Where next? 10 destinations you should switch sell your customers to

“One place that a lot of people ask for is Santorini as people see it on Instagram – it looks amazing with its idyllic sunsets. When they get there however, they have to queue for an hour and a half to get the funicular to the top of the mountain and there are a lot of cruise ships coming in. 

“We try to persuade them to consider somewhere slightly bigger like Rhodes or Crete or even somewhere smaller such as Corfu, Paxos or Skiathos.

“We also suggest the northern parts of Croatia such as Pula and the Istrian coastline – especially when customers want to go to more crowded places like Dubrovnik.”

“New York is notoriously rammed with tourists, leading to really high prices and queues everywhere. But Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania can tick all the same boxes for what someone might look for in New York: you’ve got amazing river cruises and excellent family attractions. It’s also perfect for sports enthusiasts and it has a trendy food and craft beer scene.

“Having been to both, I think Pittsburgh is a great alternative. You can fly with British Airways direct into Pittsburgh and that’s the only international flight that goes into that terminal so you can get straight to your hotel really quickly, whereas New York airports are pretty hectic by comparison.”

“The most popular switch sell I do is when people come in asking for Iceland but they’re on a budget. In these instances we generally switch sell them to a Transun Lapland trip, as they are all-inclusive. We ask customers what it is they want from their trip, and if it’s the Northern Lights then Lapland is a great alternative as it’s much further north and the whole experience is more authentic.” 

“For us it’s usually honeymooners that we switch sell. They have this wonderful idea of going to the likes of French Polynesia but they haven’t considered airfare or accommodation costs. They usually end up going to Mauritius or the Caribbean because they haven’t given a thought as to what the cost implications are, they just see these lovely pictures and think they can afford to go there for about £1,500/£2,000 per person. They haven’t realised they can’t even get the airfare for that sort of money. 

“The other day I had a couple wanting to go to the Seychelles. They wanted to go diving but they hadn’t really given a thought to pricing and didn’t realise it was going to cost them the best part of £12,000. They ended up going to Sardinia instead. That’s a bit of a difference, but sometimes people have these wonderful ideas that don’t quite work out.”

“You can switch sell between European destinations: for example, Greece is often better value for money than the Balearic Islands. Whereas Menorca, Majorca and Ibiza are usually more expensive than the Greek islands, where there’s a lot of product and therefore better prices.”