🧠The Calm Marketing Playbook for Travel Business Owners
A 5-Step Guide to Get More Bookings Without Losing Your Mind (or Budget)
You’re a busy travel company owner booking flights, trips, tours, and managing your day to day business challenges. It’s not easy to break inertia on those other tasks that you know are really important.
But they just seem intimidating don’t they? It’s not surprising you find digital travel marketing a pain and avoid it assiduously. The web and social media create overwhelm. Well, what if we simplified the process?
Try this easy 5-step process to gain clarity on what you can actually do to get your digital marketing working on the way to creating leads and bookings.
🚶🏻‍➡️Step 1: Don’t Overdo It — Just Show Up Clearly
Most travelers don’t need flash — they need to trust you.
- Make sure your contact info, tour descriptions, and a few smiling guest photos are easy to find on your website or Google listing.
- You don’t need to be on every platform — just 1 or 2 done right.
🔧 Tool: Google Business Profile (free & powerful)
🚶🏻‍➡️Step 2: Let Your Customers Do the Talking
Word-of-mouth is still your best marketing — but travelers are chatting on Facebook, Instagram, texting and email. Often, their online activity spawns conversations and meetings about a special place they discovered. Ask for reviews of their trips as they’ll be pleased to see their comments published.
- Ask past travelers for reviews with specific details on what’s most enjoyable (not just “great tour!”).
- Repost their Instagram pics or testimonials.
- Use their words in your tour descriptions (real, authentic, raw is powerful today).
🔧 Tool: Copy/paste short review requests by email or text
🚶🏻‍➡️Step 3: One Great Photo > Ten Bad Ones
Travel is visual — and your photos must help guests imagine themselves being there.
- Show travelers enjoying the moment, not just visiting places.
- Use natural light, smiles, and action.
- Replace any blurry or dull photos with sharp, vivid, well lit photos.
🔧 Tool: Photo editing tools such Pixlr.
🚶🏻‍➡️ Step 4: Answer the Real Questions from Your Own Travelers
Your content only Needs to be helpful.
- What do guests always ask about before booking?
- What makes your tour different or a special experience?
- How do first-timers feel once it starts?
Write your FAQs or video your short answers and use them on your site or socials.
🔧 Tool: Use your FAQs and email replies as easy content starters
🚶🏻‍➡️Step 5: Try One Thing at a Time — Not Everything
Marketing fails when it’s rushed or done out of panic.
- Focus — Choose one key goal (e.g., “get 10 more local bookings”) and work to make that successful.
- Choose one activity to support it (e.g., “post 1 guest story each week”)
- Evaluate what did work — not everything will.
Much can be included in digital marketing campaigns and some of them require a lot of money. I know that’s a stopper and that it’s holding your business back.
Free Help can be a Great Booster
But as this post suggests, we can approach it from a simple, practical angle that costs almost nothing.
You want to get on top of this and not be carried along like a passenger and outsourcing to a high cost agency. Even in hiring a big agency, there’s no guarantee they’ll get it right. If risk of financial loss and time is the big concern, then starting out simply with me might be a great way to go. It’s FREE with no risk to you!
Let me know what you think about that. I’ll help you by starting where you need to, to get past inertia and onto building your confidence that digital marketing is worth it.
Here are several free reports I offer to help you get started with your content marketing:
- Free mini-SEO audit
- Free blog post written for your audience
- Free competitor research
- Evaluate your Google Business/Maps Profile
- Free content engagement review
- Free review of your blog
- Free review of trip/tour listing page content and descriptions
Contact me Gord, for more.
