Personal Travel Managers ‘Like a Local’ Hawaii Experience a Famil Highlight
Experiencing the Hawaiian Islands just like a client would, was the highlight for TravelManagers’ personal travel managers who recently experienced the best the ‘Valley Isle’ of Maui and the main island of Oahu had to offer on a recent six-night exclusive TravelManagers educational.
Nigel Rodighiero from Viva! Holidays and Rachel Fitze from Hawaiian Airways hosted famil participants Michelle Thomas, Louise McCarthy, Kerrin Poupos and Sharon Wright from New South Wales with Lisa Leary and Aileen Collins from Queensland.
Having the ability to share personal travel experiences and product knowledge with clients is an absolute priority for Aileen Collins, representative for Carrara in Queensland.
“The opportunity to self-drive and explore the islands, see how the locals live, visit the supermarket, shopping centres, read the local papers and go to a local event rather than follow the usual tourist trail was hugely appealing. Being immersed in the culture and understanding exactly what our clients would do, has been invaluable and I can now sell this destination with absolute confidence.”
Maui is famed for its beautiful beaches, but it was the views from Mt Haleakala, Maui’s highest peak at over 10,000 feet, that personal travel manager Lisa Leary, representative for Cedar Creek in Queensland found captivating.
“It is a long and winding road and it took us about an hour and a half to reach the summit. But it was certainly well worth the effort to see the world’s largest dormant volcano. Gazing into the huge and colourful crater was incredibly awe-inspiring and the views out across Haleakala National Park and the island were breath taking.”
The ability to self-drive enabled the personal travel managers to explore the island and experience local restaurants and cafes.
“The famous Australian foodie Bill Grainger has just opened a Bills café in Waikiki – so now you can really get a decent coffee! As we discovered coffee is mostly the brewed variety so this was a welcomed find,” says Collins.
Collins also discovered the ABC Stores to be a great multi-purpose convenience store.
“The ABC Store has everything! It really is the best place to shop, providing everything from food items – fresh and packaged to bring home, reasonably priced non tacky souvenirs, pharmacy items and fabulously priced sarongs, sun dresses, sandals and best of all amazingly low priced wines. You can get a good Australian wine for only $12 a bottle – at prices like these there really is no need to bring duty-free from Australia.”
The group experienced Hawaiian Airways and Leary is a real fan of both the destination and the airline.
“Hawaii is such a fabulous destination and I highly recommend your stay include one of the outer islands as its quite a different feel to Waikiki, which really is quite busy. With regular Hawaiian Airlines flights now out of Brisbane, not only does it provide direct flights to Hawaii, the airline provides a great alternative routing to many USA destinations without having to stopover in Los Angeles. I recommend and use their services a lot.”
TravelManagers attribute the exceptional, strong and effective business relationships with key airline, cruise and wholesale suppliers with providing personal travel managers the ability to experience exclusive educationals, to a variety of worldwide destinations.
“Supplier relationships have been built over many years and support of our preferred products is absolutely key to our business model. The ability for our personal travel managers to experience dedicated famils is a large part of this support, says Executive General Manager, Michael Gazal.
Gazal further adds that “TravelManagers prides itself on providing exceptional and personal customer service which comes from first hand knowledge and experience. Educationals that allow immersion into a destination, such as our co-created dedicated supplier famils, are so important and why we proactively work to provide as many educational opportunities as possible.”
For more information or to speak to someone confidentially about TravelManagers please contact Suzanne Laister on 1800 019 599.
