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Traveling and Selecting a Hotel
Interview with Margaux Pellegrino, Area Director of the Indian Ocean and Head of Jet Tours’ ‘Signature Collection Exception’
I recently had the pleasure of taking part in a press trip organized by Jet Tours in Scotland. I was thus able to discover all the steps involved in preparing a travel package and live out the experience of a Jet Tour trip. The tour operator has been in existence since 1968, benefitting from an expertise that has allowed it to create successful trips across the world. It owns more than 40 clubs (Club Jumbo and Club Jet Tours), more than 55 circuit destinations, exclusive stays in the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, and the Indian Ocean, as well as weekends in some of the most beautiful cities in Europe.
In Scotland, during this trip, I was able to discover several hand-picked hotels with exceptional taste. I wanted to understand how the hotel selection takes place when a Jet Tour trip is organized. In my interview with Margaux Pellegrino, Area Director of the Indian Ocean and Head of Jet Tour’s ‘Signature Collection Exception,’ you’ll learn more about the back-stage work involved in preparing a trip.
Traveling in Scotland
How do you define the art of welcoming in your travel packages? Can you present to us a few elements?
Our vision of the art of welcoming is based above all on accompanying our clients throughout their journey. Our teams put their expertise entirely in the service of a successful trip for our clients and remain engaged with them before, during, and after the voyage.
Prior to departure, we put at your disposal a team of experts who are entirely dedicated to giving advice, organizing, and executing your trip. We can also help our clients obtain their visa, for instance.
Once they’ve arrived, our clients have a 7/7 and 24-hour service on hand. Thanks to our openness with the latest technology, our clients can join us over the telephone, by text, on Skype, or on Facetime. We offer them a ‘Travel Guide’ to give them suggestions for their trip (contacts, good addresses, unmissable sites, etc.).
The signature, the collection ‘Exception’
How do you organize the travel packages before you market them? What are your selection criteria for your hotels? What are the first steps in our partnership with hotels (from the first contact to the eventual sale in the catalog)
We first begin with market research, research on our clients’ needs, and research on our competition in order to target hotels that are consistent with our brand’s positioning. We choose a whole range of quality hotels adapted to all of our needs and budgets.
We explore the destination to verify the quality of the targeted and existing products, and then we choose our partners carefully.
For our new products, we begin by first getting into contact with hoteliers. The principal criteria for selection is: the quality of their services and offerings! Once the product is validated, we begin a phase of negotiation with the partner (notably on the price). Then, we prepare the communication materials: the brochure, the texts, and the choice of photos, calculation of sale prices, etc. We have numerous back-and-forths with partners. We negotiate the marketing budget and the communication placement with our partners for the product launch. Together we prepare a planning of actions to promote the destination within our network. Once the brochures are approved, our products become marketable.
Hotels and Trips
How do you maintain the same level of quality across each trip? How do you evaluate, for instance, the quality level of the hotels for your stays?
Our teams on site ensure follow-up in the quality of the hotel; we follow the quality and evaluate the hotels through numerous regular satisfaction surveys with each of our clients. The most popular trips are distinguished by Client Trophies. We also work with opinion-rating sites such as TripAdvisor, and we publish them live on our sites.
What is the high-end range within your Jet Tours trips? Can the trips ever be personalized? And if so, in what ways?
We have a selection of hotels called ‘Signature Collection Exception.’ These involve a collection of extraordinary hotels from a highly exclusive range of 5-star hotels. Refinement and elegance are the keystones of these establishments.
All of our stays can be personalized. It is possible, for instance, to offer individual transfers, transfers in helicopters, to foresee an personalized welcome in hotels, rent a car, discover certain activities such as sports sessions, relaxation therapies, chauffeur- or guide-led excursions, golf courses, scuba-diving etc. We can even organize weddings. We adapt to all the kinds of personalized attentions and services that our clients wish for.
Laurent Delporte, an editor and conference speaker, is a strategic expert in the sector of hotels. A visionary, he brings his unique look on hotels in service to the decision-makers in the industry, whether to enhance the development of new projects or strategic visions.
Laurent has visited and audited over 350 hotels across the world and also participates in mystery visits to provide quality control for the world’s finest hotels.
