The final frontier | To set Hurley Travel Experts apart from its competitors, Pamela Hurley Moser looks to outer space
With just a few clicks of a mouse, you can purchase a flight anywhere in the world, book hotel reservations and reserve a rental car - tasks that travel agents once claimed as their domain. But if you're looking for something a little more exotic than a cross-country flight to visit relatives - say, for example, traveling to outer space - you might need a little extra help.
For a journey into the final frontier, your contact is Pamela Hurley Moser, northern New England's only "accredited space agent." Moser, the owner and CEO of Hurley Travel Experts in Portland, was among 47 travel consultants selected to attend a two-day training seminar in February at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. She is now certified to sell $200,000 seats on Virgin Galactic's space shuttle, which is expected to begin daily trips beyond the Earth's atmosphere in 2009.
Space tourism may be a unique market for Hurley Travel Experts, but Moser says the offering is in line with a new direction the company has taken over the last few years. In place of an emphasis on mass-market travel, the company has shifted toward niches in the market, such as higher-end "luxury adventure travel," as Moser calls it. That market includes safaris in Kenya, guided cycling trips and romantic cruises along the Italian coast. Today's clients, predominantly baby boomers, are looking for experiential travel, says
Moser. "They don't want things, they want experiences," she says.
In an industry that suffered in recent years from the emergence of the Internet, the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and rising fuel prices, maintaining the status quo has not been an option. Business was way down, and Moser remembers well how bleak things got. "I thought, 'Am I going to lose my business?'" recalls Moser.
To combat what had become a very difficult travel market, Moser figured she'd tweak her strategy. First came advertising, and lots of it, to send a message that her company offered more than just booking a flight. Next was changing the company's name in 2002 from Hurley Travel Services to Hurley Travel Experts. "Service wasn't enough any more," says Moser. "You had to have service and expertise."
Along with the name change and advertising, Moser started making sure that individual travel agents had specialized areas of expertise, such as golf and spa travel, or knowledge of certain destinations. She also signed a contract with a leisure travel company called Virtuoso that offers her access to special programs like Virgin Galactic's space travel.
The strategy seems to have worked. While many of her competitors were going out of business, Moser says Hurley Travel Experts attracted more clients than it could accept. This year she expects sales to be in the $25 million range, compared to the $250,000 she brought in during her first year in business, 15 years ago.
Moser hasn't sold any trips to space yet, but she's fielded calls from potential clients interested in the experience. And when she does, she's got plenty of exciting details to share. "Within 60 seconds you're going three times the speed of sound," she says. "It takes you about 75 miles up. You can see a thousand miles in each direction."
Moser hopes someday to experience the voyage for herself, but for now she's finding more than enough challenge keeping Hurley Travel Experts on the right path. "For the majority of the 15 years, it has been a struggle," says Moser, who is currently working from home, caring for her three-month-old first child. "Every few years we had to reinvent ourselves. Just now for the first time in 15 years I feel like I'm running the company and it's not running me."
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