Travel Agents - Balancing Act (9/01/07, ModernAgent.com)
By Kate Rice - Published on: September 1, 2007
www.modernagent.com
Working at home can be a double-edged sword for agents who have a family.
Balancing work and family is a challenge for everyone, and it is particularly true for professionals working at home, where the boundary between work and home may be a doorway between an office and a kitchen.
Lori Berberian Pelentay, the owner of Kensington Cruises in Pasadena, Calif., knows how hard it can be to keep work from infringing on family life. She began as a reservationist for Princess, worked her way up to ship dispatcher and spent 10 months onboard the Pacific Princess. Circumstances took her away of travel over the years, but she always returned, sometimes as a part-time agent working at home, sometimes as a full-time, in-house agent.
Ultimately, she opted to become a full-time agent at home in order to be the mother she wanted to be for her children. But being a single mother struggling to build a business while being there for her kids has not been easy. “I’m a workaholic,” Pelentay says. “If I didn’t have kids, I’d work 24/7.”
Her children, now 15 and 11, did an intervention with her. “My kids sat me down and said, We need our mom,’” she recalls.
So now Pelentay’s schedule is carved in stone. She takes the kids to school and works from her home office until 3 p.m. Then she picks up the kids and does “mommy things” with them-homework, field trips and after-school activities. She does monitor e-mails and calls, relying heavily on Caller ID and ignoring calls if she’s confident she can deal with them via e-mail later.
“I cook and we have dinner together, the three of us,” she says. She never answers calls during dinner. That is sacred time.
At 9 p.m. or so, she’s back in the office, doing paperwork well into the night. She deliberately does not have a wireless handheld e-mail device-she fears the total access.
Pelentay also works intelligently, using all the resources she has to make her as efficient as possible. She had worked in-house at Montrose Travel and loved it-the energy, the company’s personality and the collaborative atmosphere-but ultimately moved home because for the flexibility. But once Montrose launched its host agency, MTravel, she immediately affiliated with it.
Montrose handles the regulatory challenges, such as California’s seller of travel requirements and E&O coverage. She gets the benefits of Montrose’s buying power and, through Montrose’s membership with Ensemble Travel Group, additional supplier clout and connections. Such connections help her provide her clients with top-notch service, such as when she recently booked clients at the Hotel Danieli in Venice.
Equally important, however, is the support she gets. She can go on vacation with her family and know that if a problem arises with her clients, Montrose takes care of it.
“I’m a home-based agent, but I’m not by myself. I have the power of this huge agency,” she says. “If I need a hotel at some remote place, I just send an e-mail.” She immediately gets a response.
Pelentay also uses technology as a way to be as efficient as possible. Polar Online revolutionized her business for her; it lets her make bookings in the middle of the night. That means a client can call her at 4 p.m. and she can promise them that the booking will be in their electronic mailbox in the morning. She can make the booking at 2 a.m. if that works for her. In short, Polar Online lets her work the hours that work for her.
Pelentay specializes in cruises, focusing heavily on groups, and stays current by taking up to three cruises a year. She finds such conferences as CLIA’s cruise3sixty invaluable. Ship inspections are particularly important, as are the opportunities to meet suppliers face-to-face. “If you are going to sell cruises, you have to get out there and cruise. You have to experience them all-Carnival, Holland America, Royal Caribbean,” she says. “Now I need to do a river cruise; you need to experience all the different genres.”
Her children are quick to let her know if her work-life balance tips too far in the wrong direction. But she’s proud of the fact that she attended all of her daughter’s performances at summer school and was able to be there when her son had his tonsils out. In addition, her children share her love of travel. Her latest cruise brochures are often her 11-year-old’s nighttime reading, and her 15-year-old recently gave her ideas for new group niches. She and her children recently spent nine days together on the Crown Princess.
Looking back at her restructuring of life and work, Pelentay says, “It was totally worth it. I haven’t looked back yet.”
Tags: home based agents, home-based-agent-news, working from home
