There’s a billboard for Sandals Resorts on the route I take to
and from my son’s pre-school. It shows Elmo and a smiling woman in
the foreground and a beautiful aquamarine shoreline behind them.
Elmo catches my son’s eye, while that blue surf draws me like a
magnet. Take it from me, when you’re stuck in L.A. rush-hour
traffic that beach looks mighty good.
After working on this issue’s cover story, “Selling Sandals” (page
12), I have a new appreciation for the effectiveness of that
billboard. In the sidebar to the story, Mandy Chomat, senior VP of
sales, says that Sandals spends $40 or $50 million a year on
advertising, and he strongly suggests travel agents use that
exposure to their advantage. He feels that if an agent doesn’t
capitalize on the company’s ads and promote themselves as a seller
of Sandals, they are letting all that advertising go to waste.
“If an agent doesn’t take advantage of that,” he said, “someone
else will.”
It’s a good point coming from someone in an organization that knows
a thing or two about reaching customers. For nearly 25 years now,
Sandals has been on the cutting edge of innovative marketing,
whether it’s creating Beaches to capture the family market; or
teaming with Sesame Street to bring in families with younger
children once school is back in session; or the company’s latest
move, a partnership with wedding-consultant-to-the-stars Preston
Bailey. Sandals is infused with an entrepreneurial spirit that has
spread from the top down, beginning with founder Butch Stewart, a
former air-conditioning salesman who has watched Sandals grow into
the success it is today.
Besides taking a well-deserved look at an industry stalwart, I hope
the Sandals profile is an inspiration to those agents with similar
entrepreneurial inclinations, and as always, I hope it helps
readers make more sales.
For my part, I wonder if I can open a travel agency just past that
billboard.
