How Gina Hoyt From Avoya Travel Leverages a LMS To Grow Business

In this LMScast episode Gina Hoyt, discusses her innovative use of LifterLMS in building a travel agent certification program.

Given that the majority of travel agents operate from home as independent contractors, Gina stresses the need of formal training for more sales, larger commissions, and a more seamless entry into the travel sector. Her CLIA and ASTA-recognized certification program offers insights into business setup, industry best practices, and utilizing travel knowledge.

Gina attributes her ability to develop a thorough, user-friendly course to LifterLMS’s rich features, intuitive interface, and complex quizzes, automatic certifications, and wealth of learning materials. Her narrative emphasis.

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Episode Transcript

Chris Badgett: You’ve come to the right place if you’re looking to create, launch, and scale a high value online training program. I’m your guide, Chris Badgett. I’m the co-founder of LifterLMS, the most powerful learning management system for WordPress. State of the end, I’ve got something special for you. Enjoy the show.

Hello, and welcome back to another episode of LMScast. I’m joined by a special guest. Her name is Gina Hoyt. She’s from AvoyaTravelAcademy. com. She’s been using LifterLMS for a bit now. I just found out on multiple sites. But first, welcome to the show, Gina. 

Gina Hoyt: Thanks, Chris. Glad to be here. 

Chris Badgett: I’m excited to chat with you today and learn what you’re up to and what you’ve been building.

Tell us about Voya travel academy.com. What’s the project? What’s going on there? What did you build? 

Gina Hoyt: Sure. The Voya Travel Academy is a. We’ve got an LMS solution that we’re pretty proud of. We’ve implemented a lot of the LFTR, solutions from, oh, the advanced quizzes, the videos. the audio options several different things that we love, but what we’ve built is a course really providing a foundation for travel agent, for a travel agent certification.

So those who are new to our industry who raised their hand and say, Hey, I want to be a travel agent, but don’t necessarily know where to start. This would be the first place to start is, provide getting some sort of education. Hey, when you’re become a travel agent.

And you affiliate with a host agency, you understand what that looks like and what it’s going to take. 

Chris Badgett: How much of the travel agent industry is work from home? 

Gina Hoyt: A lot. So I would say probably 90 percent of travel agents to leisure travel agents. Let me, because there is a difference between leisure and business, but and corporate, but most probably 90 percent of the leisure travel agents work from home today.

Chris Badgett: And tell us about the industry a little bit. Sometimes we think, Oh, the internet, we talked about this before we hit record, but I think it’s cool for people to hear. Like you can shop for a house as an example on Zillow, but you still need a real estate agent to make things happen. I think some might argue people can book flights and hotels online.

Where does the travel agent fit today? Like, how has the industry evolved given the internet and technology? 

Gina Hoyt: Sure. When it comes to air only, and you’re right, we did talk about this a little bit, but if. If somebody was, if I was still booking travel and somebody came to me and said, Hey Gina, I need a domestic flight from Seattle to Vegas.

I’d say, Hey, here’s a website, go check it out and go book your flight. Because at the end of the day, I’m not going to be able to provide much value as a travel agent to an air only. But if you’re talking an international flight or even the whole package, this is really where travel agents, Can show their value in terms of what they can offer, not only with pricing, but in their knowledge, right?

So you, you want to put together an entire package. Let’s say you want, to visit Venice, Rome, Florence, and end up in London for 3 nights and you want that all put together. Can you do that today? yourself? Absolutely. You can. The truth is you can. However, if you’re booking with a travel agent, they’re going to know where to go and they’re going to have their knowledge to draw from in terms of versus you spending hours yourself looking online, right?

And then it’s is that hotel really what it seems like? Where we have a bunch of knowledge that we can draw from and suppliers that give us great values and benefits. And then Very rarely costs you anymore to book with a travel agent. Most people don’t know that or understand that, but our commissions come from the suppliers.

So even if you book with a supplier directly, you’re still paying the commission. You’re just not paying for the support that goes with it. 

Chris Badgett: Wow, that’s cool. I feel like that’s a secret of the industry that needs to be out there more so that people know that not just the time savings, but you might even save money.

