Travel agents who’ve successfully tapped the honeymoon and destination weddings market will tell you that it’ a very special niche, unlike any other in the industry. “It’s really not about selling, it’s about coming alongside a couple and helping them make their dreams come true,” says Judi Henninger of Always Honeymoon Travel in Cleveland. “If you come at it thinking, ‘I need to make more money and sell more honeymoons because that’s a lucrative market,’ you’re not going to be successful.”

Many issues are involved in arranging honeymoons, as well as destination weddings, at hotels and resorts, and that’s why agents must dig deep, says Katherine Gould of Brownell Travel in Birmingham, Ala. “Find out where the bride and groom have been in the past,” she says. “A lot of times one is well traveled and the other is not. So I usually start by trying to get a good feel for what level of traveler they are.”

Travel agents who specialize in honeymoons offer the following tips to help you succeed in this growing niche.

Manage expectations. What clients want and what they can afford are often two very different things. “I ask them about their hopes and their dreams and if they could do anything, what would it be,” says Henninger, adding that she is always prepared to temper dreams with a reality that is palatable to the client. “If you don’t know what they really want, you’re just throwing itineraries at them.”

For instance, she recently had a client who has always dreamed of swimming with dolphins in Hawaii. Henninger said the couple’s budget wasn’t big enough for Hawaii, but was better suited for Mexico. “I put them at a resort in Mexico that had a dolphinarium on property and scheduled her to swim with them,” she says.

Put it in writing. Angela Turen, owner and president of Churchill & Turen in Naperville, Ill., created a questionnaire that provides clients with an introduction to her services and at the same time enables her to learn everything she needs to know about them.

One section of Turen’s questionnaire provides five different scenarios for the client to select: a stay at a luxury resort in the Caribbean or Mexico; a contemporary cruise; a resort stay in Tahiti, the Maldives, Bali or Hawaii; a cruise on an all-inclusive luxury liner carrying less than 1,000 passengers; and a self-drive vacation overseas that includes accommodations at unique and upscale venues and that features special dinners. The questionnaire also covers such standard items as the number of nights preferred, travel budget, and personal information.

The questionnaire, says Turen, enables her to really get to know her clients. “I understand the client on paper as well as through conversations, just so there are no misunderstandings. That’s why I do it both in writing and verbally,” she says.

Learn the products. Perhaps most important of all, travel agents need to ensure that they have the foundation to successfully sell resort honeymoons and destination weddings. “It’s important to read, read, read and educate yourself on the different properties,” says Turen.

Provide value-added services. Turen never books a hotel or resort honeymoon without either upgrading the client to a higher level of accommodation or creating an event for them at the property or at a local restaurant. Experiences run the gamut, she says, from special dinners on the beach to dinner at a restaurant accessible only by private boat.

“I’m not making any extra money, but I’m giving them the experience that they’re envisioning,” Turen says. “And so I’m a superstar when they come back, because I’ve let them know along the way that I’ve planted a couple of surprises.” Depending on what the surprise is, Turen sometimes will tell either the groom or the bride about it before the trip.

Ask for referrals. “If I have a bride and groom who are pleased with what I’ve done for them I say, ‘Please refer your friends.’ I simply ask for the business,” says Claire Schoeder of Century Travel in Atlanta. She also asks friends and older clients to recommend her to their younger relatives. “You have to ask for the business in some way, shape or form,” she says. “Anything to get your foot in the door.”

“There’s nothing wrong with asking for the business,” says Gould, adding that she herself has established a strong referral network that has transformed her business. When booking honeymoon couples, it’s safe to assume that their friends hail from a similar demographic. One client alone, she says, has been responsible for referring some 20 honeymoon customers. “They’re his friends and his network keeps expanding,” she says.

Look for repeat business. When you book a honeymoon couple, you have the chance to keep those clients for a lifetime. “The honeymoon should be the first of many trips that you do for them,” says Stacy Small, president and founder of Los Angeles-based Elite Travel International. “It’s a good niche for a newcomer to target, because you do their honeymoon and that will quickly turn into the first anniversary trip” and so on.

Broaden the definition of honeymoon. The honeymoon market has transformed itself. “It’s not necessarily the one trip this couple is doing together or the first time they ever traveled together,” says Small. “There are different incarnations of the honeymoon besides just the traditional honeymoon.” These days, honeymoons can be transformed into “familymoons” or “friendmoons.”

“Maybe they have kids from the first marriage and they turn it into a familymoon,” says Small. “Or they may invite some of their friends and turn it into a friendmoon.”

Build relationships with hotels and resorts. Turen is able to arrange special perks for her clients because she makes sure she establishes strong relationships with executives at the resorts with which she works. “You have to have friends in your industry that you can call,” she says.

Usually, Turen books directly with the general manager or sales director at the hotel. If she’s booked through a tour operator, she still contacts the hotel. “I go to the general manager or director of sales,” says Turen. “That’s how I get the value add.”

Conversely, agents need to make sure they’re aware of problems with hotel personnel to ensure that their clients aren’t going to experience spotty service. If you know, for instance, that a particular general manager has moved around frequently, you need to ascertain whether said manager tends to leave on his or her own accord.

For destination weddings, establish who’s paying for accommodations. “The first thing an agent needs to do before anything else is establish who’s paying for everything,” says Peter Friedman, a luxury travel specialist at Unique Travel in Delray Beach, Fla. Agents need to explain to prospective clients that it’s not possible to hold large numbers of rooms for extended periods.

“I’ll get somebody who wants to have a destination wedding in Africa, for instance,” says Friedman. “They’ll say we’re going to have 100 people, we’re going to need 50 rooms, so on and so forth. I have to say to them, ‘Okay, now if you want 50 rooms they have to be filled by a certain time.’” If the bride and groom say guests are paying for themselves, Friedman says he then will offer to arrange the wedding party’s accommodations for them and book rooms as wedding guests contact him. “But I say that I cannot guarantee that there’s going to be enough rooms.”

Establish a price point. When the couple is paying for the destination wedding, the first thing Friedman does is calculate the cost. “I’ll quickly calculate the number of people and the costs of air and hotel per person, plus costs for the actual wedding party per person,” says Friedman. He then asks the couple how much they have budgeted for the wedding. “If they say we have $15,000 and by my quick calculation it’s running $65,000, then I have to basically get them to realize this is not going to work.” The next step? Make other suggestions in line with the couple’s budget, says Friedman.

Adjust your mindset. When it comes to arranging honeymoons, Henninger of Always Honeymoon Travel suggests that agents remove the word “sell” from their vocabularies. “It’s really not about selling,” she says. “Making money in this market is a byproduct of caring about the client.” Agents interested in tapping a larger share of the honeymoon market must realize that honeymooners may need more handholding than other clients.

“They need to know you’re in their corner before traveling and while traveling,” says Henninger. “They need to know that you know what you’re doing, that you’ve been to the places they’re thinking of and that you’ll add that little touch of magic that they didn’t expect.”