All-Inclusive Resorts can be a travel agent's sweatheart.

Romance travel accounts for a significant percentage of the booking pie. According to the Travel Industry Association of America (TIA), 61.8 million Americans, or 31 percent of U.S. adults, took a romantic getaway in the past 12 months, and the average traveler took 2.5 romantic trips in the past year. Fifty-one percent of those surveyed enjoyed one romantic vacation in the past year while 10 percent went on five or more romantic trips.

Moreover, trips to beaches and/or lakes accounted for one of the most popular types of romance travel, 44 percent of those surveyed having taken such a trip in the past year. Given the popularity and frequency of romance travel as well as the number of couples booking beach getaways, honing your all-inclusive selling skills is certainly a worthwhile endeavor, especially since these resorts pay commission on the food and beverage component of their rates.

“What is more romantic than walking on the beach, hand in hand, and not having to carry your wallet and photo ID because you have pre-purchased all your meals and drinks,” says Wendy Cole, vice president of sales and marketing, North America at Almond Resorts. “You don’t need to complicate your romance by having to dole out cash for every ‘romantic experience.’”

Cole also points out the breadth and depth of experiences that couples have to choose from while staying at an all-inclusive. At Almond Resorts, of which there are a total of five properties in Barbados and St. Lucia, properties offering cooking classes will take guests shopping in the destination’s markets and include a half-day picnic off-site as well as water skiing with instruction. So, there is an abundance of reasons to convince clients to book a romantic getaway at an all-inclusive resort. Once you do, the next challenge is helping them to decide which resort. “You need to look at what your clients’ interests are and what is really included without surcharges,” says Cole. “It really comes down to asking your clients to paint the picture of their ideal vacation for you and then [you] create that picture for them.”

Of course, painting that picture gives you, as the expert travel professional, the ability to steer clients toward a particular resort or a particular brand of all-inclusive resort, which means there are additional factors that you’ll want to take into consideration when researching properties.

One option worth keeping in mind is adult-only resorts. TIA statistics cite that romance travelers without children in their household took more getaways in the past 12 months than romance travelers with children, or 3.1 trips compared with 1.9 respectively. Chances are these frequent travelers are not leaving town to vacation with other people’s children, and so they are prospective guests at an adults-only all-inclusive resort.

“Couples traveling together are going to focus on the adults-only aspect of the experience, and that’s critical with romance,” says Faith Wishnie, director of wedding services at Mexico’s Karisma Resorts, which comprise five properties on the Riviera Maya, three of which are adults-only. “A lot of times, people going on a romantic getaway don’t want to be reminded of children who were left behind or don’t want a family vacation experience.”

Mike Norton, vice president of sales at Sandals resorts seconds the idea. “Our tagline is ‘All You Need is Love’ and so it’s really about the experience more than anything else.”

Norton’s point couldn’t be more valid. Romance travel doesn’t translate only to destination weddings and honeymoons. Actually, TIA defines a romantic getaway as “a trip with a spouse or other love interest, without children, to rekindle the romantic feelings in the relationship.”
 
So, any client with a significant other represents a possible romance-related booking. But, clients who are engaged and are planning either a destination wedding or honeymoon—and even clients who are considering marriage—are worthy candidates for a site inspection. Perhaps they met in the Caribbean or they know they want to honeymoon in Mexico or get married in Antigua—this is a golden opportunity for you to suggest that they plan a trip or two and scout out resorts for the big event.
“We’d like to see more couples do site inspections,” says John Arrindell, managing director of Antigua’s Jolly Beach Resort. “Site inspections mean more business for us and more business for travel agents.” Arrindell notes that not only will couples want to check out the on-property options for wedding ceremonies, but they might also gain a better appreciation of what exactly all-inclusive means in terms of food and beverage. “Meals won’t cost anything extra provided they decide to take the reception to a resort restaurant rather than a private venue on site,” he says.

Incidentally, Jolly Beach Resort captured 23 percent of Antigua’s wedding business last year. According to Derede Samuel Whitlock, director of the Antigua and Barbuda Tourism Office in New York, the “Guinness Book of World Records” cited Antigua as having the highest number of weddings in the world two years ago. She suspects this is due to the fact that the island does not have a residency requirement for couples planning a destination wedding. This is also a topic to consider when booking a destination wedding. If the couple’s budget or schedule doesn’t allow for a honeymoon and a long resort stay before the wedding, look for destinations that have little or no residency requirement.
 
Also worth keeping in mind is whether the resort or resort brand offers any personalized services that would allow you and your clients to customize the romance aspect of their trip. Almond Resorts’ “For You, About You” service program consists of guest support teams who orchestrate special requests from guests and their travel agents. Alternatively, many resorts also offer the complimentary services of a wedding coordinator.

“I think the value of working with a wedding coordinator is that it doesn’t cost an extra penny,” says Raul Villagran, director of sales and marketing for Holiday Inn Sunspree Resorts. “They know the local customs and requirements and you don’t have to go the extra mile to find a local florist or research customs and local fees when something needs to be shipped. Wedding coordinators are like a one-stop shop and they save travel agents having to do the extra leg work.”

However, weddings aren’t necessarily the exclusive domain of the wedding coordinator. These resort staff members are often willing to assist in arranging a romantic retreat for any couple, whether they’re getting married at the resort or not. From setting up couples’ massages and candlelight dinners on the beach to coordinating birthday celebrations complete with piñatas and mariachi bands, wedding coordinators are the experts in all things romantic and their services are worth taking advantage of, especially when it comes to ensuring that your clients’ romantic getaway really is romantic. “We celebrate everything and anything that’s important to anyone,” says Wishnie. “Because we’re an adults-only resort and we focus on the romance factor, there are all different things that we can arrange. Because we’re accustomed to dealing with party events, we can handle any kind of event.”

She’s not exaggerating. Last year, Wishnie and her staff orchestrated an entire destination wedding for a bride who had not yet been proposed to. The mother of the bride contacted Wishnie to set up the wedding because the groom was going to propose while the family was on vacation at the resort, and the bride’s mother thought it would also be the perfect time to get married. Wishnie not only arranged the details of the wedding ceremony and reception that followed, but she also offered advice on shops in the area where additional purchases—such as a wedding gown for the unsuspecting bride—could be obtained. Fortunately, the bride said yes to the groom’s proposal and also agreed to the surprise wedding. Those were probably the only aspects of the wedding that Wishnie didn’t make happen.

As far as the travel professional’s involvement with the wedding planner goes, Wishnie says it’s up to the travel agent to determine at what point in the process of arranging the event he or she wants to turn things over to the client. “You have to be very attentive to detail and make sure that all the information is communicated to everyone involved,” she says. “It takes a very organized individual, and usually the agents who have those qualities are the ones who want to be involved.”