Mike Kempinski, owner/CEO of NorthStar Cruises, is all about getting back to the basics of being a travel advisor. He believes in consistently educating oneself on new suppliers in the market, attending educational travel webinars and sharing product information amongst his team of five advisors at NorthStar Cruises, which he operates with co-owner and president, Gina Morovati.
The agency, based in Essex Fells, NJ, has been in business for 30 years and generates $8 million a year. Eight years ago, Kempinski, who is just turning 70, relocated to Kauai, HI for a more balanced lifestyle. He spends Tuesday and Thursday mornings paddleboarding, which he says refreshes his mind and sets a positive tone for the days ahead.
Moving to the Garden Island hasn’t slowed Kempinski’s momentum down one bit: In August, Virtuoso named him as the top producing advisor in its Ultraluxe Community, whose portfolio primarily includes private travel services such as jets, yachts, islands and villas.
The prestigious designation marks a shift in the agency’s strategy. Kempinski and Morovati have made a concerted effort to focus on planning ultra-luxury travel over the past few years, passing mass market leads over to the agency’s new hires. With his plate clear of dealing with lots and lots of little details that come with airline schedules and ticketing, for example, he’s able to focus on his specialty, which is selling luxury and expedition cruises.
And that business is thriving. He tells us that current trends are showing clients requesting longer cruises, i.e. 30 days plus, and they are booking well into 2027 and 2028.
We asked Kempinski for his top tips on how travel advisors can develop their business in the ultra-luxe arena. His advice is to keep learning as much as you can and never assume you know the business inside out.
“The advice that I give even to myself is to realize that you don't know it all. If the phones are quiet and you have a little down time, don't go on Facebook and have fun. Sit back and look at a new webinar,” he advises. “Start looking at the distinction between what’s considered ultra luxury compared to premium and compared to mass market, and determine what those differences are,” he says, noting that there are fine nuances amongst the luxury and expedition cruise brands that should be considered.
“It's not just about food quality or service quality, it's about where is the cruise line getting their lecturers from? How do they handle the day-to-day transfer from ship to Zodiac to land?" says Kempinski.
He also believes that an expedition cruise experience can be considered ultra luxury even if it doesn’t provide the finest food or service or butlers in the suites. “It can still be ultra luxury in how they handle the destination,” he says. “That's the distinction for clients. We have to say to them, ‘Listen, we're sending you Antarctica, and you're not going to have caviar at every single meal, but you're going to have the best guides. You're going to come back knowing so much about your destination and you’ll have been well taken care of in terms of your safety and in terms of your learning experience.’ It comes down to the details of how you handle people,” he says.
Luxury travel advisors should also look at how the supplier’s reservation team performs. “When you're calling an expedition cruise line, you’ve got to make sure that the staff is well-trained and enthusiastic. It's not just a reservation center, it's a knowledge center,” says Kempinski. “You can tell when you get someone who's well versed on an itinerary and knowledgeable about a destination or a ship. That makes a world of difference for you to be able to give that information over to a client.”
Suppliers whose reservationists can really drill down into their knowledge of a destination, rather than simply having a broad overview of an entire region, are most valuable to advisors, he says. “You might have to wait for a call back from someone who really is well versed on the Arctic vs. Antarctica, but it's worth that little bit of a wait,” says Kempinski.
Bottom line? It’s incumbent on luxury travel advisors to be knowledgeable about the travel products and destinations they sell, but they should be able to rely on their suppliers to have a well-versed team as well. “It's nice to know if a supplier is building another luxury expedition ship but are they also expanding their team to know about the expedition areas? Are they training them?” says Kempinski.
Whether an advisor is dealing with ultra luxury or with the mass market, respect for a client’s time is paramount, he adds. “So is responding to a client even when you don’t have the information. A client’s time is precious. Courtesy is huge. When you don’t know something let clients know that and that you are willing to look into it,” he says.
Another tip? Advisors who complain that they don’t have time for themselves should need to determine which clients to keep, says Kempinski. He says that NorthStar Cruises prints out its client mailing lists once a month for its advisors to review. “We’ll ask, ‘When was the last time you checked in with them? Are they still alive? Really look at your list and ensure that it's still up to date. If you haven't talked to a person in 10 years, if they haven’t emailed you in all that time, take them off the list and move on.”
Again, getting back to the basics, Kempinski says even in the ultra-luxe arena, one needs to qualify clients. For expedition cruising, that means ensuring that clients are physically fit enough to participate in all the activities, such as getting in and out of a Zodiac vessel. “It comes down to really having an honest conversation. For example, the wife might be very fit, but the husband might not be so fit, so where do you place them?” Red flags can be raised is a client insists they are fit, yet requests wheelchair assistance at the airport. That’s when it’s time to have a reality check with the client, he says.
Kempinski, who started his career as a CLIA instructor, says he is consistently reminding himself about going back to the basics. “Even now I have to remind myself, that instead of trying to get off the phone quickly with a client, I should look at what they really want.” The hardest thing is getting a budget out of people, which is vital so that the advisor doesn’t waste time requesting three or four different quotes from suppliers. That struggle will go away once you’ve worked with a client a few times because you’ll have a sense of what they’ll spend, he says.
“You also know them a little bit more personally,” says Kempinski, who believes advisors should share a bit of their own personal lives with clients, so they know who they are and what they do. “It helps to build comradery and takes away the, ‘Oh, you're just a travel counselor…I'm above you in the hierarchy of life’ thing,” he says.
Kempinski and Morovati did the full Virtuoso tracks for the first time in 10 years back in August because they had a new advisor with them, and they didn’t want him to have to attend the hundreds of meetings with suppliers alone.
Kempinski, who usually networks instead at the cruise café and with ultra-luxury suppliers, found returning to the tracks to be an invaluable experience.
“It was really eye opening for me as to how much new stuff is out there,” he said. “It was good for me to go through those 10-minute meetings and listen, and to find some new faces and new contacts, and to see how they're enjoying their side of the business. You can really tell a lot if they're still enthusiastic by Thursday morning [the final day of meetings], and if they're not beaten down by the air conditioning, by the noise quality and by the pressure of attending too many parties or whatever. If they're still enthusiastic, they're going to be a good supplier,” says Kempinski.
Certainly, finding life balance is another credo Kempinski adheres to.
“My life is pretty easy here on a day-to-day basis,” he says of his life on Kauai. “I still want to produce and to keep my numbers up with all the suppliers, but I also need to take some breathing time for me.”
He says he’s still having fun being a luxury travel advisor and doesn’t plan on changing anything until it’s no longer fun.
“It's interesting,” he says. “We go to meetings and advisors are complaining, ‘It's tough.’ And I'm like, ‘Well, are you having fun? Because if the answer is no, then what are you doing wrong? Change your focus. Because without fun, it just becomes drudgery. And I don't need my senior years to become drudgery,” he concludes.