We used to call them travel agents. In 2018, the American Society of Travel Agents was renamed the American Society of Travel Advisors and kept the initials, which saved on stationery. An agent sounds like somebody selling you something: the sort of man who takes a cut of a footballer’s wages. An advisor, however, is somebody who unequivocally has your best interests at heart.
The commission stayed.
At Matobo Hills Lodge, we give trade rates. A trade rate is a lower price given on the understanding that the guest never sees it. The agent pays one price and the guest pays another and the gap never appears on the quote because the gap is where the advice gets paid for.
We host fam trips. Somebody in the travel business decided “free holiday” didn’t sound important enough so it became a familiarisation trip. Nobody could be bothered saying that so now it’s fam, which is shorter than “free holiday” and sounds much more like work. We feed the agents and drive them about and hope they enjoy it enough to sell us, and they generally do, because it was free.
Then we get to describe ourselves the way a man would write his own obituary if you let him. Every lodge on the continent is “nestled”. I’ve yet to read about one that was simply built on a bit of flat ground. Every room is intimate and every view is breathtaking, including the one from the staff car park.
So I’m as complicit as anyone and, on the adjectives, I may be worse than most.
Here are a few notes on selling Zimbabwe, for my friends in the trade, who will mostly recognise their own itineraries.
Call it Africa. Your client couldn’t find Zimbabwe on a map. Until somebody sold you the trip, you couldn’t either. In fairness, though, the map has shown Greenland the size of Africa since 1569 whereas Africa is about fourteen times bigger. A few days ago, the UN voted to fix it, 164 to one, and the one was the United States, which has its own reasons for wanting Greenland to look big. Nobody is going to ask you to point to Zimbabwe anyway. Africa fits on a banner and everybody at home already knows what it looks like from the documentaries.
It’s a continent of 54 countries with exactly one smell and every travel writer who has ever stepped off the Cessna onto a bush strip has had a go at describing it. It’s earthy and ancient, which is true of all dirt, with notes of wild sage and the promise of rain. If your client can’t place it, it’s just dust and aviation fuel.
Whatever you do, don’t say Zimbabwe. It is a dirty word. You can put “untamed” in a brochure and you can put “once in a lifetime” on a trip you’re hoping they’ll book again next year. But say Zimbabwe and the client thinks of corruption and whatever is in the news and now you’re on the phone explaining something you don’t understand either.
Say Victoria Falls. I’ve seen agents selling South Africa, Kenya, Namibia, Zambia, Botswana, Mauritius, the Seychelles and Victoria Falls. That’s seven countries and a waterfall with a seat at the table among the countries. Zambia shares the waterfall so it got in twice and the country on the other bank is represented by the water.
When the client asks which side of the falls to stay on, tell them both sides are lovely then check the rates to find out which side is lovelier.
Learn the language while you’re at it. Nobody in this business says “commission”. They say “preferred partner”. Nobody says “mark-up”. They say “value”. “Complimentary” means it’s in the price and the price went up to make room for it.
A lodge paying more is a strong commercial partner. A lodge paying less develops problems nobody mentioned last year. The road in gets longer, the rooms get smaller over the phone and somebody’s heard the food isn’t what it was. The guide who was a legend last season is suddenly still finding his feet.
All anybody has to do is get a little more excited about one lodge than the other and the excitement always happens to match the rates.
Then there’s the brochure. Use “authentic” as often as you can and nobody will ask what the inauthentic version looks like. “Untouched wilderness” is very good, provided nobody asks about the airstrip, the borehole, the laundry and the staff housing it takes to keep it untouched. “Off the beaten track” means there is a track and it has been beaten, mostly by Land Cruisers from the lodge next door. A “community visit” is a village that knows which days the vehicles come.
Speaking of which, send your clients to visit a school with a bag of pens and make sure somebody photographs the handover. If there’s no photograph, did they really do something noble?
Put the guide on the website. Use the photograph where he’s laughing and use his first name so clients feel they know him before they land. He is wise and he reads the bush “like a book”. Leave out the years of apprenticeship and exams it took before anyone let him walk a paying stranger towards a buffalo because it makes him sound like a professional. Then somebody might ask what he earns and you certainly don’t want that anywhere near the rate card. Instead call him “priceless”, which is the word we use for something nobody intends to pay for.
Meet the owner. Ideally, he’s a white man in khaki whose family has been on the land for generations. I’m fifth generation so I’ve had plenty of practice at this part.
Let him talk about passion and the land. The story begins when the family arrived and you mustn’t ask who was there before them because nobody likes being interrupted while he’s talking about passion. Anything older than the family is rock art, which goes on the afternoon activity sheet.
Mention Zimbabwe’s troubles once – early. The word you want is “despite” as in “despite its troubled past”. It tells the reader the traveller is brave and nobody has to spend the afternoon discussing what happened to somebody’s farm. After that, leave politics alone. It’s bad for the sunset.
If somebody asks whether Zimbabwe is safe, they mean Robert Mugabe who has been dead since 2019. Tell them it’s perfectly safe, which it generally is, and don’t bring up the hippos. They’ve never read about the hippos so they aren’t frightened of them and there’s no reason to give them something new to worry about this late in the booking.
Tell them to buy a hundred-trillion-dollar note at the Falls where they sell them to tourists. It will probably be the only Zimbabwean banknote they ever own as everything else they buy will be priced in US dollars and it’s a lot funnier than asking what happened to people’s savings.
Sell the elephants. They’re “gentle giants”. There’s a matriarch and there’s something about memory and grief. Children wave at the vehicle and you wave back. If you’re writing about the trip, this is where you’re supposed to feel something.
Then sell the rhino. If the client asks why the ranger has a rifle, say it’s for safety and move on to lunch.
Talk about conservation. It’s the most useful word in the business because everybody approves of it and nobody asks to see the accounts. Call a fee a conservation levy and the guest will pay it and feel good about it, which is more than anyone has ever felt about VAT. Some programmes do extraordinary work. Most others have found that a conservation levy looks terrific on an invoice.
Then go on the fam trip yourself. Sleep in a different lodge every night and, by day five, you’ll remember them by their showers. There is always a sundowner. Somebody will hand you a gin and tonic beside a waterhole while the sun turns the dust orange. Write that Zimbabwe stole your heart and that a part of you will always remain there. Post it before the ice melts and tag the lodge.
The lodge will reshare it in the morning. Some mornings, that’s me because it sells.
The lodge writes the story and the agent repeats it. A journalist comes on a hosted trip and repeats it more beautifully and then the lodge republishes the journalist saying what the lodge told them in the first place. Eventually the client has heard the same story from so many directions that it looks like consensus.
None of this makes travel agents useless. A good one is superb. They know which connection will ruin the trip, which lodge is living off photographs from 10 years ago, which room to ask for, how to get a family home when an airline decides their holiday ends in Johannesburg and who actually answers the phone when it all goes wrong.
That’s worth paying for so charge for it. If you’re advising the traveller, let the traveller pay you. Tell them when a supplier pays you as well, and which lodges are preferred partners, then recommend the place you actually think is right.
Nobody minds the money. I run a lodge and I want agents to sell it. I want them to visit, to like it and to tell their clients Matobo is worth three nights rather than treating it as the bit of Zimbabwe between Botswana and Victoria Falls. The trouble starts when we pretend the money has nothing to do with the recommendation.
Call yourself an advisor if you like. I’ll keep sending you the rate sheet and it will still say commission.
