Terms
"It was crucial to provide a platform for our community to connect with each other," Katalina begins. "Some individuals will refer to their community' and mean their Instagram follower base; it could be the two-way communication between the creator and their followers However, it's not really conversations between one user and one. We wanted to make it easier for members speaking to one another since that's community building in the core. It's the way people feel connected to the other."
It wasn't just travel enthusiasts who were becoming part of this ECT community. Industry experts were becoming members and actively providing information to people around them, creating a friendly and knowledgeable platform. Katalina as well as members of the ECT team wanted to officially acknowledge these experts' contributions to express their gratitude to all the information and advice that was to be shared.
"We were looking to make the experts who are aware of the values we hold dear and are the El Caminos of these nations, to be more active in our community," Katalina starts. "We made badges for them and gave them profile photos featuring a blue circle on their picture as well as a checkmark in yellow for verification that proves that they're experts in destination. If you ask a question concerning Greece and Christina responds, you'll know this is an expert who had a minimum of ten years in the country."
Members of the community had questions to answer, and genuine, qualified, travel professionals were engaging. The online community was serving the purpose it was intended to serve perhaps even better than had been expected. It was then that the magic happened: lockdowns were lifted. The online ECT community was moving back to the the offline world, and it was time for the company to shift into a state of survival and begin developing to the future. "During the pandemic , we tested ourselves against fire, and proved resilient," Katalina explains.
The pandemic , and the resulting global slowing allowed the ECT staff to think more about the best way to help its female traveling. "We knew we were creating something truly special and we had the time or space to really think about our brand that we were creating. We realized just how unique it was for a travel-related company in general," she continues. "As the world started to open up it became apparent that there was a lot more we could do through memberships in real-life. We could serve the community by expressing what they were looking for from us, when they began to explore to the outside world."
Big ambition
How can El Camino Travel going to provide its members with the things they require, given the world is about to go back to normal? "The major goal is to be the leading one-stop shop for women travelers to plan, dream for, plan, make reservations, and then share their travel experiences," Katalina asserts.
ECT was founded with 100 members in August 2020 and is now at about 700. The ECT team has grown to six and a half full-time staff members. The US women of the millennial generation have the highest growth rate in the travel sector, however Katalina feels that no one of the top operators is serving this segment. "For many of the largest firms, there's no one sitting in the boardroom telling them"Hey, women are spending lots of money, but they're not feeling safe when they travel. What are we able to do to improve their experience?" she adds.
Katalina recounts that, in a recent survey of 5000 female travelers most frequently they want from their travel company by most (85 percent) of those who participated was the feeling of security while travelling. "These women don't ask for bodyguards," Katalina affirms "They just want to feel that they've got the information as well as the resources to make informed decisions. That's what makes them feel empowered and feel safe. We're solving this in the present with our small-group trips as they allow travelers to completely immerse themselves in their travel experience and to not sacrifice the overall quality of their trip experiences due to their gender."
In the end, Katalina hopes El Camino Travel to become the top source for female travelers. "TripAdvisor as well as Google are focused on the quantity of information versus quality: there's a high volume of low-quality data available and we want to be completely different," she continues. "It's about having an online community to lean on in a way which I am not able to lean on anyone else in my journey to discover the world."
Travel concierge
What exactly is it that makes being able to lean on a community manifest itself? Katalina informs me that whenever someone asks a question on the ECT forum The community manager steps into the discussion "with the white glove concierge services" and shares all the hyperlinks to threads that may already exist, and then at least five users of the community will reply. "Rather than the 200 or so responses you'd get through the Facebook group for free you'll get better suggestions which reflect our way of travel," Katalina says. "People pay for El Camino because they think, 'That's who I am as a traveler; they are more knowledgeable than anybody else'. The goal is to bring people together."
The question is: in order to maintain the high quality of service, ECT perhaps have an upper limit for number of members? "We are asked every time: 'How you going to ensure that you keep the high quality?'" Katalina responds, by saying "Tech is going to contribute to that certainly. We've started monitoring data and evaluating the options." She adds the team is looking for solutions so that people don't become inundated with bad quality information. The team already moderates the forum, and chooses which topics to be answered, and stop the replies after a certain number.
"At this moment, the advantage of joining is that you get an expertly curated travel guide every month. It's put together by our destination experts So maybe we'll roll up more content that is curated, because people really trust our services," she continues. "We want to make sure we're able to handle many more users and remain able to offer the information and connections that they're searching for, but without feeling like what happens when the number of people join."
She notes that a lot of ECT community members want to communicate with one another particularly when traveling and many are remote working together at the moment. "You'll get messages saying, 'Hey, who's currently in Mexico for the next few months? I'm remote working in Oaxaca!'" she explains. "We're researching technology that will make it easier for people to find each other whenever they're travelling to the same places around the same dates."
As well as the latest advances in tech, the big plan of ECT is to embrace the post-lockdown landscape and begin selling trips again. The company restarted selling group-travel trips again in June of 2021. the main part of their business is selling those trips, selling membership -- and combining the two with discounts to members.
Sharing, not selling
We conclude that, counterintuitively this approach of not selling travel -and instead discussing it on the ECT forum has ultimately helped many of the experts from ECT's travel department to get the business. "The forum is a great way for people to display their expertise and thought leadership and a lot of members of the El Camino Travel community have actually acquired clients through the responses they provide to inquiries," Kataliana explains.
Katalina quickly realized they was a great concept and sought ways to expand and establish the destination expert roster. "We have asked our teammembers, "Who do we believe should be considered the expert?' they started recommending people," she continues. "I would interview them, inform them about the forum, I would get them excited. This is a brand new channel of distribution that they can use, without all the algorithms from Facebook and Instagram which gives the opportunity to be in front of their ideal audience."
The experts recognized clear advantages. "When you talk to potential travel clients, you have showcase your experience, you have to show what makes someone want to book a trip with you. Forums allow them to show their expertise in an natural, genuine way which doesn't come off as salesy," she says.
"Travel experts love to talk about travel. We enjoy sharing details. It gives us the chance to help others," Katalina muses. The simple act of being helping is an effective method to promote travel. as the industry has begun to recover in recent years, we as the ECT team has managed to go a stage further than just discussing traveling. "Since lockdown lifted and we've begun planning our next trip together with our expert destination specialists. We've been to Morocco as well as to Guatemala, through Greece in Greece, and Georgia. It's been pretty cool!" she smiles.