Luxury Travel Advisor - February 2008 - (Page 49) W e have the ability to make a marriage, mend a broken heart, create memories that will last a lifetime and show customers a world beyond their imagination.” That’s Bob Malmberg, president of Malmberg Travel Companies, on how he views his agency’s impact on his clients’ lives. This credo is the driving force behind the success of the Boston-based agency, which has been in operation since the early eighties and which, from day one, has specialized in luxury. In fact, the word “luxury” might be a bit too light to use in the case of some of the itineraries enjoyed by Malmberg’s clients, for whom every minute detail is seen to. For example, a private luncheon enjoyed on a safari will include the clients’ favorite brand of scotch. Paper napkins will have the Malmberg logo embossed on them, as will the beverage glasses provided in the private plane that Malmberg has secured for them. Needless to say, private guides and the top suites are de rigeur for Malmberg’s crowd. The philosophy for providing top-of-theline experiences comes from Malmberg’s belief that when a client comes to his agency with a vacation request, “we’re about to embark upon an experience that, for us, is extraordinary. This customer is a real person—whether he’s in front of you or on the telephone—who has entrusted us with the responsibility to manage what he does in the next two weeks, month, three weeks or one week. The customer comes to the table with the most precious commodity in this world, which is time, and he is trusting the agent to manage that time in a significant and meaningful way.” With that heavy responsibility in mind, Malmberg immediately sets into analyzing why the client wants to travel, going so far as to question the destination that’s been requested. “Say the customer says he wants to go to Paris,” says Malmberg. “Well, not necessarily. What he really means is that he wants to get out of here. He just doesn’t know any other alternative so he’ll just say Paris because he thinks that is probably where he wants to go.” At that point, says Malmberg, “We need to kick the tires and find out what the motivation is. We have to look at the whole person, at who he is. I need to know what the experi- ence level of my customer is and, more than that, what is the expectation? I’ll say, ‘Tell me about yourself: Have you traveled a lot? If so, how did you get there?’ That all goes into putting together something that is going to deliver the experience the customer wants.” Following this “discovery” process, Malmberg gets to work on prescribing the proper trip. He does not believe in cutting corners when building an itinerary, because, he says, he and the client have but one chance to get this experience right. Along those lines, he recently found himself at a cocktail party where he met someone who had just returned from Africa. Revealing that he knew Africa quite well, Malmberg asked for details. The gentleman divulged that he had taken a very inexpensive tour, had a wonderful time and truly couldn’t imagine spending any more money to get the same experience. Malmberg begged to differ, saying, “If you were buying the product for economy, you don’t know what you’re missing. We can do MALMBERG TRAVEL COMPANIES President: Robert Malmberg Headquarters: Boston, MA Number of Agents: 10 in-house; two home-based Annual volume: $25 million Affiliation: Virtuoso Travel Network Website: www.malmbergtravel.com a Nile cruise easily and it can cost very, very little. You can spend seven days and see all of the monuments and be very happy with it. What you didn’t get, and which would cost considerably more, is an expert Egyptologist who can answer your every question and make the trip worthwhile. I need to have you come back to me saying, ‘I loved it, I learned a lot. I didn’t know things like that existed.’ I’m not going to be able to deliver that unless we enlist the products and services that can deliver that kind of experience.” Malmberg has sold travel in this manner since 1958, when he went to work for Ernest Ruegg at Boston’s Metropolitan Travel, the single luxury travel agency in New England at the time. “Ruegg was a legend,” recalls Malmberg. “He would visit a resort or hotel, meet the manager and comment on his suit jacket: ‘My, that’s a handsome jacket you’ve got there. I wonder how it would look on me.’ The manager would oblige by allowing Ruegg to try it on. Whether or not it fit was irrelevant,” says Malmberg. “Ruegg would inspect the size of the garment clandestinely and upon returning home would go to Brooks Brothers and have a snazzy blazer made in the manager’s size and send it off with the simple message, ‘With compliments, Ernest Ruegg.’” Such efforts were not in vain. When Ruegg needed space at a hotel, he got it, says Malmberg. “And upgrades were understood.” After Ruegg passed away, Malmberg became an independent contractor working through a host agency out of his Boston townhouse. By the early 1970s, he was fulfilling the in-house travel for a business that provided corporate services, which afforded him office space, facilities and, more importantly, a new customer base, in Cambridge’s Harvard Square where “we prospered and grew,” says Malmberg. Selling commercial/corporate travel eventually lost its luster, however. “We became sophisticated order-takers,” he says. “It’s not much of an atonement, selling basically airline tickets and hotel rooms. The call for independent travel became stronger and offered far greater opportunities to achieve something of more significance than the corporate side could offer.” As a result, in the early 1980s Malmberg Travel Companies was incorporated, enjoying to this day a loyal nationwide customer base and a strong reputation for its extremely high level of service. Today, if you visit Malmberg Travel’s website (www.malmbergtravel.com), you’ll see the phrase “The Art of Travel” inscribed on its home page, perfectly summing up what Malmberg has been delivering to his clients over the past 50 years. In fact, Malmberg is himself graceful and elegant in everything he does. Those who conduct business with him will recall his formal thank-you notes, whether they’ve been sent to someone who has supplied a strong client referral or to a supplier who has fulfilled a client’s trip. “I just went into our files and re-read the treasure trove of letters of thanks and praise written by Bob,” recounts Micato Safaris’ managing director, Dennis Pinto. “Every one of them is worth saving and sharing with our team here and in Africa. For every client www.luxuryta.com February 2008 | LUXURY TRAVEL ADVISOR 49 http://www.malmbergtravel.com http://www.luxuryta.com
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.