In this episode of the Training Impact Podcast, Jeff Walter sits down with Stan Kravitz, Director of Global Tourism Sales and Partnerships for American Dream, to explore what it takes to build a partner network that can sell and support a destination at massive scale. Stan opens by reframing what American Dream actually is. He intentionally avoids the word mall and instead describes the property as retail-tainment, a blend of retail, dining, and major attractions under one roof. In his view, the concept changes the expectations of everyone involved, including guests, internal teams, and third-party resellers.
This matters because American Dream is not selling a single store experience. It is selling an entire day, weekend, or trip experience. That creates a unique training and enablement challenge. When you sell an experience, partners need to understand not only the list of attractions, but also how to position the destination to different customer types, how to plan itineraries, and how to solve the friction points that can make or break a visit.
Jeff frames Stan’s role in a way that aligns perfectly with the mission of the Training Impact Podcast. Stan leads training efforts for internal teams and third-party resellers with the goal of creating a unified ecosystem, where everyone understands the value of American Dream and can represent it clearly and confidently.
That phrase, unified ecosystem, is a major theme throughout the conversation. American Dream depends on multiple channels to drive tourism demand. Those channels include online travel agents, group travel planners, and various reseller and distribution partners. Each partner has a different audience and a different selling motion. The training challenge is not just product knowledge. It is channel readiness, positioning, and consistency.
A practical part of the discussion centers on how American Dream prioritized channels when tourism demand was recovering. Stan explains that when you have many channel options, you still have to start somewhere. For American Dream, the strategy was to begin with online travel agents because they already had built-in networks, reputation, and demand. That created the ability to generate return sooner while building toward broader channel coverage over time.
Jeff reflects this back as a strategy story. First, identify the target traveler segment. Then, identify where that segment books and how they buy. Then, align your channel and partner strategy accordingly. Over time, as the market evolves and demand returns, you widen the net to include additional channels and group travel. Stan describes that growth as a widening of brand recognition and distribution reach, where the destination shifts from pushing into channels to receiving inbound interest from partners whose customers are asking for American Dream by name.
Jeff notes that tourism is competitive and travelers have endless choices. Stan agrees and calls the New York market one of the most unique tourism marketplaces in the world. He also explains that his career history in hospitality and tourism, including decades of relationships in the New York marketplace, made it possible to open doors with resellers more quickly.
Then Stan shares a simple, repeatable insight that applies to almost any partner ecosystem. When you talk to resellers, the question you will always get is: what’s new? Stan emphasizes that American Dream had an advantage because it was both new and totally unique in the marketplace. But novelty alone does not sustain performance. Partners need a constant stream of updates, new offers, new attractions, and refreshed messaging so they can keep their own promotions alive.
One of the most actionable points in the episode is Stan’s belief that the most effective step, whenever feasible, is getting partners into the building to see the property firsthand. Once they experience it, the destination sells itself.
He reinforces this with an example of how the destination expanded from six attractions to 25 attractions. If a reseller cannot find something to promote within that range, then their issue is not the product. It is the positioning. That statement underscores why training matters. Partners need help identifying what to sell, to whom, and how to bundle experiences into a compelling offer.
Stan explains another differentiator that partners immediately understand: American Dream is weatherproof. He describes how, even on a day with a zero-wind chill, guests can still swim, surf, ride a roller coaster, and experience attractions without the weather impacting the trip. To a tour operator, that reliability changes the economics. It creates confidence that the operator can deliver value to customers regardless of outside conditions.
This is a useful reminder for training leaders. Resellers do not just need feature lists. They need a sales narrative that maps features to outcomes, like reliability, predictability, and guest satisfaction.
Later in the episode, Jeff and Stan get into the heart of what makes this conversation relevant to partner training professionals. Stan explicitly rejects a one-and-done approach. He describes enablement as a long-term education process, not only for external sellers, but also internally. The purpose is a seamless customer journey, where customers do not run into ticket problems, check-in issues, or experience breakdowns that create negative impressions.
Stan summarizes the philosophy with a line that hits hard for anyone building training programs: the company may sign the paycheck, but it is the customer who paid you. That mindset forces alignment between training, operations, and customer experience.
When Jeff asks how reseller education happens after the initial wow factor, Stan outlines a practical enablement model. The destination does not simply ask resellers what they want to do. Instead, it guides them through what matters for their customers, drawing on Stan’s experience as a tour operator. He explains that you do not show every audience the same things. You show them what fits their market and their clients. Then you back that up with the right promotional material, content, imagery, and refresh cycles because things get stale.
Stan also describes how he uses LinkedIn to consistently announce what is new, what is coming, and what partners should be talking about. When a new attraction or program appears, the communication and training cycle starts again. This is not marketing for marketing’s sake. It is partner readiness and sales enablement delivered through real-time updates.
Stan also highlights a practical reality of tourism sales: customers want to know how easy it is to get there. He outlines the transportation options available and shares how American Dream explores partner-friendly solutions, such as shuttle services from Times Square that include commissionable opportunities for the trade. These operational details matter because they remove uncertainty at the point of decision and make the destination easier to sell.
He extends this thinking to packaging and promotions. By bundling experiences like laser tag and arcade attractions, and by continuously educating partners on how to position these offers, American Dream keeps the sales conversation fresh and actionable. The approach follows a clear pattern: introduce something new, communicate it with clarity, and enable the entire ecosystem to confidently sell the experience.
This conversation is a strong example of what extended enterprise training looks like in the real world. American Dream is not just training employees. It is training a network. That network includes internal teams and external resellers who shape the customer journey and the customer experience.
The core takeaway is simple: partner performance is not driven by content alone. It is driven by education loops. Bring partners into the experience. Give them the right materials. Keep messaging fresh. Communicate what is new. Remove friction in transportation and packaging. And treat training as a long-term process tied directly to customer experience and revenue.
For more information about American Dream visit their website: https://www.americandream.com/
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