You probably are wondering why a travel site has such a nostalgic “look”. Well, let me tell you why and how our look happened.

We researched, what I am sure, were five thousand travel sites and discovered that we each came away from these sites with three common feelings, overwhelming coldness, confusion, and a sense of deep frustration, we were always lost! This was not what we wanted Travel Agent Online to convey! We wanted quite the opposite impression for any visitor and potential client. It was imperative that Travel Agent Online be warm, welcoming and friendly. The site must also be valid, efficient, simple, timely and flexible, but how could we convey all of this to total strangers and in a one dimensional medium, the Internet.

One Saturday, I was looking for something in an upstairs storage room at our office (our office is in an old home built in the 1920’s, but that’s another story) when I stumbled over a stash of old magazines. Then I remember what I had done with “those old magazines” from Mama’s house. These weren’t just any magazines; they were real “old” ones. You see, back when Mama passed away and while we going through her things, we knew that we couldn’t possibly look through everything then. So we decided to store boxes of her memories at our office to look through at our leisure. Through this process of sorting her things, we found many family treasures, “junque”, junk, unique things. Generally, for me, it was an amazing walk down memory lane. Nearing the back of the house, our real “Andy Worhol” moment came when we happened upon a large stack of hundreds of magazines from the 30’s, 40’s, 50’s, 60’ and even the 70’s. The largest numbers were from the earlier years. We were overwhelmed to say the least. My husband had always suspected that my family, albeit a wonderful group of folks, were descended from pack rats. Now he knew it for sure! Since our home was gradually filling to the brim with my Mama’s things, he drew the line here, saying, “WE ARE NOT TAKING THOSE OLD MAGAZINES HOME, PERIOD”. Guess you know what happened………!!!!!!!!! Technically, I DID NOT take them home. I took them to our office.

Armed with my rediscovery of Mama’s treasure trove of old magazines, the idea hit me like a brick! I will use these very old graphics from these magazines, incorporating the warm and friendly pictures, and make this the theme for our site. My decision was confirmed by everyone who looked at the magazines. Regardless of age, each person was fascinated by literally everything in each publication. They eagerly read each article that harkened back to a simpler time. Each one looked at the ads and you could see that a warm and fuzzy feeling had come over them. But when they would gazed upon certain pictures in the books, they would each have a really faraway look in their eyes. We could only think that at that moment, happy memories from their childhood and youth were triggering a rush of “pleasure endorphins” from their brain’s and each person was in a world all of their own childhood or that of their parents. That evidence was all I needed. I was convinced. If I could make people feel good when they looked at the site for just a split second, maybe they would stay and visit the whole site. With this hurdle crossed, now we had to convey that we were honest, trustworthy, knowledgeable and above all professional. We hope we have done this too. But only time and our visitors will prove this to be the truth.

Each person has memories and we hope that just one of these pictures triggers a good one for you. We are not interested in capturing everyone’s attention, only those who respect real value and those who will appreciate service based knowledge.

We always appreciate your constructive criticism, welcome to Travel Agent Online.

Harriot Roberts
Aka
Sparkle