Is Short Form Video the Right Opportunity for Small Travel Agencies in 2026? As an experienced travel agency owner, hotel owner or DMO manager, you’re hoping for some sure hits, or maybe even a magic bullet for your inbound traffic strategy. You’re reading a lot about how some channels are great while others not so….
Inbound Travel is Receding – Here’s how US DMOs can Rebuild for 2026 If you manage a US-based travel agency, destination management organization, or perhaps a hotel, or tour company, you’re likely finding 2025 is a little tougher. Foreign demand for US travel destinations dropped, particularly from alienated Canadians. The European outbound market is still…
A Refreshing, Warm Winter Sunshine Vacation (but Not in Florida) You’re dreaming of a beach holiday with warm sunshine to beat your winter blues. This year, some travelers are avoiding US sunshine destinations, but they’re still looking for water fun, beach walks on palm-strewn, golden sand beaches, and relaxing restaurant dining. US inbound travel has been…
Why It’s Time for Travel Agencies to Let Go of “Good Enough” and Step Into the Reach They Deserve If you’ve been running a travel agency for years—or even decades—it’s easy to look at the digital landscape and feel a little overwhelmed. Everything moves so fast and competition is growing. Big OTAs seem to scoop…
European Travel: The Biggest Growth Opportunity Many Agencies Haven’t Fully Tapped Yet For as long as anyone might remember, Europe has represented the most sophisticated, rewarding, and transformative travel experience the world has to offer. From adventure to culture, to shared experiences, and a profound immersion in the history of the human race, Europe has…
How to Surmount the Major, Current Travel Business Challenges Small travel company owners and managers today face a marketing landscape that’s more fragmented and demanding than ever. Your travel audience isn’t a single audience anymore — they’re seniors, empty nesters, Gen X planners, multigenerational families, solo travelers, luxury buyers, affinity groups, and experience-hungry Millennials and…
Loss of Canadian Travelers Hurting the US Travel Sector US inbound international travel is predicted to fall by about 6.3% in 2025, falling to an estimated 67.9 million visitors, which marks the first decline since 2020. A sizable portion of that loss is attributed to missing Canadians, who look to be cutting out US travel even…
TMR’s Travel Market Reports 2025 A couple of travel market research reports by TMR show geopolitical tensions, overtourism, AI, and economic uncertainty are hampering the travel market. And travel company owners have to decide on how to respond to reduced bookings. Change and challenges like this generate opportunities, or gaps in the marketplace, which in…
Toronto Travel Spending a Market Worth Fighting For Canadian travel to the US has plummeted and now your Toronto region travelers are searching on Google for other destinations in big numbers. That’s great news for all Toronto travel agencies. Not only are new customers in the GTA up for grabs, they’re shopping with an open…
Show Your Audience You Care For humans, caring is the glue of society and personal relationships. If your marketing is all about value, price, customization, and service for the sake of transporting travelers, your marketing will likely miss the mark and make your brand irrelevant. Have you wondered if your customers and target audience even…
Your New Theme of Efficiency, Service and Performance Many travel companies are being forced to reorganize this year as politics reduces travel demand, and travel consumers become harder to reach. Travel has changed. It’s more competitive, revenue outlooks are weaker, and consumers have new expectations about travel companies. You’ll need to improve the message you…
Helping Your Travel Agency Thrive This year’s travel season is a little challenging, but we know it’s going to pick up as the economy strengthens and the tariff issues weaken. There are opportunities for your travel agency to prosper, expand and improve customer loyalty. From staying top of mind, to reaching new audiences, to improving…
How to Market Small Beach Towns Beach town communities are special destinations. From open sky vistas over a lake or ocean setting, to golden sands with kids playing, to surfing and boating, to gorgeous sunsets, and amazing waterside dining experiences, they are a compelling experience for almost any visitor. And these places deserve a special…