And, yeah that’s, super valuable. Tell us more about the professional certificate. When people earn that, what do they do with it? How do they think about it? How do you think about it? What is the certification all about? 

Gina Hoyt: So that certification is, It’s both recognized by CLIA, which is Cruise Lines International Association, and ASTA, which is the American Society of Travel Advisors.

We’ve had both of those organizations review our program and give us a thumbs up. They actually both have a some knowledge of what our program is and what it looks like, and the content that we include. When you come out The avoid travel Academy, you’re going to have a really solid foundation in terms of number one.

How do I set up my business? Because again, we talked about 90 percent of travel agents today are work from home, probably very close to that percentage are independent contractors. So they each own and operate their own businesses. But if you don’t understand what that means, you could end up getting yourself into a little bit of trouble on the, and again, there’s nothing to be scared of, right?

It’s just have the knowledge. And that’s what we’re providing in that certification. It’s like, how do, how can you set up your business? What are the different options? What are some of the requirements, is there a requirement industry wide or state wide? in the states that you live in things to look for.

And again, we’re not telling you what to do because you’re going to own and operate your own business. So we can’t however we can provide you some really good insights and suggested best practices in moving forward and what that’s going to look like for you. 

Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. In entrepreneurship, we talk a lot about the ideal customer profile or the avatar.

What type of person, like if you think of the perfect fit person for your program. Is like the perfect travel agent. What were they doing before they made the decision to become a travel agent? And now they’re on this new journey and they’re looking for direction and guidance. Who is that person? If you could paint like a picture of them.

Gina Hoyt: Part of it is, I think that Travel agents can come from just about in any industry, right? We have a lot of health care providers. You know what I mean? That have a lot of people who come from the health care industry or even from an education background but they love to travel. They have that passion and that bug to travel.

And they, love to be of service. Those are two really good qualities. The other piece of that is to never be afraid to keep looking and asking questions. And like you talked to you and I talked about earlier before the show, being that entrepreneur, never being satisfied looking at, okay, yeah, I’m going to do this, but could I do it a little bit better and always keep and keep learning and, I think those are some great qualities of travel agents is they’re, they have the passion and they continue to learn.

Chris Badgett: That makes sense. Yeah, because I’m a traveler. I love traveling. I’ve been to Florence and Nice and the places you were talking about. And I’m like, yeah, if I was going to go back there, I might avoid this thing. I do that thing. And it makes sense that they have to have that travel passion. 

Gina Hoyt: Absolutely.

Chris Badgett: That’s cool. Tell us about how you found your way to LFTR LMS when you decided to do this education arm of what you do. 

Gina Hoyt: Sure. Thanks. So we, so there are a lot of, especially post COVID, right? There’s a lot of people who are working from home who didn’t necessarily want to go back into the office, really wanted, they decided that they wanted to don that little entrepreneur hat and, travel is something they wanted to do.

And, We, as a Voya, as a network, years ago, we didn’t affiliate with anybody new to industry, was only experienced only, and there’s a lot of reasons for that, but we wanted to bring that new to travel person in and continue to grow the industry, not only our network, But just the industry overall.

But the biggest thing that what we’ve seen is people with education, some sort of foundational education, their sales are 50 percent higher, their commissions are higher their close rate percentage is higher when they have a solid foundation. So we set out to create a course that can provide that, provide that foundation.

And for me, when I started in this industry, 25 plus years ago I started knowing nothing. And I remember I had interviewed with a agency in the town that I lived in and I came home and my husband said what did they say? And I’m like they offered me the job, but I’m not going to take it. He goes, what are you going to do?

I said, I’m going to open my own. And he goes, okay. And I didn’t know anything about travel. So I made a ton of. And for me, it’s I love being of service. I love helping the next guy, the next, that next person in line who really wants to learn our industry. And so the big thing is you don’t have to make these same mistakes.

Let me help you. Let us help you show you the way, to give you that foundation. Are you going to make mistakes? 100 percent you are, I promise that, but hopefully it’s not as expensive as the ones I made. But anyway, so that’s how we ended up here. How we ended up with LFTR is we looked at several different LMS resources, and I was sharing with you.

