Grow Your Travel Business Online

How many ways are there to grow? Let us count the ways:

1. expand your target market geographically
2. refocus entirely on the USA market (or Canada if you’re in Canada)
3. expand your range of travel products and packages
4. design niche packages (e.g., eco-travel, culinary tours, or wellness retreats).
5. grow your marketing reach on Google, Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin and Twitter
6. grow your engagement with your audiences and connections
7. expand your marketing content to be more significant and helpful to travelers (destination blogs, travel guides, eBooks, user-generated content, or how-to videos).
8. create new business and marketing partnerships
9. try out and integrate new AI agent tools
10. organize travel fairs or destination showcases

A Growing Economy, So Why Resist this Rare Opportunity?

With the Trump 2.0 era just ahead, the US economy will surge, and will lift the travel industry. It will be driven by:

• lower interest rates for credit
• lower income tax
• deregulation of industry
• lower fuel prices
• rising employment wage levels

The mood of Americans is lifting as the Thanksgiving Day period revealed a record number of travelers. And the 2025 travel market is predicted to be amazing. A great economy and a huge audience wanting to travel means the industry is in for good things for the next 5 years.

Travel Market Will Grow

Americans will still be heading to Europe and the Caribbean, but the domestic travel market will grow strong too.  Lower energy prices is one reason. Roadtrips will be economical this coming summer. Another is that Americans are becoming more interested in their own country. More are interested in the Rocky Mountains and Alaska, and exploring Canada which is a bargain.

With a positive outlook and extended economic well-being predicted, travel business growth makes sense. All you have to do is your research and preparation to reach new audiences and present new travel and tour packages. Below I take a closer look at Intrepid Travel who are preparing a new approach for their marketing initiatives.

Sam Altman of Open AI says their growth mindset helped them secure billions to fund their risky AI business. With intent, all else will follow. Positivity and growth create their own wave of success. The best is yet to come for them.

“Growth solves (nearly) all problems” — Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI.

 

Travel companies that focus on growth protect their businesses in many ways including: stability, increasing pay for agents, more opportunities for ambitious salespeople, better service for customers for greater loyalty, and the opportunity for true market leadership. See the list of growth strategies below.

Review your Fears for the last time, then Move onto Your Growth Plan

1. Fear of losing control: the fear that growth will lead to a loss of control over costs, operations, customer service, or product quality (consulting with a management consultant might be effective).
2. Limited financial resources: not having the funds to improve products, advertising and move into new markets (increase savings, cut costs, to move money over to the growth expansion project).
3. Risk aversion: unmanageable risks of increased debt, customer alienation, or more complex business operations (assess the real risks and be strict on keeping them under control).
4. Status quo comfort: Owners may feel comfortable with the current size of their business and not see a need for expansion (yet being comfortable while growing is possible, and creates more comfort)
5. Lack of knowledge or skills: lack of expertise and talent in staff in key areas like marketing, finance, or management (slowly hire the new staff needed to fit your new business vision).
6. Overwhelmed by current workload: Business owners may already feel overworked and see growth as adding more stress (adopt a more streamlined customer management platform).
7. Uncertain market conditions: Economic uncertainty, regulatory changes, or market saturation can make growth seem too risky (market bottom is a signal that growth is coming and the economy will surge).
8. Reluctance to delegate: Some owners struggle to trust others with important tasks, limiting their ability to scale (hiring more talented people allows you to let go, and be confident in them).
9. Fear of failure: The fear that expansion might not succeed can paralyze business owners from taking steps toward growth (always have a plan B just in case).
10. Personal goals and lifestyle preferences: Some small business owners prioritize work-life balance over profits and prefer keeping their business small to maintain their desired lifestyle (work the plan to give you the freedom and work/life balance (improved staff talent, outsourcing, and AI automation).

Smart Decisions: Capture What Growth Really Delivers

Going for growth is a business project and a marketing project. It gives your marketing team a chance to learn and improve their skills and competence. We all need learning opportunities and without pursuing growth, how will we learn?

One good look at the top travel management software companies, and you see enterprises that began as startups with limited funding. But as they learned the ropes and the timely demand for great travel management solutions rose, they were nicely positioned to surf on that big travel tech wave.

Why Grow Now?

