Travel Advisors Address the Power of Gen Z and the Emotional Quotient
Photo Credit: Three young tourists in downtown Melbourne. At Virtuoso Travel Week, travel advisors learned the impact of young people on family travel decisions and what advisors need to know to serve this increasingly influential market. Unsplash / Kevin Laminto
Skift Take
Travel advisors are finding that kids are playing an increasingly important role in travel planning decisions. They must address the preferences of all family members, including their emotional needs.
The make-or-break impact of Generation Z on family travel and the importance of addressing clients' emotional needs surfaced as key issues last week during a panel discussion among travel advisors at Virtuoso Travel Week.
The role that EQ (emotional quotient) plays in travel planning was not just the panel focus, but a central theme during Virtuoso’s annual gathering in Las Vegas.
Emotional Intelligence
Noting that “travel makes you smarter and pushes you out of your comfort zone,” moderator Terrie Hanson, Virtuoso’s senior vice president of marketing, asked the panel, “How do you work with EQ and emotional intelligence?”
For Anne Scully, president of McCabe World Travel in McLean, Virginia, it’s about listening carefully to the client and then going the extra mile to create experiences with emotional impact. A particularly dramatic example of this occurred when planning a trip to Normandy for a client whose father had been killed on D-Day.
“He wanted to brin