✈️ 20 Travel Startup Ideas (Low-to-Mid Budget) I discussed the many business opportunities in travel for VC investors and entrepreneurs and want to expand with some practical possibilities that you might find very interesting (and profitable). It’s a billion-dollar industry of course, and has a bright future despite current geopolitical, migration, and recessionary issues. People…
Your Career in Travel? Are you looking for a new career? Drained by another week doing work you have no interest in? Are you starting to dream of a more engaging, inspiring, and rewarding workday, while enjoying a whole swath of cool benefits? Who isn’t right? After all, the employment market is shrinking and changing…
Travel Business Opportunity: The Right Plan for VC’s and Entrepreneurs Travel remains a growth sector with amazing possibilities, even when there are lulls in consumer or business-related bookings. If this is that lull, then the sector must be promising for the years ahead. The US and global economy is expected to improve, and any easing…
Upcoming Tour Operator Conferences and Conventions The Travel and Tourism sector is readying for an exciting winter season along with growth in trips and tour bookings in 2026 as the US and global economies continue their growth. You’ve got some outstanding events planned for this fall, such as Tourpreneurs “TourWeek” in South Carolina, and US…
🍁 Why Canadians Still Make a Great Choice for Outsourcing The US is undergoing a fantastic economic, cultural and business transformation launched via tariffs, deregulation, tax reduction, cheaper energy and artificial intelligence. Growth will be phenomenal. In 2026, the FED rate will drop allowing small US businesses to enter the boom times. We’ll see burgeoning…
La Jolla: A Coastal Drive Toward Culinary Elegance The Pacific Coast Highway in southern California is renowned as one of the most beautiful drives in the world. For travelers over 50, the views, sunshine, and California ambiance is nothing short of marvelous. For those who revel in pleasant drives as part of a great travel…
How You Can Beat AI Travel Agencies With OTA’s and new AI travel agencies impinging on your audience and customer base, you’re understandably concerned. Young travelers are open to AI-driven travel planning and services. Agency owners on the other hand appear to be resisting anything that carries that artificial intelligence tone to it. However, as…
Google is Fading? It’s Actually Rising Oh, the AI hypesters. All of them so eager to push their new Agentic AI, Chatbots, AI apps, and AI-augmented services and infrastructure. And many of these AI followers lash out with rhetoric about Google being a digital Dinosaur, whose user traffic will suddenly disappear. Much of the rancor,…
Responsible Tourism Response to the Anti-Tourism Surge Anti-tourism rallies and sentiment are sweeping across Europe, combined with excessive immigration pushing Spaniards, Greeks, Italians, French, British and other nationals to reject mass tourism. Even in Mexico City, the chant “Gringos Go Home” is catching media attention and adding to the growing rancor for tourists that locals…
Small Business Marketing Report The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) says its latest Small Business Optimism Index in July, rose 1.7 points to 100.3, slightly above the 52-year average of 98. Uncertainty remains (fell 8 points from June to 97) and is a big factor in growth and hiring intentions. Yet, respondents feel the…
A Rejuvenating Drive Through Portugal’s Historic Cultural Regions Avoid the overtourism in Spain, France and Italy with a rejuvenating road trip into Portugal’s quiet regions. Portugal Solves Your Destination Stagnation Are you feeling a little “destination stagnation” or maybe just tired of the familiarity and overcrowding of France, Greece, Italy or Spain? Many are, and…
The Power of New Ideas How would you win a best design competition at the Albuquerque International Balloon Festival? Would you show up with the usual round balloon with a different color scheme? Or would you brainstorm a brilliant unique design that evokes judge’s imagination and resonates with the balloon festival spirit? Would you go…
How LLM GPT’s Help us Create Great Content AI LLMs are a major change in how travel consumers experience search and content on the web. ChatGPT and Google Gemini are the two new AI search engines gaining significantly in the search marketplace. Many users love the comprehensiveness of answers to their questions — their pre-trip…
