Power of Play
Power of Play
Reigniting the Power of Play: Welcome Back with Kelly and Amanda
Ready to reignite your passion for play and travel? Buckle up as we, your hosts, Amanda Klimak and Kelly Clements, embark on a journey back into the exhilarating world of play through travel.
We discuss the latest trends, the impact of COVID-19 and the upcoming rush of Chinese travelers hitting the global market. Amanda shares her insights on the changes in the industry, the rise in prices, and emphasizes the importance of planning ahead. With the future of travel looking busier than ever, we chat about the necessity of planning trips years in advance!
We also shed light on Kelly's newly published book, 'Grow Your Business Without Growing Apart.' Moving on, we ponder over potential travel destinations, those that are blossoming, and others that might be overcrowded soon. We navigate the allure of alternative locations while promoting sustainable travel. Lastly, we tease you with a preview of our upcoming episodes, assuring you of engaging and insightful content. So, tune in to our lively conversation and let's fuel our joint enthusiasm for travel and the Power of Play once again!
Hello and welcome to the Power of Play. I'm your host, Amanda Klimak, and along with me is my great friend, Kelly Clements. Hello.
Kelly Clements:Kelly. Hi, i mean, it's so good to be back. I'm so excited to kick this off again.
Amanda Klimak:Yes, well, it is certainly been a few years thank you, Covide we now come back up to the surface and we're ready to start sharing again.
Kelly Clements:I cannot wait. I am ready to reintegrate with life.
Amanda Klimak:I know and it's funny because you and I we've kind of stayed in contact but we lost contact a little bit through coven, which I think a lot of people find happened. But you know, it's really nice to kind of be back into the flow of life again. I don't know about you, but I feel like things have started to normalize and recovery is happening, so it's really great.
Kelly Clements:Yeah, you know, even though the world opens I don't even I've lost track of time time Post Covid and is such a blur, and so, even though the world opened again, however many years or last year ago, i think I found myself really hibernating, you know. I think there was a psychological toll that that took over, and think that was fear, whether it was fear of the virus or fear of being labeled a grammar killer. I think, you know, it was a very divisive time and people really shut down. And I'm ready to come back, i'm ready to, like, reintegrate with society and and start sharing and doing the work that we were so passionate about before coven.
Amanda Klimak:Absolutely well on our end with travel. We certainly haven't stopped. We did have a certainly a two year pause, but it seems like everyone is ready to go again. People are ready to reengage and play. Certainly, on my end at the spectrum, we did a lot of work in just refining processes, making sure we help travelers the way they needed to be helped, with extra restrictions and rules and things like that. And you certainly kept busy because you wrote a book, didn't you?
Kelly Clements:I did. I have my second book out. It's called grow your business without growing apart. If you are an entrepreneur or married to one, get yourself a copy. It's amazing, if I do say so myself of course I'm biased, but I believe every entrepreneur needs this book on their desk. Yes, it was a very productive time for me on several fronts, one of which was travel. We got a lot of travel and during coven, especially post coven, when airlines and resort started opening up again. But I understand that there's some big changes coming, even even again as a as a result of the shutdown. What? what are you seeing in terms of travel trends coming out?
Amanda Klimak:Yeah, well, i mean, travel has opened up again and everybody is back on the road traveling.
Amanda Klimak:Certainly, the prices of airline tickets, hotels, have gone up considerably due to demands and some people trying to make up lost time. But there is another thing that's going to be happening this fall which we're a little bit we're watching very closely, and that is that the Chinese travelers who have been restricted from traveling for so long. You know, it was opened up earlier this year for them to travel, but they weren't able to get visas. So, you know, in 2019, we had 155 million trips that came out of China by Chinese residents, and certainly those travelers are going to be back on the road. So if we think things are busy now, just wait until you add another 100 plus million travelers to the world. So it's going to be an interesting time for us, for destinations, for tourism boards. You know we're talking a lot about sustainability, not just even the environment, but also cultures and destinations. So it's been a really interesting transition as we, as we've gone from no travel to a booming travel market and then this up and coming market that's coming.
Kelly Clements:I mean, if you can imagine the American Revenge Travel, or like just the European Union and what we did for Revenge Travel, imagine the Chinese, because they've had that many more years of being basically dormant, yes, their Revenge Travel, i'm sure, is going to increase exponentially. So, amanda, what does this mean for us? like, what do we do? do we plan proactively? Do we take a break? do we get selected with destinations? what's our call to action as travelers?
Amanda Klimak:I think the biggest thing is plan ahead.
Amanda Klimak:You know, everyone thought, well, i'm just going to wait till the prices go down and then I'm going to jump on the bandwagon and I don't know, as we're going to see the prices come down necessarily.
