We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Alana LaBissoniere a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alana, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?
ALL. Those are my initials, so ALL Travel just kind of made sense. I really struggled to find a name, though, because in general searches, the letters A, L, L appear a lot. One day my husband and I were just brainstorming and he asked me, “what do you want your business to be?” I thought about it and knew that I wanted to be ALL Theatre, ALL Art, ALL travel. Part of my 5 year plan is to lead groups to see the shows in London–the best theatre is in London. Not New York, like everyone thinks. I love London. I love art. I had 2 majors in college: theatre and fine arts. That way I could study everything I love. And my masters degree is in theatre arts admin with a minor in art history, the Impressionists are my favorite. So ALL Travel just stuck. There are others out there, but not in MN, so ALL Travel is a registered LLC here in my home state.
Alana, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I was a double major in college–theatre and fine arts. I also went to grad school. I have a masters (almost) in theatre arts admin and a minor in art history. My work experience throughout school was retail. So naturally I ended up in retail when I needed a job with benefits. As a child, my family would travel by car to our destination–usually to visit a relative–but my father would plan our trip to include the Black Hills and Mt Rushmore, or Glacier National Park, or Yellowstone, or the Colorado Rockies. We traveled to Washington DC for my Uncle’s wedding. I loved it! Seeing the landscape pass by the window, looking at the towns, counting the bridges, or the license plates from the other cars–all the things you do to pass the time during a long car ride. My first international trip was with my high school French class. We spent 3 weeks in France and I was in love with travel even more. I also got to spend J-term of my senior year in college in London. We saw 28 plays in 28 days, and we toured England by bus and train. I really wanted to be a travel agent, but my practical work was retail and my education was in the arts.
Once my kids grew up and moved on to college, I went back to my love of acting, all the while planning every trip my family ever took. Coordinating the hotels, the plane tickets, everything. One day about 5 years ago while planning a trip to London and Paris for my parents, my husband and myself, my husband said “you should be getting paid for that”. That started my journey to find some education about being a travel advisor and starting my own business. And then Covid hit. So I still feel pretty new, even though I launched ALL Travel in January of 2020.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
Starting a travel agency 2 months before the world shut down with the Pandemic shows my resilience. I am still here. I was blessed with a day job when everything shut down so I could collect unemployment from that job while taking webinars and zoom classes day after day when no one was traveling. I learned how to be persistent in getting clients’ their money back at the start of the shutdown because I had time to call every day and wait on hold to reach someone to explain why my clients should get their money back. And they did. All of them did. Every penny, even the non-refundable deposits. When my day job started back up, I worked remotely, so I could continue my travel education during breaks and at night. And then a few clients started to call in February of 2021. And then a few more. And I realized people were ready to plan their vacations. They wanted to get out of town and I was here to help them. By August of 2021, I had enough work to distract me from my day job responsibilities, and it wasn’t fair to my employer and it wasn’t fair to my clients, so my husband and I talked and we agreed that I could quit the day job to concentrate on building my travel agency. And I’m still building. In travel, we don’t get paid our commissions often until the travelers have returned from their vacations. So there can be a long wait for the income to start rolling in. I think that illustrates my resilience.
What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?
I’m still working on this, but right now networking is the most effective strategy for growing my client base. I get the best clients from referrals from my networking group or from a friend who saw my Facebook or Instagram post. Word of mouth seems to be the best method for finding quality clients that I want to work with and I believe it’s because of the networking I have done within a couple groups I belong to and for sharing my needs with my friends and family. I have specialized in European river cruising, European vacations and tours, ocean cruises, and luxury all-inclusive resorts, so I don’t work with every request or referral that comes in. I think my area of specialization also helps grow my client base because my network knows what to listen for when someone says they want to take a vacation.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.alltraveladvisor.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alltraveladvisor/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alanalabiss/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alltravel/
- Other: https://www.travelleaders.com/agents?txtAgentName=Alana%20LaBissoniere