Terms
"It was vital to have a way for us to be able to communicate with one another," Katalina begins. "Some people will say 'my community' and mean their Instagram followers; perhaps it's the two-way communication between the creator and their audience, but it's not conversations between one user and an additional. We really wanted facilitate members talking to each other because that's community-building at its core, it's what makes people feel connected with the other."
There was more than just travelers becoming part of the ECT community. Experts from the industry were joining and were actively sharing information with other members, creating an open and knowledgeable platform. Katalina and the ECT group wanted to formalize their contributions and acknowledge their appreciation for the information and advice that was being shared.
"We were looking to make the experts who are aware of our values and are basically the El Caminos of those countries, more engaged within our group," Katalina starts. "We put together badges and also gave them profiles that have a blue circle surrounding their photo as well as a checkmark in yellow in order to prove they're destination experts. If you ask a question about Greece and Christina replies, you can be sure that this is an expert who had a minimum of ten years in Greece."
The community members were asking questions, as well as genuine, certified travel experts were talking to each other. The online community was serving its purpose perfectly -- maybe even more than what had been expected. It was then that the magic was achieved: lockdowns were lifted. It was clear that the online ECT community had begun now moving back to the the offline realm, and it was the right time for the business to shift from survival mode to building for the future. "During the pandemic we tested ourselves against fire, and did well," Katalina explains.
The pandemic and its resulting world slowdown enabled for the ECT group to consider thinking more about how to best serve its community of women travelers. "We felt we were doing something special however, we didn't have the time or resources to think bigger about our brand that we were creating. We realized how special this is as a travel business as a whole," she continues. "As the world began to become more open, we realized there was more we could do through memberships in real-life. It was possible to serve our community with a manner that was reflective of the things they wanted from us, as they started to venture out into the world."
Big ambition
What is El Camino Travel going to offer its clients everything they require now the world is about to go back to routine? "The major goal is to become the most renowned one-stop shop for women travelers to dream, plan to book, travel, and document their journey," Katalina asserts.
ECT was founded with 100 members in August 2020 The number has increased to around 700, and the ECT team has expanded to 6 and a half full-time employees. In the US the millennial females have the highest growth rate in the travel sector, however Katalina believes that none of the big operators are serving this segment. "For certain of the larger firms, there's no one in the boardroom saying, 'Hey, women spend so much money but they still feel really unsafe while traveling. What are we able to do to improve their experience?" She adds.
Katalina recalls that, during a survey conducted recently of female travelers most frequently wanted from travel companies by most (85 percent) of those who participated was the feeling of security while traveling. "These women are not asking to have bodyguards on their property," Katalina affirms "They only want to be confident that they have the intel as well as the resources for making informed choices. They feel confident and secure. We're solving this in the present with our small-group travel experiences, as they enable travelers to immerse themselves fully and to not sacrifice the overall quality of their trip experience because of their gender."
Ultimately, Katalina wants El Camino Travel to become the best resource available to women who travel. "TripAdvisor and Google concentrate on volume versus quality: there's an abundance of poor quality data available and we'd like to do the completely different," she continues. "It's about knowing that there's a community behind me which I can rely on, in a way that I don't have to rely upon any other group, when I go out to explore the world."
Travel concierge
How does the ability to rely on the community show up? Katalina tells me that, whenever someone asks a question within the ECT forum, the community manager jumps in "with that white glove concierge service" and shares all the details of threads that could already exist, and then at least five community members will respond. "Rather than the 200 responses you'd get through a free Facebook group, there'll be better recommendations that are a reflection of our style of traveling" she says. "People pay for El Camino due to the belief that, 'That's who I am as a traveler; they get me better than anyone else'. This is how we bring these folks together."
This begs the question what is the best way to ensure the level of quality, ECT have a possible upper limit for member numbers? "We are asked every times, "How do you going to maintain the high quality and maintain the quality?'" Katalina responds, saying "Tech will play a role in that, for sure. We've started collecting data and looking into the options." She adds the team is looking into solutions so that people do not get bombarded by low high-quality information. The team is already moderating the forum, and chooses which questions that they will answer. They also stop the replies after an amount of time.
"At this moment, the advantage of joining is that you will receive a highly curated travel guide each month, composed by our destination experts We may also put out more curated content, because people really are awestruck by us," she continues. "We are determined to ensure we're able to handle many more users and are able to provide them with the information and connections that they're searching for, without like ever feeling like what happens when the number of people join."
The author explains that the majority members of ECT members wish to communicate with one another in particular when they travel and lots of them work remotely in the present. "You'll get messages saying, 'Hey, who's in Mexico in the coming months? I'm remote working in Oaxaca and I'm looking forward to seeing you!'" she explains. "We're exploring technology to make it easy for people to find each other when they're traveling to similar places on the same time."
As well as the latest advances in technology, the primary plan to ECT is to embrace the post-lockdown world and get selling travel trips once more. It began offering group-travel trips again in June 2021. nowadays a huge focus of the company is to sell these trips and offering memberships -- as well as bundling them together and offering members discounts.
Sharing and not selling
It is our conclusion that, contrary to what we would expect, the approach of not marketing travelinstead, simply discussing it on the ECT forum -- has ultimately helped certain of the ECT's experts in travel to gain clients. "The forum lets people display their expertise and thought leadership as well as a large portion people in the El Camino Travel community have been able to gain clients by the responses they provide to inquiries," Kataliana explains.
Katalina was quick to realize they was a great idea and began looking for ways to grow and formalize the experts' list for destination. "We asked our current team, 'Who do you think should be the expert?' they started recommending people," she continues. "I interviewed them and inform them about the forum to make them feel excited. It's a fresh distribution method for them, free of all the algorithms from Facebook and Instagram, and gives an opportunity to sit in on the ideal customer."
The experts recognized clear advantages. "When you meet with potential customers for travel, you need to show off your expertise and demonstrate the reason why someone should take a trip to you. Forums allow them to show their expertise in an natural, genuine way that doesn't feel salesy," she says.
"Travel experts love to talk about travel; we love sharing the information. This gives us another opportunity to be helpful," Katalina muses. The simple act of being helping is an effective way to sell travel: Since the travel industry is beginning to grow, the ECT team has managed to go a stage further beyond simply speaking about traveling. "Since the lockdown was lifted the ECT team has begun to plan trips with our experts on destination. We've been to Morocco and to Guatemala, through Greece in Greece, and Georgia. It's been quite cool!" she smiles.