Amanda Klimak:And so more and more people are finally saying, okay, i'm going to bite the bullet, i'm going to take that trip, i want to get away, even if it costs more. I think that's going to continue happening. But I think you know, also having people we work with so many entrepreneurs, and what we're asking our travelers is what is on your bucket list? where do you want to go, so that we can be proactive and let people know when the rate of change is good and a destination opens up maybe there's a new hotel that we might be able to get some really aggressive pricing. So it's one of those things that I think we're just kind of going with the flow, but we're letting our travelers know plan ahead, because it's going to be something where you really do need to plan, not necessarily even months in advance. Now we're talking years. We're already booking into 24 and even 25.
Kelly Clements:Wow, yeah. What destinations would you recommend right now? are there destinations that have great pricing, that are sustainable or super accommodating, like what are the hot destinations you're seeing right now?
Amanda Klimak:Well, you know, it's interesting because at first Europe just started up and it was booming And then you had some other destinations that started to light up, like Iceland and French Polynesia and, as Australia has been opening, and Zealand and some of these other places people are starting to explore again, but they're getting a lot more creative on where they want to go. So, if they know, maybe Italy is going to be swamped this summer, they're looking for that altered destination, maybe in South America, or even Asia is starting to really open up again And I think we have gotten out of the swing of looking at Asia as a destination because it's been so long. But there's some destinations over there that are really, really opening up and we're excited about it because it just offers that much more real estate for us to book into and that's great Good.
Kelly Clements:Are there destinations to avoid? Do you know, out of those 155 million trips that the Chinese traveler took in 2019, do you know where their favorite destinations are that maybe we should be avoiding right?
Amanda Klimak:now It's hard to say because a lot of people in the US did shift to some different destinations. Certainly for the Chinese travelers, the US has always been a huge destination for them, going to the national parks, europe, cities like Paris and things like that are always popular. So I would anticipate those same travel patterns will take place, but again, nobody knows. It's going to be a new world as we open back up and as they start traveling, and certainly we're going to be watching very closely so that we could pivot our travelers based on either avoiding overcrowding or looking for alternate destinations that would provide that amazing experience. I mean Columbia and some of these other destinations that weren't super popular in the past have just been booming and it's really fabulous to see.
Kelly Clements:Great, i'm so excited, i know.
Amanda Klimak:So let's talk about what we're going to be doing, because I know you've already started to work with some people, get some podcasts lined up, so let's just talk about what we're thinking for future podcasts.
Kelly Clements:Yes, i am so excited we have so much great content coming down the pipeline. So I'm going to start with a quick interview with Jim and Jamie Shields, who are author of the family board meetings and their their whole premise premise is on one on one connections with your kids, and so they tell the story of how Jim is a successful entrepreneur and he tells the story of how he was in a recovery session a number of years ago and he all of the addicts were talking about a lack of quality time and he was like, well, we really need to shore up our quality time. And so he developed a system called the family board meetings And it's it's basically a protocol for how to connect with your kids one on one and how to connect with your spouse one on one. They have a great rhythm for dating your spouse, which, of course, i'm a huge fan of. We have an interview with them that's coming up.
Kelly Clements:We have an interview with Jennifer Carol, who is author of permission to play, coming up. We have an interview with Denise Gossnell, author of the vacation effect, and she her book is all about how vacations are multipliers for entrepreneurs. I think many entrepreneurs really struggle with how to take vacation, how to turn off their brains and why it's important. She has great content on coaching entrepreneurs through that, so there's a lot of really relevant, powerful and necessary information for entrepreneurs to really get in touch with this place of being a playful entrepreneur and how it's so important. It's great for creativity, it's great for productivity. It's why play is called recreation because it's recreation. Yeah, really excited to bring this message to the world and help empower entrepreneurs to their best through play.
Amanda Klimak:I love it Well in a lot of these concepts I they are so close to my heart. I've always been such a prominent for people raising global citizens, especially with their children. I think what we don't realize is we only have about 18 years before they are often running into the world. So I'm really looking forward to that one. On the flip side, i'm going to be speaking with Ashish, a friend of mine, who owns an amazing tour company called big five tours and he actually has a board, a board of children that actually advise him on an advisory board. So I'm going to be talking about that and how he incorporates what is important to children and how they do that.
Amanda Klimak:I'm also going to be talking with Lisa Bain from Limblad Expeditions. She and I are going to be going to Australia in just about two weeks and we're going to be traveling in the Kimberleys. So we're going to do some talk about adventure travel and how people can be explorers without really roughing it but can get that feel of expedition. So I've got a lot coming up on the travel side and I'm so excited to really tie it in with all of that learning that you've been doing and all that you talk about as far as how play really enhances lives. It's so exciting.
Kelly Clements:So you, amanda, and I want to welcome all of our listeners back. It's going to be a wild ride. Stay tuned. There's so much more content than even just what we shared right here, so welcome back. I hope you guys find plenty of time to go play today and we'll see you next week Sounds great.
Amanda Klimak:Thank you so much, everyone for tuning in. We'll be back with you next week with our next episode of the power of play. Have a great day, everyone. Bye, bye.