamental elements of running a business. They are required to attend the Virtuoso Travel Mart for their first two years in the program. The idea, she says, is to provide a clear picture of how to develop a profitable business, a business that just happens to be selling travel.

All participants are required to subscribe to Agent@Home magazine. Wilson says it caters to the agent-at-home market "better than anyone else. It's focused on what is important to the person who wants to be a professional travel consultant working from home."

But it's not just Wilson who works with these new entrants. "The beauty of it is, we have, between Brownell and Sterling Brownell, more associates listed on the Condé Nast Traveler and Travel & Leisure top agent listings than any other [agency]," she says. "We have at our fingertips what I call 'the masters of the industry.'"

These masters are a key component of the monthly conference calls that Wilson holds as part of the mentoring program. She frequently brings in a different "master of the industry" to speak during these calls. A recent guest caller, for example, was a cruise specialist; other agents speak about their specialties. Some sessions deal with other aspects of retail travel: one session was devoted to travel insurance, another featured a speaker from Travelex. Upcoming sessions will focus on the ongoing development of marketing plans, client retention and client acquisition.

Wilson is confident that her mentoring program is unique. "I don't know of any other place a person could go to and have such a concentrated effort devoted to helping them learn and then have a family of people to encourage them and give them help 24/7," she says.

The beauty of the mentoring program is that it gives participants access to the collective knowledge of Brownell and Sterling Brownell travel agents in a variety of ways: online, on the phone and face- to-face. Participants have access to all the same tools that experienced agents in the hosting program use.

To attract new travel agents, Wilson uses word of mouth. Experienced travel sellers are drawn by the potential to benefit from the clout that Brownell and Sterling Brownell have with suppliers as well as Virtuoso's supplier clout. The two brands have a lot of strong vendor relationships. "One of the most recent independents I accepted said, 'Oh my goodness, the doors that opened for me the minute I could call a vendor and say I was associated with you,'" says Wilson.

As for experienced agents, they go directly into the hosting program. Wilson looks for agents who have been in the industry for several years, already have a strong customer following and specialize (or want to specialize) in an upscale niche. Travel agents should also have a history of selling quality products and services. "I'm always looking for a quality consultant, always," Wilson says. "I'll take as many quality consultants as I bump into, it only makes our family stronger."

She works closely with the experienced agents in the hosting program as well. "I have what I call 'therapy calls' with my independent associates," she says. Even experienced agents can get frustrated, and Wilson firmly believes in giving them one- on-one support. She can do that because of the size of her program. "We're not serving 1,000 people, we're serving the best of the best," she says. "We are a relationship-based host."

Experienced agents joining the host program pay a one-time fee to join, go through two days of training and are then set up on the agency's systems. The agency and the agent working from home split commissions using a sliding scale based on income.

Those participating in the mentoring program pay a higher fee to join, and also pay for their textbooks and Travel Institute classes. There is also a monthly training fee, though Wilson was recalculating those fees at press time.