Sales Boost: Grab Your Low-Hanging Fruit Easy lead generation for travel companies! Yes, I’m not crazy. It’s like picking cherries. You know how I can help you generate significant visibility on ChatGPT or Google/Bing search engines, build brand recognition, and get your offer to new customers (and former customers who are online). You need to…
Best Marketing Analytics Solutions for Travel Businesses The only thing worse than knowing your digital marketing isn’t working is not knowing why. Which is why we need deeper insight into the full marketing funnel. In this post, I present some great analytics software solutions for you to review and I think you’ll be surprised at…
Give the Gift of Travel You know all about the joy of travel. It’s lifted your spirit, empowered your confidence, and broadened your awareness of how the world is and could be. But many others haven’t had that pleasurable, healthy vacation getaway. And perhaps now, your heroic side is awakening, and this might be the…
Ready Your Travel Company for the 2026 Boom! The latest travel stats are reflecting an unsettling trend of travelers avoiding the US and consumers spending less. Travel experts feel this will extend into more revenue and booking losses for the years ahead. While the economy has flagged amidst the Trump tariffs, there are many positive…
Have you Given Up On SEO? SEO has been in vogue in digital marketing for over 30 years, before I started in 1998. And for the last 15 years, the rumors of SEO is dead were part of the buzzword narrative, to sell more SEO. In reality, the doomsday phrase should have been “SEO is…
The Ultimate Guide to PPC Optimization and Lead Generation At some point in time as a small business owner, you have launched an online ad campaign on Facebook or Google, and likely discovered how difficult it is to produce leads and revenue. Your budget suffered and so did your confidence. Then you wondered if ppc…
Moving Forward with Your Travel Content I just visited an interesting and luxuriously branded website at Velyagroup.com that you’ll instantly recognize as unique and elegant. What a great start to build a unique spot in the travel market landscape! There’s something Velya Group may be missing though — real, authentic content experiences for their audience…
The Untapped Wealth of Search Engines In other posts, you saw how much consumer online search traffic there is – trillions of searches by consumers actively seeking products/services — to fulfill their intent. It’s not like social media where users are inundated with irrelevant, low-intent topics/ads they have little interest in. And social doesn’t connect…
Blogs Drive Engagement, Leads & Revenue Today, with the competitive noise, spam and AI-generated material on social media, blogs, websites, customers need travel agencies or Realtors that are relevant, authentic and trustworthy. Your blog is ideally suited to communicate the values they respect and the offer that matches their intent. When a blog is designed…
Meeting the SMB Challenge Ahead: A New Strategy The US and especially the Canadian economy are not powering small businesses in 2025 and economic indicators are signalling trouble ahead. Not to be dour here, but rather to suggest that business reorganization and marketing optimization are a practical adaptation to the reality of the deteriorating economy….
Build Deep Insights of Your Targeted Travelers If you’re fortunate enough to have website traffic, social engagement, leads, and traveler inquiries, you may still struggle to convert those leads. It’s because they’re not getting the content experience that meets all their needs. You can improve conversions through understanding the why’s and whats via user-intent analysis,…
Massive Global Market: Your International Content Strategy How nice would it be to relax and enjoy an amazing and massive flow of travel customers from across the globe, wowed by your brand and content, fully trusting that booking with you is a great decision sure to satisfy? Sometimes a wider audience is the solution to…
✍ How To Optimize Your Travel/Tour Descriptions Hundreds of millions of travelers are online, mostly using Google, and they follow a finding path to destinations, hotels, trips, tours and more. Everything they see on their path to travel fulfillment, that stream of travel content is a description of a desired experience. The final destination…
💵 Buy Now Pay Later a Growing Opportunity in Travel Market While many wealthy Canadian, European, and American travelers can easily pay for their vacations and trips, most others are stretched to make them happen. Not being able to buy a travel package right away, as expected, means they don’t. And that results in making…