Terms

"It was really important to have a way that our community could connect with each other," Katalina begins. "Some people will say 'my community', and that's referring to their Instagram following; maybe it's the two-way communication between the creator and their followers however it's not conversations between one member with another. We wanted to make it easier for members speaking to one another as that's a form of community-building in the core. It's what makes people feel connected with the other."

It wasn't just travel enthusiasts who were becoming part of the ECT community. Experts from the industry were joining and actively providing information to people around them, creating a friendly and knowledgeable platform. Katalina as well as the ECT group wanted to formalize these experts' contributions to express their gratitude to all the information and advice that was being shared.

"We tried to bring the experts who are aware of our values and are basically the El Caminos of these nations, to be more active within our group," Katalina starts. "We made badges for them and provided them with profile pictures that have a blue circle surrounding their photo and a yellow check mark for verification that proves they're destination experts. When you post a question about Greece and Christina responds, you know she is an expert that has had a minimum of ten years in Greece."

Members of the community were asking questions, and real, experienced travel experts were talking to each other. This online community served the purpose it was intended to serve possibly even better than been expected. Then, the miracle happened: lockdowns were lifted. The online ECT community was moving back to the the offline world. It was time for the company to transition from survival mode to building to the future. "During the outbreak, we tested ourselves against fire, and proved resilient," Katalina explains.

The spread of the pandemic and worldwide slowdown allowed for the ECT staff to think more about the best way to provide for its women travelers. "We believed that we had done something unique, but we never had the time or space to consider the company we had built. We realized how special this is as a travel company in general," she continues. "As the world started to expand and we realized that there was more we could do with membership in real life. It was possible to serve our community by expressing what they were looking for from us, when they began to go out into the world."

Big ambition

How can El Camino Travel going to provide its members with the things they require, given that travel is just about back to regular? "The main goal is to be the leading single-stop destination for women to plan, dream for, plan, make reservations, and document their journey," Katalina asserts.

ECT began with about 100 members as of the end of August in 2020 It is now around 700, and the ECT team has grown to six and a half full time employees. In the US women of the millennial generation represent the fastest-growing group within the travel industry, but Katalina feels that no one of the big operators are serving this segment. "For certain of the larger businesses, nobody is in the boardroom saying, 'Hey, women spend an enormous amount of money yet they're not feeling safe while traveling. What are we able to do to improve their experience?" she adds.

Katalina recounts that, in a recent survey of women who travel most frequently they want from their travel company by the majority (85 percent) of the respondents is just to be safe when traveling. "These women are not asking for bodyguards," Katalina says "They only want to be confident that they have the intel, resources and the connections to make educated decisions. This is what helps them feel empowered and feel safe. We're solving this in the present with our small-group excursions, which allow guests to immerse themselves fully and to not sacrifice the experience of traveling adventure because of gender."

In the end, Katalina hopes El Camino Travel to become the top source for female travelers. "TripAdvisor and Google are focused on the quantity of information rather than quality. We've seen an abundance of poor quality information out there and we'd like to do the totally different from that," she continues. "It's about knowing there's an online community which I can rely on, in a way that I can't lean upon any other group on my way out exploring this world."

Travel concierge

Just how does being able to lean on a community come to fruition? Katalina says that whenever someone asks a question on the ECT forum and the community manager is able to jump into the discussion "with the white glove concierge assistance" and will share all links to threads that might already exist, and then as many as five other community members will respond. "Rather than the 200 responses you would get in a free Facebook group There will be more relevant recommendations that are a reflection of our style of traveling," Katalina says. "People are paying for El Camino because they think"I'm who I am as a person who travels; they have me covered better than everyone else'. This is how we bring these folks together."

This begs the question what is the best way to ensure the level of quality, ECT has maybe an upper limit on number of members? "We get asked all the time: 'How you going to keep the quality up?'" Katalina responds, adding "Tech is going to be a factor in this definitely. We've started collecting data and looking into the possibilities." She adds the team is looking for options to make sure that the users don't become inundated with bad high-quality information. The team is already moderating the forum and selects certain questions that they will answer. They also stops the responses after a certain number.

"At the moment, a feature of membership is that you will receive an extremely well-curated guide to travel every month. It's put together by our experts in destination, so maybe we'll put out more of our curated content as people are able to are awestruck by our services," she continues. "We would like to be sure that we can handle many more users and are able to provide them with the information and connections that they're searching for, without like ever experiencing the same issues that occur when the number of people join."

It is noted that many of ECT community members want to communicate with one another, especially when they travel and many have remote workgroups in the present. "You'll receive messages such as"Hello, are you located in Mexico for the next few months? I'm on the road working remotely from Oaxaca!'" she explains. "We're exploring technology to make it easy for people to find each other when they're traveling to locations that are similar to the same time."

Alongside the advancements in technology, the primary strategy of ECT is to take on the post-lockdown culture and start selling tours again. It began offering group-travel trips again in June of 2021. the main part of their business is to sell these trips and selling membership -- and combining the two by offering discounts to members.

Sharing is not selling.

It is our conclusion that, contrary to what we would expect this approach that does not sell traveland instead discussing it in the ECT forum -- can have helped some of ECT's travel experts in gaining the business. "The forum is a great way for people to show their thought-leadership and knowledge as well as a large portion people in the El Camino Travel community have gained clients from the answers to their questions," Kataliana explains.

Katalina was quick to realize they had done a wonderful concept and sought ways to expand and establish the experts' list for destination. "We talked to our present teammembers, "Who do we consider the expert?' they suggested people to us," she continues. "I interviewed them and tell them about the forum to make them feel excited. It's a fresh distribution method for them, free of all of the algorithmic limitations from Facebook and Instagram as well as giving an opportunity to sit in on their ideal audience."

Naturally these experts saw clear benefits. "When you talk to potential travelers, you must showcase your experience in demonstrating what makes someone want to decide to book a trip with you. The forum allows them to present their knowledge in an organic, authentic way that isn't slick," she says.

"Travel experts are passionate about discussing travel. We enjoy sharing the information. We have another chance to help others," Katalina muses. The simple act of being helping is an effective strategy to market travel. as the industry has begun to rebound and our ECT team has managed to go a stage further than simply speaking about travel. "Since lockdown lifted and we've begun planning our next trip with our destination experts. We did trips to Morocco, to Guatemala as well as in Greece and Georgia. It's been pretty cool!" she smiles.