Luxury Travel Advisor - October 2008 - (Page 50)

COVER STORY LEAH SMITH AND JAY JOHONSON, CO-OWNERS OF MERIDIAN PRIME: Smith says she can’t think of anyone else she’d rather partner with on a new business. “I joke with him [that] when he retires, he’s still got me working for 20 years, she teases. ” revenue has doubled. Other changes? These days, he’s apt to be found “texting” his techsavvy agents when he needs to reach them and there’s a good chance that when he walks into one of their offices, he’ll come upon them attending a webinar they’ve taken it upon themselves to enroll in. While Johnson is enthusiastic about his young staff ’s futures, he is also reenergized about selling travel himself. This new perspective led to his selection in the Virgin Galactic program. So far, he has sold four DYNAMIC MIX: NEWBIE AND VETERAN AGENTS Interestingly, those agents who were with Coastline Travel Advisors prior to the arrival of this new team have embraced the youthful group and have found themselves to be reenergized. They’re also able to use their years of experience to teach the young ones a thing or two along the way. “I think of it like basketball, says Johnson. “There are the ” older basketball players that have been in the NBA for 20 years and then there are these new guys that are 18 coming in. They know how to shoot and they know how to dunk and all that stuff, but they don’t really know the game. So it’s great that you can get the old-time players teaching the young guys. That’s what makes a team. That’s what we have. ” space trips, with two more in the works. Overall, Johnson is extremely bullish on the future for travel advisors. “I’ve been doing this now for more than 20 years and it’s fun to see how it’s evolved. It’s just getting better. I’m way more excited about business in the future than I was even yesterday. Every day I get more and more excited, even in this weird economy that we have right now. I can’t wait until we get the election over with so we can move on. I feel that the future of our profession is so bright.” Johnson says business is growing so quickly, he doesn’t think he has enough office space to keep up. “I just know I’m going to look back five years from now and say, ‘Remember how crazy busy you were then?’ But having a good team in place is going to alleviate a lot of that.” 50 LUXURY TRAVEL ADVISOR | October 2008

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Luxury Travel Advisor - October 2008

Luxury Travel Advisor - October 2008 Contents Publisher's Letter Editor's Letter Glasgow Greece & Cyprus Private Islands Park Hotel Weggis Mexico Private Yachts MS Europa Coastline Travel Awards of Excellence The Pulse Just Back Luxury Travel Expo Sightings Source List

Luxury Travel Advisor - October 2008

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.