I actually seen an advertisement for LFTR. I had never heard of it before, and I went, What is this? And so I started digging in, and I loved the resources that you guys, that LFTR provides, and how easy it was to build and also to teach my team, right? It’s I can teach my team how to maneuver within the software and, they’re not afraid once I show them it’s super simple and there’s, no fear there.

And so those were some really big things for us. It’s can you, can we do what we want to do and can I, is it. Repeatable. Can I show my, can I show my team members? And absolutely. And I, and so thank you. Thank you for that. We love the software. 

Chris Badgett: Awesome. Was that, was this project your first foray into WordPress or did you have some history with WordPress already?

Gina Hoyt: A little bit of history in WordPress. It’s been years. I, when I had my brick and mortar, I built a website. So that was years ago, by the way. So nothing recent. But I’m pretty persistent. And if I want to do something I tend to eventually figure it out or I’m not afraid to ask questions either.

Chris Badgett: I think you’ve already answered my next question, which was, learning WordPress, I know you had some previous experience, but learning Lifter, there’s like a lot of features and bells and whistles and things to figure out decisions to make. What advice would you have from somebody going into that journey of building an online education website?

From the standpoint that you said you were persistent. So to me, that’s the answer, persistence. But what else would you add around that? 

Gina Hoyt: So for me, Lifter, your team makes so many videos available. And so for me, it was like, I tend. I can read and learn, but if I watch and learn, for me, it’s, that’s how I learn, so I would sit in videos and I would listen, and then I would pause, and then I would try, and then I’d turn it back on, you know what I mean, so again, that persistence, and, but if it was me, if I was recommending somebody, if this is something that you’re looking at, Go look at the videos.

Go watch them. They’re out there. You guys make it available. Thank you. Thank you, by the way, because I could have never done it otherwise. But it’s all there, and that’s how I did it. It was just by that persistence and And watching the things that are available versus saying, Hey, this isn’t available, or I don’t know how to do this.

Go look, it’s there. I promise you. 

Chris Badgett: I think last time I checked, we had 1700 videos on our YouTube channel. And that’s just YouTube. That’s not our documentation and stuff. So that’s, I appreciate you saying that. Are there any features that you like most, or like parts of the software that you or your team likes, or that’s super valuable to the project?

Gina Hoyt: We love being able to use the engagements like the, automatic, certificate, awarding and triggering emails. I’ve literally used all those engagements to do everything. For the team so we don’t have to. I love it. I absolutely love it because that just takes time off of it.

Those are things that we used to do manually and I don’t have to do that anymore. Neither does the team. And so we appreciate that the advanced videos. I love that because somebody wants to plow through a course. And I get, and I understand wanting to go through quickly. I understand it, but I want people to stop, and actually absorb what you’re learning. So we love the advanced videos, the fact that they can’t. They can’t advance without, and we get that all the time. The button’s not active. My first response is, go watch the video. Go watch the video and I promise it’ll appear. So anyway, I mean you guys have, again, you guys have done a great job in terms of making the course layout how to build it.

The course builder is super simple. And then the different features between the advanced videos. There was something else too. I forgot. Anyway. Thank you again. 

Chris Badgett: Yeah. And what other tools besides Lifter LMS and WordPress do you find mission critical for your online education business?

You mentioned GoDaddy. Do you use them for hosting? 

Gina Hoyt: Okay. Thank you. I was like, what are you talking about? Yeah. Yes. So actually we do use GoDaddy. We’ve got a couple of our product development teams that are considering maybe some other options because like I mentioned we’ve got, we have for three different websites a fourth one that we’re launching right now, getting ready to launch with a new education.

With the potential of bringing a lot more enrollees so we’re just looking at is it. continuing to be our best interest there. Do we want to go someplace else? But some of the other plugins, and I, we try to limit the amount of plugins that we use just because I don’t want any conflicts. But some of the other, We actually use Elementor and Elementor Pro for some of our WordPress features.

So the advanced quizzes, I know you asked what are some of the other things, but that comes from Lifter. So I, while I don’t necessarily use a lot of that feature on the Academy website, And then on two of our other websites that other teams are using, they use the features of the advanced quizzes. So again some great opportunity, that we use there.

