Easy Going
by Mary Martens

Keeping their clients happy is what drove the owners of Encino, Calif.-based Plaza Travel to keep tinkering with their Web site, PlazaTravel.com, until it was just right.
 

Plaza Travel's Steve Orens, right, received a Trendsetters award for Best Web Site from Ken Kearny of Nexion

"[With] the first site we had, you had to click on a lot to get anywhere," said Steve Orens, who, with his parents Nobby and Carol, own Plaza Travel. "But now, nothing is more than a click or two away to get from general information to more specific."
 

In designing PlazaTravel.com, now in it's fourth incarnation, Steve Orens and Marketing Director Gary Stevens focused on creating a user-friendly experience.
 

"Our company garnered its success as a result of customer relations, providing a consistent level of quality service and ongoing information," Stevens said. "We strived to bring that level to our site."
 

They choose a color palette that is easy on the eye and upbeat: Mustard yellow and a cheery blue are set against a white background.
 

There are no flashy graphics, so loading the site is swift. Text is at a readable level: not too long, with short, punchy headlines. Whenever they add third-party material to the site, they ensure it "opens in our window and the colors match," Orens said.
 

Ease of navigation is the site's real advantage, however. The homepage announces Plaza Travel as a leisure and corporate agency that started in 1985. Through a series of buttons and pull-down menus, visitors can find the area of their interest or got to resources such as Travel Tips or Currency Exchange. No click leads a visitor off PlazaTravel.com, a trap other sites have fallen into for the sake of appearing to offer more content to a user.
 

The site is updated once a month and receives about 3,500 hits a month, mostly from existing clientele. The site offers several interactive features, including client profile forms, surveys, booking requests and trip searches.
 

Visitors can book real-time travel online, track flights, view and print their personal itineraries, find special vacation offers, check the weather, calculate currency conversions, obtain the latest information in security and browse through the agency's online newsletter. One of the most popular features with corporate clients is secure, password-protected pages, accessible only to the company's employees.
 

Part of the site's success stems from the support Steve Orens' parents lent when he developed their first site eight years ago.
 

"I'm one to delegate easily," his father, Nobby Orens, said. "I'm a perfectionist. If I don't know something, I would rather someone who does handle it."
 

While in between careers, Steve started working with his parents at Plaza Travel, helping them inaugurate an accounting system.
 

"It was the best thing that happened, when he came to work for us," Nobby said. "The three of us get along well. There's almost never a cross word."
 

That happy work environment is a recipe for success. The 60-agent Plaza Travel is in the top 2% of agencies in the United States in terms of sales volume. Most recently, the agency landed a new corporate client that let to hiring three new agents.
 

This article reprinted from TravelAge West • April 15, 2002
and TravelAgeWest.com