I love reading this.
Not all TAs have the capacity to dote on their clients with gifts, whether big or small. What they do have to offer is their time, their expertise, and their professional handling of all your travel needs. They hope to make the trip a little more magical, and a lot more stress-free, even without trinkets and snacks and gift bags or boxes.
And they hope that is enough.
Now if youâre suggesting TPâs own whiskyâŚ
Facts.
These agent gifts come directly out of their commission, i.e. their paycheck. Only the really big agencies can sustainably afford to do this.
I wish more people understood how agents get paid.
Disney pays a comission (usually 10%)
The individual agent pays a cut to their host agency, which can be from 10% to 40%.
Stat sending gift cards or snack baskets, and youâll be losing money real soon.
I believe this question was only regarding the TP agency? People should be able to answer the question.
In my example I booked with Michelle because of her cruising experience. I never asked for or expected anything other than advice.
I gave my feedback because Michelle is now a TP agent. I do not need or expect a gift card. If the agency wants to give something, it can be a small token.
YesâŚ
I think we were just sharing additional thoughts? @lizzieanne771 said that thatâs not important to her and I was acknowledging that remark. @ninjasherrie just agreed.
Did not mean to suggest people cannot answer the question?
Exactly. No one was suggesting that people not answer the question.
Correct. I was answering for myself what matters. Service is whatâs important to me. You could give the best trinkets in the world, but if you have crappy service, Iâm not going to use you again. (You in the generic term.) Give me excellent service and Iâll use your services again and again and recommend you to all my friends and family.
I suspect the giving of trinkets or small tokens or not really has little to do with whether the service is necessarily good or not. It has to do with a business model and choice.
Giving incentives to entice a potential client is nothing new, and might sway a person who doesnât know one TA from another. The TA might be able to offer the incentive as a means to obtain more clients (which means they are choosing to make less per client, but perhaps have more clients). The downside is that once a TA has âtoo manyâ clients (whatever that means) it could mean their service suffers, spreading themselves too thin.
Another TA might have fewer clients, but make more per client, and so can potentially offer more time dedicated to each client.
Ultimately, as far as THIS THREAD goes, it sounds like TP is considering offering an incentive, and trying to figure out what would be the most attractive benefit.
And I maintain Len is using gift cards and cookies as âreal life objectâ things in a hypothetical to make a point. 
Itâs the whole tin hat thing⌠I hardly take anything at face value anymore.
I see. (Perhaps the POINT was merely to see how long it takes an innocent poll question to turn into an argument about something unrelated??? 
)
Clock is still ticking.
No arguments yet observed! 
Tick tock. Tick tock.
I disagreeâŚ
Well, some agencies offer things like these chips baskets as an incentive for booking. They get them through Disney directly, and the cost is just under $75. But objectively, it doesnât look like the basket contains more than, say, $30 worth of stuff if you had to buy it at a grocery store instead of from Disney,
Because it seems overpriced, we were trying to figure out:
I think itâs clear that people would rather have the cash value.
It occurs to me that this poll, in a sense, creates a bit of bias in the results, considering @PrincipalTinkerâs comment about what made her cry.
If GIVEN A CHOICE, most people will see the practical advantage of choosing the money over the chips/cookies. When Iâm polled, I can stop and think about it.
HOWEVER, if you were to just give people either a gift card for $80, or give people a smaller amount plus the âgift basketâ of chips/cookies, and then report back how it made them feel, you might come to an entirely different conclusion. And, in fact, it is possible I, myself, would report an entirely different outcome than I did when offered a choice.
Weâve been watching numerous videos on DCL lately, and in every situation, when someone walks back into their stateroom and finds just three chocolates on their bed, or whatever, they are ECSTATIC! A (very) small detail that made the trip feel special in a way that Iâm sure that bonus gift card ahead of time did not.
This is a very good point. You know what else I love? A handwritten note in snail mail. Our mortgage company did that twice, and now I recommend them to everyone. They sent me a blanket too with our name embroidered but I most appreciated the note.
During the early part of the pandemic we got hand written thank you notes in our take out order from a local business and it absolutely tickled us pink and elevated them forever in our minds! We told everyone about that too!
I struggle if we are the clients that Touring Plans are trying to get?
I honestly donât need a gift card to bring my business to them and although I live onboard credit, Michelle never advertised that, and I did not expect that.
I would be happy with nothing or if they insist, a $10 Touring Plans cap would be great.
There are many people that post on chat looking for what TAs give the most so I do think advertising a gift card would make a difference to them.
This is a good point.
In general, people are terrible about recognizing cash equivalents of âstuffâ and that the âstuffâ is priced in. A cruise could be $42 cheaper if you didnât get chocolates and towel animals each night, but once the money is paid they see the chocolates and towel animals as charming and special.
But give people a bare bones service and make them pay for each thing separately and they (usually) hate it.
Liners are probably somewhat more immune to this, doing the extra work of comparing options and really thinking through cost trade offs, but certainly not exempt.
I think the timing of the cookies is also a factor - I might have voted differently if it said the cookies were a welcoming gift awaiting in my room upon arrival (or there first day). Now managing allergens is another factor that makes it difficult so maybe not, but without the context of WHEN/HOW we get cookied it is difficult to judge if the vote is accurateâŚ