And then we also use front end premium or front end admin, excuse me, and then there’s the publish press premium. capabilities pro. So to limit, so like my team, I limit what they can see. If they log into the WordPress website, there’s only certain things that I want them to be able to access. I don’t want them to see everything and be able to maneuver with everything.

So there’s a few different things that we use. 

Chris Badgett: What about, you mentioned videos. What do you do for video usually? Is it mostly you? Is it are you recording the videos in Zoom or ScreenFlow or some Camtasia? What do you use in that department? 

Gina Hoyt: So for our, I have a few videos that I’ve done that I actually record in zoom and I throw them into Camtasia and edit them.

And then other team members, same thing, but we also have some videos from some, of our suppliers because we have some of their certification courses within our program, because our suppliers have seen our product and they’re like, we want our certification program in your academy.

So we pull videos from there. Now we used to house all of our videos in our own, 

Chris Badgett: was it Vimeo or 

Gina Hoyt: it was not Vimeo, but with the advanced videos, we ended up transitioning all of our videos over to Vimeo. So we could use that advanced video feature. Yeah. 

Chris Badgett: Okay, that’s awesome. Tell us about just like how you gauge the success of Avoya Travel Academy.

What kind of impact have you been able to have or, maybe a story about somebody’s life that changed because of the training? Just what kind of impact is the platform having? 

Gina Hoyt: For us, what we look at is, okay, so we have a test, we have a test group of students, or excuse me, of new to travel who came to the industry, who had no education, right?

And then we compare those who come through the education, and we compare them post, post graduation, post certification, graduation isn’t the appropriate, certification, And we, compare those two groups in terms of sales and close rate percentages. And as I mentioned earlier, those who take the certification, they have a much stronger base and foundation to begin with their sales, their commissions and their close rate percentage are averaging upwards over 50 percent higher than those who did not take that foundational education.

What that means for somebody, they’re going to stay in our industry longer, right? They’re going to get to do the thing that they visioned, that they had a vision for and that they love doing longer because they’re not going to get so frustrated. That was, I think part of, which was so hard about bringing somebody in new to travel, who doesn’t have a foundation, who doesn’t understand what it means.

It’s though. because there’s not that foundational understanding. They may make a hit, run into a hiccup or a challenge or make a mistake and they’ll turn tuck their tail between their legs and their leave. And it’s no, don’t leave. Let’s walk through and figure out how to make this better.

But we’re able to eliminate some of those before they ever get started. 

Chris Badgett: I want to go back to some, you said earlier you mentioned that you were getting some resources from the industry to include in the training resources. Those is that something you have to license or they’re just happy to give you or how do you sometimes it can be a little overwhelming if we have to create everything ourselves when there’s all this other great stuff out there.

Tell us more about that content. 

Gina Hoyt: So we have Some of our, and if you go to our website, if you look at avoid travel academy. com, you’re going to see sponsored by Norwegian cruise line sponsored by Colette. Those are 2 major industry suppliers who, have allowed us to use some of with, there are, agreements in place on the backside with those 2 suppliers in terms of what that’s going to look like.

So we don’t just go take their content. We have, agreements in place, and then there’s also another. Party, another third party out there that they’ve been in the industry a lot longer than the 25 years I’ve been here. And so we’ve partnered with them as well and have an agreement in place with them and some of their content.

And so they’ve provided us some content. So we’re really pulling content from a lot of different areas. I’ve written and created content. Some of my team has, and then we have industry, other industry people who have. Brought it all together. 

Chris Badgett: I love that. Sometimes it’s not just about being a content creator, but also a curator.

You’re bringing in the and assembling the best possible stuff. 

Gina Hoyt: Absolutely. 

Chris Badgett: Just a quick, fun story sidetrack. I’m sure you mentioned Norwegian cruise lines. 

Gina Hoyt: Are you 

Chris Badgett: familiar with, I’m sure you are like Alaska cruises. 

Gina Hoyt: Yes, been about there about six times, but anyway, go ahead. 

