Trade Magazines and Publications

There's more information on travel out there than I ever thought possible. As I started my business, I subscribed to a few print publications and several e-mail newsletters. I also found some RSS feeds that I added to my google home page and onto my browser. Suppliers, of course, send a lot of e-mails as well. It soon became a little overwhelming and I had to figure out what to do with it all.

Print publications: I like to get printed magazines because I just don't want to be on the computer 24/7. However, I quickly realized that one or two a month was plenty and the rest could be done via e-mail. Travel Weekly and Travel Trade are available in both print and e-mail versions. The print versions usually have about the same news and articles that I already read in e-mail, so I will be cancelling the delivery of the printed copies. I do like the Agent@Home and VacationAgent magazines as well as some of the consumer magazines like Budget Travel, so I'll keep those coming.

E-mails: I glance through most of my news and promotions e-mails - just to find aything newsworthy that I need to know about (defunct suppliers, great sales, new ships, etc). I save copies of good articles (print them to pdf and file on hard drive) so I can read them later when I have time. Then I delete the original e-mail to make room for more. I find if I let them accumulate in my inbox, I feel overwhelmed. At some point, I just delete them and move on. It's really important to keep up with all of the news and happenings, but at some point you need to decide if it makes sense to have the e-mails sent to you (sometimes I get 4 or 5 e-mails in a day with the same news on each one) or does it make more sense for you to visit a few key websites at a certain point in the day to catch up on the news and specials? Time management is certainly key here. After all, you should be focusing on selling travel. Reading e-mails is not selling travel.

One challenge I have with all of this is trying to retain the information. How do you remember who was having the big sale and for which dates, or where you read about a great new technology that you wanted to look into later. I think as I continue to develop my niche and narrow down the suppliers I work with, this task will become more manageable. I look forward to hearing from the travel community on their experiences with managing all of this.