Custom Travel Solutions, LLC

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the founder of Cher Terais, a publishing company. We help successful women feel witnessed, connected, and seen through my wanderlust romance novels, a connected travel community, and curated wander retreats.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Custom Travel Solutions, LLC?

I needed a white-label travel resource, tool, and platform that would allow me to gain members. As part of their membership subscription, I wanted them to be able to utilize the platform for wholesale pricing on trips and all things related to their travel. I also wanted a platform that would allow me to build curated retreats for members and nonmembers to join.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Custom Travel Solutions, LLC provides backend support by connecting via third-party api to my membership community for my travel platform called The Booked Club. They also host my travel platform and the benefits provided to each of my members. Along with those benefits, they include my curated wander retreats, the payment packaging, and the landing pages for booking. Custom Travel Solutions, LLC is responsible for designing and developing the landing pages and payment packaging.

What is the team composition?

We work with 2–5 teammates from Custom Travel Solutions, LLC.

How did you come to work with Custom Travel Solutions, LLC?

Someone referred them to me.

How much have you invested with them?

We've spent around $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in December 2024, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

It took about three weeks to roll out the platform and have it open and available for use for my initial members. I'll say it was a rough rollout, and we're still finding issues with things that weren't clearly implemented correctly. I think that's due to the speed in which we rolled it out.We gain about 5–12 new members per month. For the year, that's about 60–144 members total, with only about 65 active members to date. The challenge hasn't been gaining new members; it's keeping the members we have. There are a lot of glitches on the platform that cause our members to cancel. One of the main ones is that they're not finding wholesale pricing as promised. They're able to find trips cheaper, especially flights, in other places.Another documented issue has been with travel customer support on Custom Travel Solutions, LLC's side. We're at about a 15% turnover rate month over month, which is above the industry standard of 6%. Customer support on the travel side is getting better, but not so much with the wholesale pricing issues, which is one of our biggest selling points to acquire new members.We're currently evaluating which of the 15+ benefits our members are using and not using in an effort to right-size these benefits. We're trying to work with Custom Travel Solutions, LLC's client support to better understand these numbers.

How did Custom Travel Solutions, LLC perform from a project management standpoint?

As with all systems and processes, there's room for improvement. It takes a while for actions to get accomplished sometimes, so I'm not sure what processes or controls are in place.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I'm impressed by their ability to roll out the platform quickly. The main benefit my members want is wholesale pricing. It's hit or miss, especially on flights. The Room Coins benefit is a bit clunky and is a source of distrust in pricing for my members.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could work better with us on rolling out features and making changes that impact our members. The overall application and website that CTS built for my platform works as intended at surface level. Improvements are definitely needed on the User Interface side, for example, some of the benefits have not been fully set up for members to use. Landing pages for trips could stand modernization.