Chris Badgett: So before I did Mercator LMS, I used to work at a helicopter supported sled dog tour business on a glacier above Juneau.

So the cruise ships would come in. Some of those were Norwegian and people would fly up in the helicopter and we’d take them out on sled dog rides. So that’s my old connection to the Norwegian cruise industry. 

Gina Hoyt: Love it. Love it. 

Chris Badgett: Tell us more about I call it the offer stack. So is this like one mega certification course?

Is it a collection of courses? Is it, like what kind of support is included? If somebody has a question as they’re going through it What’s in the stack of the offer? 

Gina Hoyt: So in, we have one course, we do one course, and there’s about a hundred and 19 lessons within that course. So it’s one big one to get through, we give everybody a hundred days to get through the education.

We do have a timeline on there and at the end of the day, it’s if somebody is having a struggle we understand life happens. So it. Reach out to us. We can always work with somebody on that in terms of what that looks like. In terms of support, I have an, I have myself and my team.

We, we support people all the way through. If they have any questions we have a, team email. We ask people to send their questions to the team email. Because if I’m not, if you send an email to me directly or you send an email to directly to one of my team members and let’s say they’re not in the office that day you’re not going to hear back right away where it’s most efficient to send it to our team email.

We pick up the phone, we call people, they can schedule, they can actually schedule. We have a link in all of our emails because we, it’s not just a. Register, take your money and you never hear from us again in that 100 days, you’re going to probably get 9 or 10 emails from the, throughout that process, just touching bases. Hey, we want people to know, look, we’re here. We’re here to help. And we’re here to support you. If you have questions, let us know. So you can call, you can email. You can schedule a call with one of our team members if you have any questions. If something’s not working technically our office hours are Tuesday through Saturday, but I tend to watch emails on Sunday too, just because that’s who I am.

I struggle with walking away. Yeah. So we there’s a ton of support. We’re here to see people succeed not, to take their money, have them register for a course and walk away. You know what I mean? We want to see everybody succeed. 

Chris Badgett: I think that’s fantastic. I’ve done a lot of these interviews and talked to a lot of Lyft Realness users and the ones that are most successful they support their people outside of the content, whatever that means.

You mentioned phone calls and emails, whatever that is. Like people sometimes need a little help along the way, not just access to great content. So my hat’s off to you. You mentioned you had three or four other LMS projects in the works or actively going on. How have you branched out from Avoya travel academy.

com? 

Gina Hoyt: So they’re all industry related and all related back to avoid in some way, shape or form. They are my employer. But we have, like I mentioned, we have the travel Academy. We also have so for. AVOIA as a host agency, the AVOIA network, the AVOIA travel network is a host agency for independent agency owners.

So there’s education that we have support teams that offer education like our early success team. They talk about sales and different things like that. Destinations and so there is a project there where we have a platform where those teams use the lifter software for their that type of education, which is separate from the travel Academy.

And then we have internal training for some of our teams. Some of our, the different support teams for Avoya. We offer, education training for employees. And then we have a fourth one that we’re getting ready to launch. Remember I talked about while we love and we want to provide Avoya and our agents the best possible resources available.

We have a commitment to our industry to the travel industry overall, and there is not a requirement right for somebody to say if you want to be a lawyer, you got to go to school for a lawyer, you know what I’m saying, if they’re in the travel industry, there’s not a mandated certification that you have to do.

But what we find is, again, and I’ve keep touching on this, is those who are in our industry have, who have a foundation, who understand what it means. They’re much more successful. And so we really feel oblig, I don’t know if obligated is the right word, but we have a desire to, help our industry overall.

So we’re actually providing a white label product. Some of our other host agencies in, the industry will be able to provide their agents and their new to network agents and education resource as well, because for whatever reason, maybe they don’t have the resources available to create it or the team, the manpower, whatever the reason is, and we’ll be able to, bring that to the table for them and it’ll be branded with their information.

Yeah, it’s pretty exciting. 

Chris Badgett: I love that. You’re keeping the focus on the industry and the the travel agents at the heart of that. And, and really getting as much impact as you can out there, whether it’s your team, Avoya, the industry, it all works together and everybody wins.

