Why Read Our Blog—What’s in It for Me?
Hank Schrader, USMA '71, Europe Destination & Europe River Cruise Expert
Anne Schrader, Certified Travel Counselor & Certified Luxury Cruise Specialist
After writing our blog for over five and half years, I started to reflect on why we write about travel. I think it is a fair question to ask—why should you read our blog? Most of you are very busy and often are overwhelmed by emails and online information about travel.
So, why should you take the time to read our blog? Let’s explore this thought together and decide if you should or should not read our blog!
Some Stunning Statistics
A lot of folks this year so far have visited our website. Here are the totals from our Squarespace Analytics Report for 2022 so far:
· Visits 32,579
· Unique Visitors 28,429
· Pageviews 39,742
So, a lot of folks have visited our website and most come from search engines. Why are they coming to our website? The answer is our blogs and content on our website.
The Starting Point—What is the Purpose of Our Blog?
For me this is a simple answer—our purpose is to make you a better-informed traveler who may need our services. Sounds simple but it really is much more complex in my mind.
I think there are 4 parts of making you a better-informed traveler.
First, we want to teach about what good value travel is.
Second, we want to inspire you and help you visualize your next trip.
Third, we want to provide objective advice, so you can make wise travel choices.
Forth, we want to help you decide if you should trust Visit Dream Destinations, LLC to plan your trip?
So, let’s evaluate our blog and see if it is worthwhile for you to read our blog and if we deliver on the 4 parts of making you a better-informed traveler.
Our Role as Teachers About Good Value Travel
Good value travel is making the most of your travel dollars. It is about memorable experiences. It is about reduced hassles on the trip. We write often about these topics. The blog has 7 subtopics. We write about Ocean Cruising, Europe River cruising, Europe Travel, Europe Destinations, Best Value Travel, Travel Planning and Our Travel Philosophy.
The River Cruise Blog Archives on our website is excellent place to learn if river cruising is the right trip for your vacation. The topics in this section are Our River Cruise Services, River Cruise Line Comparisons, River Cruise Routes, River Cruise Advice and River Cruise Reviews. Our comparisons of river cruise companies and Europe River Cruise route Guides are especially strong—we are number 1 on Google for both topics.
On our website we have all our blogs under these categories, so you can find travel or destination advice easily. We try and write about the advantages and disadvantages of travel to help understand about the suppliers and their benefits to help you achieve your travel goals and how we can guide you to make wise choices.
There is one common theme in each topic –We try to write with the viewpoint of:
Do they care about me and what I need as a traveler?
In our blogs, we try and establish what we consider as a good relationship with our readers. We want our readers to think of us as friends who may become clients and help them decide if they need our services.
If we take the next step in our relationship to client and travel consultant, we still maintain the friend’s mantra. We treat each of our clients as friends, because we don’t sell travel to clients—we sell travel to friends. There is a big difference—how your trip goes makes a world of difference to us.
We like to say we are small enough to deliver personalize service but big and experience enough to get you just the right trip. We try to match you to just the right experience and make it logical, realistic, and affordable in your price range.
Don’t get us wrong—we do not sell on price—we sell on value. We try to demonstrate how valuable you are to us in many ways but how many other travel professionals have a Traveler Hall of Fame? We are proud we could help you travel, and we want to share with others your joy and satisfaction.
Inspiration
We try in our blogs to help you visualize your next trip. We often talk about our experiences during our travels so you can see if that trip would fit into a trip you might like to take. There are many pictures in our blogs, most taken by us, to help you visualize the trip in your mind. Many of you recognize the great pictures Anne takes to document our travels and that is perhaps the best feature of our blogs. She really makes the places come alive! Here are some of my favorites:
Mykonos, Greece
Old Town Square, Stockholm
Burg Eltz in Germany near the Mosel River
Portofino Italy
Sailing the Iron Gates
Sailing the Rhine River in the famous Rhine River Gorge area—two of the 40 castles on this section of the Rhine.
Budapest Parliament at night—stunning!.
The Watchman of the Danube
If you want to see more of our travel pictures, please visit our Pinterest page—it has over 4,500 pictures (www.pinterest.com/visitdd).
Our emphasis is always the best possible experience within your price range, and we hope these pictures help inspire you to visit a new place or experience a new culture, help celebrate a milestone in your life, or have a bucket list trip you have always dreamed about.
Objective Advice
I recently read that 62% of business bloggers outsource their blog! I was stunned—their blog may have good content but what that tells me they are too busy to provide first-hand information. How reliable and objective is that? Trust me, we write our own blog and the only guest writers are our clients. It’s funny to me that we get requests and offers from others to write about subjects that have nothing to do with travel to post on our blog—it is crazy that we would even consider this, but the pitches will continue.
With over 25+ years of experience selling travel to many satisfied clients, we know both what you need to make your travel experience better and the knowledge of what is available to match you with just the right vacation.
