Travel concierge startup targets events market

Courtesy / Experience Maine Rachel Sagiroglu of Cumberland has launched a travel concierge and event planning company called Experience Maine. She’s seen here at Linekin Bay Resort in Boothbay Harbor, where she was recently networking with area vendors.

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By Laurie Schreiber

Experience Maine, a new travel concierge and event planning company in Cumberland, aims to retool tourism marketing and expand Maine’s corporate meeting and events market.

Founder Rachel Sagiroglu will curate, design and plan travel experiences for corporate and individual clients, according to a news release.

“I was inspired to start my business after learning that growth in the tourism industry has slowed and that there are opportunities to expand existing markets for corporate meetings, retreats, and the incentive travel industry,” Sagiroglu said in the release. “One of my first orders of business will be to leverage my valuable network of meeting planners to host a familiarization visit for key buyers.”

The Experience Maine website is designed to promote hospitality and tourism businesses in Maine. Additional services include corporate event planning and travel concierge.

Businesses can join the site for a membership fee. Founding members on the website include Sugarloaf Inn, Inn on Peaks Island, Three Rivers Whitewater Rafting, Old Port Sea Grill and Shipyard Brewing Co.

Sagiroglu has more than 20 years of experience planning meetings, events and experiential marketing campaigns. For seven years, she managed marketing and events for Clean Harbors Inc. (NYSE: CLH) in Norwell, Mass., an environmental, energy and industrial services company with annual sales of $3.3 billion. She also worked as director of sales and marketing at 33 Management Group in Boston, promotions manager for Time Warner Cable in Portland, and marketing and events coordinator for Vreeland Marketing & Design in Yarmouth. Most recently, she was a marketing manager at WEX Inc.

The Experience Maine website launched last spring, Sagiroglu told Mainebiz, and she left her job at WEX in early July to focus on the startup full-time.

Currently, she’s working from her home in Cumberland.

“My vision is, by next year, after we add a few employees, we’ll get a space, probably in Portland,” she said.

Financing to date largely comes from personal funds. She’s also utilized Coastal Enterprises Inc.’s Women's Business Center for business advice and its “Wicked Fast Microloans” program for a $15,000 loan to help with legal fees for tasks like trademarking and contracts, as well as website development. The University of Southern Maine Small Business Development Center helped with initial financial projections.

Travel concierge

The “travel concierge” component, also called a “destination concierge,” is focused on the leisure market and is looking for something “out of the ordinary,” she explained.

“We can help organize their trip, either the full trip from the day the leave their homes to the day they head back, or we have itinerary add-ons,” she said.

“Somebody might come into the state with their family: ‘My three kids are different ages, the boys want to go sky-diving, my husband wants to play golf, his buddies are coming up, I’m looking for nice dinners, and we’ll be here for five days.’ So I’d put together options for them to choose from and then help plan that.”

She added, “The thing that differentiates me from others is my focus on what the individuals want to have for an experience. This is how I came up with the ‘experience’ in ‘Experience Maine.’”

Maine, she said, is “an experience state. There’s so much to experience in Maine that’s unique and different. And there’s so much national buzz around Portland and Maine” with regard to the foodie scene. “I want Maine to ride that wave.”

Vendor showcase

The website is designed to showcase vendors, everything from hotels and restaurants to tour companies and private yoga instructors. Sagiroglu is building her vendor network.

“I spent the last four days in Boothbay Harbor talking with hotels and charter companies there,” she said. “As a member of Experience Maine, they get a profile page for a small membership fee. When I engage with them and they want to work with me, we build up a beautiful page with lots of content that promotes them. They can manage the page themselves. In return, to promote the website and the vendors, I reinvest the money back into digital marketing, search engine optimization, public relations, content marketing.”

Plans include expanding the geographic scope to Bar Harbor, Sunday River, The Forks, Ogunquit and Kennebunkport in the coming months.

“This summer and fall I’ll be developing key partners and building out content on the website,” she said. “At the same time, I’m looking ahead at connecting with meeting planners. I have many leads for the 2020 season.”

She expects the travel concierge piece of the business to pick up next year. She’s currently operating the business on her own, but expects to hire a part-time events coordinator, probably by next spring. As events pick up, she plans to hire workers as needed. Wedding planning is off the table, but she expects to connect with wedding planners so she can provide referrals.

Experience design options

How would this be different from the Maine Office of Tourism’s Visit Maine website?

“Mine is different in the sense that travelers are looking at it as the experience they want to have, versus where they want to go,” she explained. “I’m bringing in tools like ‘design your own experience.’”

The “design your own experience” tool allows users to personalize their trip, meeting or event. The stepped tool clicks through to options like “adventure travel,” “corporate meeting” and “social event.” Subsequent clicks bring the user to geographic options like “coastal Maine,” and then to recreation activities.

The website allows users to book their own trip by clicking directly to the vendors’ websites. Or they can hire Sagiroglu to help them with the planning.

“If they book themselves, that’s great,” she said. “I want those businesses to succeed. The goal is to get more business for those Maine employers. But if they want to take it a step further and engage with me for my services, that’s good, too.”

The site is also optimized for corporate and events planning, she said.

“Living in Maine for most of my life and then leaving Maine to be a corporate meeting professional, I came back with a new lens on Maine as a meeting and conference destination,” she said. “How do we bring more business travelers and more corporate meetings into Maine? A lot of planners aren’t as familiar with Maine as they probably could be. How do we change that?

"I’m identifying how I can be a positive force in bringing more meetings and events into the state, and making the people who source those meetings and events aware of all that Maine has to offer.”