It’s not, I call it the infinite game, which is, somebody doesn’t have to lose for somebody else to win. And it’s just. Let’s help everybody, basically. 

Gina Hoyt: And, I was always taught the sun shines for everyone. You know what I’m saying? There’s enough to go around. And that’s even when I owned my, my, my travel agency and I would hear people get frustrated, I would talk to another agent.

This customer went and booked so and and I’m like, you have to remember the sun shines for everyone. Maybe there was a better connection there. It doesn’t matter. There’s going to be somebody else coming. You know what I mean? And, we really want to provide. Again, the sunshine’s for everyone and we want to provide something industry overall that, that benefits all of us.

So 

Chris Badgett: What’s, your vision for the future? You’ve been doing this for a bit, like you’re doing a lot already, but is there anywhere else you’re, wanting to go with this or what, is your plan to make Voyage Travel Academy even better? 

Gina Hoyt: So future goals, we’re not there yet, is we’re going to provide some ongoing education.

So some additional courses. Again, we’re not there yet. I’ve got my head in too many other arenas right this second. But as soon as those calm down and we get those launched and implemented, then we’ll start doing some research for some additional certifications. For again, not just our, the agents in our network, but overall industry wide.

Chris Badgett: I love that. And it’s also what’s interesting about your story is this industry is not like heavily controlled or regulated. It’s not like you have to have certain training or continuing ed, but you’ve realized that, hey, these people need this. I’ll provide it. People are using it. They’re getting paid 50 percent better or doing better in the career they’ve chosen.

I think it’s really cool. It’s not yeah. It’s not like you’re asking for permission. You’re just doing the thing that this, these people need and helping improve their lives. That’s really cool. Fun. Final question for you. So in leisure travel, I know there’s a broad question, but what are some counterintuitive underappreciated trips that people could do or ways to think about vacation?

That from your time in the industry, you realize, Hey, there’s a lot of opportunity off the beaten path over here, or maybe try this, but do this differently. I’m just looking for some insight from the inside of travel. What are some counterintuitive insights or little known secrets? 

Gina Hoyt: Oh my. 

Chris Badgett: There’s probably a lot.

Gina Hoyt: There’s a, so my head goes, which part of the world, right? It’s because to me, the world is like a candy store, right? And it’s for me, I walk into this candy store and I go, Oh, where do I start? Which piece do I want first? Let’s 

Chris Badgett: divide it into three parts. Let’s say, North America, Europe, Asia.

If you were to do those three, what are some off the beaten path things or little known, insights? 

Gina Hoyt: Asia, Vietnam. I, oh, Halong Bay. If you stay in a junk for a couple nights out on Halong Bay, I know One of the state colleges in the state that I live in they have a business group that goes, I don’t know if it’s every other year, the students in their business degree program, when I was selling travel, I actually had a friend who was in that course for a while.

And so she came to me and I started doing that every other year for them. And we would put some of the most amazing trips together coming down through central Vietnam and on the coastline and Halong Bay, by far. over and over every year was like the winner. People loved being out on a junk for a couple of nights and having that experience.

So if you’re going to Asia and you have an opportunity to do Vietnam go to Hong Bay. Okay. So there’s that piece. Europe. I know this is, there’s so many, I love Europe. Holy cow, there’s a lot of really cool things and I could go on and on. But one of my favorite cities in, which is probably not most, but I love Amsterdam, I love the canals.

I love the whole, that whole thing. Rome is another one, but there’s a lot of things to go see and do. Aye yai While Greece is amazing, I hate the flight. I’m West Coast, so for me trying to get there I tend to stay away just because of the flight. You know what I mean? I struggle with flights, but Africa, if you ever want to do a safari in Africa, make sure you do one that has a hot air balloon.

The hot air balloons over the Serengeti. Nothing like it. Again, something little, not everybody, not, you can’t book it through everybody, but if you find, if you’re going to look into that, being sure and do the hot air balloon over the Serengeti, it’s an amazing, it’s amazing. North America.