We have extensive first-hand knowledge and do comprehensive research on trips. We have planned hundreds of successful trips to delighted clients and we are eager to plan yours. Would you like a little proof?
A wine tasting on a Rhone River Cruise in 2016 on AmaWaterways—this is one of Anne’s favorite pictures of us. We have taken 22 river cruises and 2 more planned for this year.
Ask for one of our 50 Europe City travel guides—we wrote them, not some other person or company—just go to our website, click on the region of Europe you want to visit and then click on the city, and we will send you the guide (if you are not a current client there is a limit of 2 guides). We have visited 44 of 50 cities we write about and have awesome pictures to go with these guides.
Or click on one of our many PowerPoint presentations on our web site or visit our Resource Section of our website to get travel tips (www.dreamdestinations.com).
We also have 51 river cruise port guides available on our website—they are also free by request but again there is a limit of 2 if you are not a current client.
There is one common thread here—almost 98% is our own pictures or written by us—in truth, it would be hard to find many travel professionals who have been to so many of the places we sell. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know we know our stuff. As I used to say as a coach, when evaluating good football players, “he is the real deal!” Well folks, we are the real deal!
Should I trust Dream Destinations LLC to Plan My trip?
Trust and integrity are valuable traits and, in my judgement, in short supply in our country. Too many make promises they can’t or won’t keep.
My whole life has been devoted to service after graduating from West Point—20 years as a US Army Officer, 20 years as a coach and teacher and 25 years helping others travel to the right location.
My graduation at West Point in June 1971.
This picture was taken at Ft. Ord when Anne and I were first dating in 1986.
Anne is equally dedicated to trust and integrity—she always thinks about what is best for our clients, every single time. We think trust is the cornerstone of our relationship with you.
We try to under promise and over deliver a great travel experience for you. We strive to make your travel experience better by helping you make wise choices, eliminate hassles, and help you get the best value for your money. You are never on your own when you trust us to help you and ever year, we solve complex problems in the planning phase and during the trip. I like to say we are just an email, text, or phone call away.
In short, while working with us, we want to provide a trip that will exceed your expectations. I guess the best thing we can provide you is some comments by some of our clients. All over the website is testimonials from our friends who we have helped travel through the years.
We are proud to have helped them and look forward to helping as many as possible in the future.
Our Final Thoughts
We hope our blog is worth your time to read. As you can see, there is much more than these brief thoughts to describe the value of our blogs.
I think we help you become a more informed traveler by being good teachers, providing inspiration, providing objective information, and developing trust. If our blog has helped get more knowledge about travel, then we have done our job and the blog is worth your time to read.
Thanks to the many who take time out of their busy lives to read the blog—we love you folks!
We are travel experts, ocean and river cruise specialists, and Europe destination experts. We have first-hand knowledge of almost anywhere you want to visit in Europe. We know our products and the vendors who sell them to you. We have designed special tours for dozens of clients, led several and will continue to find just the right vacation that will exceed your expectations.
When you are spending your hard-earned money for a vacation, you want an advisor who can match you with the right trip. You want someone who will understand your expectations and fuel your anticipation (or excitement) to get you the best possible trip experience. And you want someone who can help you with the decision-making process. We think we have all these qualities.
Whatever your Dream Destinations are, we are here to help you get the best possible vacation based on what is important to you! We will provide you high quality, expertly planned travel. Please give me a call 713-397-0188 (Hank) or email me at hschrader@dreamdestinations.com. We want to help you: Savor life…make memories…Visit Dream Destinations! Your journey begins here!
ANNE has earned a degree from the University of Houston in Hotel and Restaurant Management. Serving as the President of Visit Dream Destinations, LLC, since 2016, she is uniquely experienced professional travel advisor with over 26 years’ experience in the travel industry. Among her numerous certifications, she is a Certified Travel Counselor (CTC) by the Travel Institute, considered the gold standard in travel agent certification and she is also an Accredited Cruise Counselor (ACC) by the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), as well Luxury Cruise Specialist also from CLIA. Having traveled often to Europe since 1989, she has expanded on her certification as a Destination Specialist in Western Europe (DS) with extensive first-hand experience in luxury vacations. She holds numerous other specialty designations from individual vendors. An expert photographer, she delights in capturing the true essence of destinations to share with all.
HANK is a certified Western European Destination Specialist (DS) who has been traveling to Europe for 51 years. He is also an Accredited Cruise Counselor (ACC), conferred by the Cruise Line International Association (CLIA). This recognized expert in cruise and leisure travel is a retired Army Officer, and taught World Geography for 8 years. He is a `71 graduate of West Point and has earned 2 master’s degrees. His other Certifications:
AmaWaterways River Cruise Specialist
Viking River Cruise Specialist
Scenic River Cruise Specialist
Emerald Waterways Specialist
Avalon Waterways Specialist
Brit Agent
