Connecting Brides With Far-Flung Locales | DestinationWeddings.com grows despite troubles in the travel industry
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Quentin Carmichael III, marketing and sales manager for DestinationWeddings.com.
Six years ago, Quentin Carmichael III saw that he and his team at Horizon’s Unlimited Travel were organizing and planning more and more destination weddings and, after surveying the industry, he realized it was a niche market with very few suppliers.
For Carmichael, the next decision was an obvious one: he started DestinationWeddings.com.
“We identified that niche in the travel industry that no one was doing at the time and even today, knock on wood, not many specialize in that niche of destination weddings,” he said.
Many Hats
While the company continues to grow and his business continues to expand, Carmichael acknowledges that it required a lot of work early on and he found himself wearing numerous hats. In the beginning, he had his hand in the company’s marketing efforts and was also setting up the training programs with experts across the country. In some instances he was even providing the training.
Now, as the marketing and sales manager of the company, he oversees the training department, which offers a continuing education program and also includes company travel for site inspections and general destination research.
Though the current recession has hindered the majority of businesses and industries across the country, DestinationWeddings.com is boasting increased sales and a thriving demand for its services—a result of an increased popularity in destination weddings in general and a product of the poor economy.
“We always said that destination weddings were recession proof,” Carmichael said. “But now it seems that destination weddings are recession enabled. It’s a much more unique event and it’s a heck of a lot cheaper than getting married at home.”
While managing a growing company hardly seems like a problem, Carmichael says there are numerous pitfalls that must be avoided.
“There’s a lot of opportunity for us to grow and it’s very important for us to make sure that we’re doing so and picking the right avenues to expand,” he said. “It’s been a challenge to slow down what I call the good idea bus. It’s exciting, but you have to slow down and make sure you go after the right opportunities.”
And to that end, he says that a budding entrepreneur must ignore those who say it can’t be done.
“For us, there are a lot of people that brought up the reasons why it couldn’t work,” he said. “But if you have an idea, you just have to keep going after it.”
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