Holy cow. I love Hawaii, but that’s such a, for me, that’s I know I’m West Coast. So again, for me it’s like, a bread and butter thing. When I was selling travel, everybody does it, train travel, TransCanada on VRail is amazing with what the domed cars and the meals and nothing like it.

So that’s really cool going East Coast to West Coast. And I’ve been anyway, so I don’t know if I answered your questions, but I’ve. 

Chris Badgett: You did. And I’ll, let me actually throw two more on real quick. What about Mexico? 

Gina Hoyt: What about it? I love Mexico. If you’re looking for all inclusive and and I hear this a lot, cause I, I have a lot of friends who hear, Oh, don’t go to Mexico because of this and because of that.

And I’ll, tell you the same thing. I tell, would tell them is that As long as you stay in the areas you’re supposed to be in, you’re going to be fine. Do you know what I mean? It’s you’re going to be fine, but if you decide to venture out on your own and go into in into an area that you shouldn’t be in, you might run into some trouble, but I hate to tell you, you’re going to find that in the United States anywhere.

So any major city that you go to. Yeah, it’s fine. And there’s a lot of great, there’s a ton of great resorts, all inclusive resorts. If that if, my kids, they went for their honeymoon last year. I was a couple years ago, not my honeymoon, but I’ve been married for a lot of years. But we go. So I’m not afraid to be in Mexico. We find it safe. Like I said, as long as you’re going to the areas, And you stay in the areas that you’re to be in. 

Chris Badgett: And last one, I may have a trip coming up to the Philippines. Is there anything, do you have any intel on the Philippines? 

Gina Hoyt: In terms of Philippines, what, what type of travel are you looking for?

Chris Badgett: Let’s say I was at a business conference in Manila and then wanted to take a week or so at a more, beach, low key environment. 

Gina Hoyt: So are you wanting to just go to a resort and stay, or are you wanting to maybe do a tour and see more? What, do you know what I mean? There’s so many, it’s not just a, Hey, I want to go here.

What do you got? There’s really an entire conversation for somebody, for a travel agent, to provide you what you, want. There, there’s an extensive conversation that needs to be had in terms of what are your expectations? If you have this thing of I want to visit this, and this, but you say, I want to go to the Philippines and stay at a beach resort and somebody gives you that, you’re going to be highly disappointed because that’s not what you had in mind.

Yeah, it’s not a simple question of go here. Unfortunately, I’m sorry. 

Chris Badgett: I love that. Yeah, so we, as travelers, we need to do more research and at least get directionally, not just like the geography location, but what’s the experience we’re going for? What things do we want to see? What types?

Gina Hoyt: Yeah, and I think that a travel agent who has a really good, solid foundation, they’re going to be able to, start asking you those questions, right? They’re going to know, hey, this is a great destination. Now, share with me some of the are you going to be traveling with family with children?

Is it just you? Or what are some of the experiences you want? Then they can take all of that information. put it together. I refer to it as a puzzle. You know what I mean? And I put all, I used to take all this information and put it together like a puzzle and then I’d provide you, okay, here, this is what the puzzle can look like.

What are your thoughts? What do you think? You do, is there anything in here that I, didn’t include that you want to see or is there too much and we need to take some of it out, some of it out. So anyway. It’s a big puzzle. It’s lots of fun. 

Chris Badgett: That’s awesome. That’s awesome. That’s Gina Hoyt.

She’s from avoyatravelacademy. com. Is there anywhere else people can connect with you or any final words you have? 

Gina Hoyt: Sure. On the Academy, you can always send me an email, which is just Gina. Hoyt at avoyatravel. com. 

Chris Badgett: Awesome, Gina. Thank you for coming on the show and thank you for being a shining example of what I call the education entrepreneur and your persistence and all the value you’re creating in the world, helping in this industry and helping your team and all of that.

It’s I love seeing what you’re up to. So thank you. 

Gina Hoyt: Thanks for having me, Chris.

Chris Badgett: And that’s a wrap for this episode of LMSCast. Did you enjoy that episode? Tell your friends and be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode. And I’ve got a gift for you over@lifterlms.com slash gift. Go to lifterlms.com/gift. Keep learning, keep taking action, and I’ll see you in the next episode.

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