Springfield Travel Company Branches Out
Springfield travel company branches out A Springfield travel company is living up to the promise of its name. Vacations Made Easy, an Internet-based provider of lodging and attraction packages, is in the midst of tweaking its services to make traveling even easier for its customers. The company's offices are located at 1675 E. Seminole, Ste. A-1. The best way to do so, said co-owner Matt Cook, is to step into a customer's shoes - and the company is doing just that. Beginning the week of April 17 with a trip to Nashville, Tenn., two of the company's eight full-time travel writers will begin visiting cities across the country and documenting their experiences firsthand. The writers will have some help touring the cities from convention and visitors bureaus, but they will spend most of their time navigating the trips on their own, as a customer would. "We want to experience it from a customer standpoint - we don't want red-carpet treatment," Cook said. The writers' vacation reviews will be available online, at www.vacationsmadeeasy.com, for customers to use in planning their own vacations. Future trips include Orlando, Fla., Memphis, Tenn., New York City and Niagara Falls, Cook said. Also this year, the company has furthered its philanthropy efforts by donating vacation packages to needy families. On April 7, Vacations Made Easy was featured on an episode of daytime talk show "Maury" for donating an all-expenses-paid trip to Orlando to a couple whose daughter was nearly killed in a lawnmower accident. High medical costs had prevented the couple from taking a honeymoon. This month, the company launched its Believe in Dreams program. Until May 31, customers are invited to submit stories online of families deserving of a free vacation to the destination of their choice. Throughout June, online visitors can vote on each family's story, and the winner will be announced July 3. "The stories are interesting - people that have had a rough couple of years and need to get away or visit their family," Cook said. Other new customer-friendly elements of the travel Web site include a photo gallery, where travelers can post pictures from their vacations and give others a unique look at different destinations and attractions, and blogs, where the company's writers mention upcoming events or review places they've been. Two languages But perhaps the company's largest recent undertaking is the Spanish version of its Web site, which premiered in February after 13 months of programming and translation. The United States boasts an extensive market for Hispanic travel services - particularly for customers in California, Texas and Florida, said Sarah Herrera, senior administrator for the company's cultural travel group. That market has been largely untapped, and Spanish-speaking people are left to arrange vacations with very little help, she said. "There really aren't any sites where they can go buy activities and lodging," Herrera said. "There's just not a lot of information for them to look at." The company's Spanish-language site not only breaks through the language barrier, Herrera said, but also the cultural barrier. Hispanic travelers often are looking for more family-oriented packages and have more disposable income than Caucasians. "They spend almost twice as much on vacation," she said. "They save their cash - they don't use credit cards - and they just save for their vacations." The addition of the new site prompted the company to hire Herrera and four bilingual customer service representatives, Cook said. Six new travel writers were hired in the last two months, bringing total employment to about 30. The company began in 1999 as a Web development firm that later sold tickets to Branson shows, and it has transformed into an agency offering packages to more than 80 destinations in North America. Cook said sales have doubled every year and are on track to do nearly as well in 2006, though he declined to disclose sales figures. Cook estimates about 5 million people visit the company's Web site every year - roughly 400,000 to 500,000 per month. |
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