TravelMole interview: Sharyn Saffan, owner of Quality Time Travel

Quality Time Travel has been successful enough in its unusual niche of single parent travel to now start offering commissions to other agents, says founder and owner Sharyn Saffan. “When someone walks into an agency and says they want travel for a single parent, a lot of times no one knows where to send them,” she told TravelMole. “Demand has been strong enough,” she says, so that she now offers other agents 8% commissions for referrals. She operates what is apparently the only such agency in the greater New York City area (she is based on Long Island). There may be a handful of such companies nationwide, she believes. Ms Saffan said her company began focusing on its present niche about eight years ago after she was frustrated at finding destinations for single parents such as herself. “Some parents were telling me their kids were having a great time, but a single parent was being left alone without other single parents around,” she said. Ms Saffan and her two associates either make custom arrangements for single parents, or act as tour guides for groups of up to 20 families. They often go on cruises. They offer about a dozen land trips a year, mostly in the Northeast. A five-day package in North Falmouth on Cape Cod typically could cost $1,209 for a single parent, with children 11 and under costing $129; the trip could include several dinners and many activities for the entire family. Arranging trips for singles who can’t share the responsibility of child care is different than family trips. Singles, for example, often prefer all-inclusive resort because they create less stress. The majority of Quality Travel Time clients are single parents, but Ms Saffan notes an upswing of other clients who dropped out but came back to her agency after having negative experiences in self-booking trips. Ms Saffan says she and her two other agents, in a financial sense, are “doing better than most travel agents.” But she does not expect too much competition in the immediate future. “I think travel agents will have to continue finding niches, but it’s taken a lot of work and several years to get this going. So someone can’t expect to make money immediately. They’d have to build up a reputation,” she said. ##