voyages to antiquity - Parallels Plesk Panel

COVER STORY
Eric Maryanov
All-Travel.com’s CEO champions his clients’ luxury travel
needs with a keen focus on select suppliers.
A
few years ago, Eric Maryanov’s
mother proudly told
him she had purchased
something online—a
bathroom faucet. “Good for
you,” said Maryanov. “Did
you actually point and click and buy it?”
No,” she said. “I had questions.”
The reality was, Maryanov’s mother had
found the faucet online, called a toll-free
number for more information, decided she
wanted the item and then given her credit
card number over the phone. “But in her
mind, she had purchased it online,” says
Maryanov, who is president and CEO of Los
Angeles-based All-Travel.com.
The incident had explained a lot to
Maryanov about consumer behavior and the
online world.
“In the travel industry, when we talk
about all these people buying online, we
almost always assume that it’s Expedia and
Travelocity they’re buying from,” he tells
Luxury Travel Advisor. “But there are a lot of
people shopping online who are actually buying
from people like us, who are traditional
retailers. Online is just how they found us.”
Many of All-Travel.com’s customers find
them via the web and then book their luxury
experience through a one-on-one relationship
with its travel advisors. The agency focuses
largely on the luxury cruise lines, with an
emphasis on Crystal Cruises, Silversea, Regent
and, increasingly, Oceania. Its efforts are paying
off: All-Travel.com is consistently a top
producer for the lines, all through a staff of 29,
which includes 19 luxury travel advisors and a
group of marketing colleagues.
40 LUXURY TRAVEL ADVISOR | OCTOBER 2011
Maryanov says that the personalization
aspect of being a travel advisor is vital to All-
Travel.com’s philosophy, especially because
time is such an important asset these days. “If
you have a parent or grandparent planning
the big family trip, it’s not about the cost;
it’s about bringing all the pieces together.
It’s being sure we've thought about what the
grandchildren will like and whether Grandma
and Grandpa will be comfortable while the
little ones and everybody else in between have
a fabulous time. It’s all in those details.”
Luxury Advocates
Being the client’s champion throughout the
experience is also absolutely necessary, Maryanov
notes. “After the cruise has been purchased,
it’s important to educate travelers on
how the experience can be extended, first by
protecting the investment by purchasing travel
insurance, then by arranging shore excursions
that will be memorable.” Important as well
is the pre- and post-cruise itinerary to create
an overall luxury experience. “It’s really about
being their travel advocate from the moment
they leave home until they return and every
step along the way,” he says.
ALL-TRAVEL.COM
President and CEO: Eric Maryanov
Vice President: David Van Ness
Staff: 29, including 19 travel advisors
Annual Volume: $20 million-plus
Affiliations: Signature Travel Network,
TRAMS
Website: www.all-travel.com
BY RUTHANNE TERRERO
This keen focus on select luxury suppliers
and then emphasizing a customized experience
to complement the cruise has paid off
well. All-Travel.com earns more than $20
million in revenue a year.
To learn just how the agency got to this
point, it’s important to take a look back.
Maryanov has been in the business for 31
years. In fact, his first travel agency gig was
at a mom-and-pop business during his senior
year at UCLA. His mother had suggested he
get a job at an agency just the year before;
the Maryanovs were well-traveled, having
taken an annual overseas vacation since he
was nine. He worked on the books at the
agency, and meant to leave when he graduated
college. But he didn’t. It was 1980, the
early days of automation, when people were
still working on Apple II computers. The
agency owner had developed a back-office
system and Maryanov helped him sell it to
other agencies. Eventually, they built a base
of 120 clients in the U.S. and Canada and
Maryanov became the support desk. He also
helped with administrative work and went
out to train agencies in back-office accounting.
The experience enabled him to truly
know and understand the retail agency from
the back office.
Even better, he was able to dispel the
myth that you can’t make money in travel.
“I knew the numbers; I knew how it was
supposed to work,” he says. He opened his
own agency in Los Angeles at the age of
24—albeit with no clients and no frontoffice
experience.
The year was 1984, and he became
extremely successful in selling corporate and