It might be for greater revenues, greater business efficiency, or might even be to survive against encroaching competition. Let’s face it, AI and OTC’s are impinging, and SMB agencies must adapt to offer unique solutions and a human connection which those firms struggle with. And there’s that other issue that your current source of leads, e.g., from a supplier/marketplace that might raise prices, reduce supply/access) may cut you out at any time.

Intrepid Travel Tours — Growing for Spectacular Revenue and Marketshare Gains

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As an example of growth, let’s look at IntrepidTravel.com, a service many travel agencies use to provide tours for their customers.

IntrepidTravel, the tour marketplace is making growth moves. Their latest financials show a net profit of $21.8 million in 2023 – a $47.7 million turnaround from 2022, the best growth in the company’s history. Bookings grew 68%, revenue rose 113%, and 41% YoY growth in revenue and a $180 million boost in web bookings, while creating 10,000 more direct customers.

What’s driving their growth is complex, obviously a deliberate overall strategy of growth and acquisitions (check out their 2025 outlook pdf), but I’ve noticed more online travel agencies using them as a provider. Seems a simple way for travel companies to expand/enhance their own product offerings, even if the cost/commissions are high. Right now, travelers might not care.

And they appear to be providing more tours, customized tours, and elite-priced guided tours as well. That would indicate a product, innovation, retention, and partnership strategy base is behind it, and that’s opening up new possibilities and connections. Of course, those business development activities are contributing to a strong presence online. As this chart shows, their Google referrals have grown.

Threats to Your Business May Contain the Key to Growth

Threats are signal to guide your response.  They’re simply the voice of change from tech, entrepreneurs and international business.  Ecotourism, adventure travel, and senior’s travel are booming.  Times and markets change. With all the change in experiences, destinations, customers, and business processes, market niches are always open for domination. A defensive positioning strategy won’t work long.

Many new online travel businesses are forming due only to technology. New SaaS travel management software is providing tools for bookings, customer service, bookings, itinerary management, consulting, and marketing and leads.

And AI is entering the picture which your staff can leverage to add services and products and be more effective. AI-powered travel software is obviously a big opportunity. Exploring the latest travel management software is a wise investment of time.

Proactive Preparation for Healthy Growth

I hope you’re serious about moving forward with a growth plan. For most agencies like yours, marketing is the weakness. Great marketing can inspire your product development, partnerships, markets and reach.  It can help you really grasp what your brand truly is.  It can help you save your current clientele, and move forward to capture new customers.

One thing about hiring me whether for content development, PPC, SEO, or social media promotion, is that it’s an inexpensive opportunity to explore a multitude of products/strategies/tactics.  When I grew Delta Hotel’s traffic from 1.2 million per year to 2.5 million, it made their PPC spend more effective, grew brand awareness significantly, captured more emails, and gave them additional feedback on many things they were doing in marketing. It was big picture value they weren’t expecting. Picture yourself in this situation.

Ways to Grow Your Travel Company

Okay, so you want to consider growth, but how would you go about it? Look at the opportunities and find ones that inspire you most.

1. 1. new types of services
   2. new geographic markets (India is seeing huge outbound growth in travelers)
   3. new branded travel experiences (your own custom tours and special tour guide)
   4. improved marketing — tv, YouTube, downloadable brochures, influencer connections
   5. improve your content marketing
   6. advertise more
   7. build partnerships
   8. drop unprofitable products/services

1. try a new travel marketing software platform
2. specialize in profitable niches (adventure, cruises, luxury travel, eco, and wine tours)
3. focus more on your unique travel niche and really capture it
4. expand your agency/tour company physically to new national or international locations/cities

Top Travel Business Growth Strategies

Let’s review growth strategies created by Entrepreneur Magazine as an initial guide. These can help you visualize a path ahead and make it easier to make good decisions.  You’ll likely employ each of them in a sophisticated approach that helps you become a market leader.

Market Penetration Strategy: growing sales of your current products/services within your current customer base.
Product Development: creating or offering new innovative travel products/subscriptions to build a more impressive brand and give current customers something new to try.
Market Expansion: You could explore new markets or target new customer segments and niches thus growing and diversifying your customer base and reducing the risk of dependency on one market.
Strategic Partnerships: Explore and Capture Whatever Works: If you’re practical, you might like the idea of us exploring several unique/diverse opportunities, a customized approach to let us find something in the marketplace that builds leads for your travel agency, destination, software company, or tour company. Real success is never simple as in these single strategies. Instead, a unique combination that works for you is likely better.
Customer Retention: Personalized communications and service packages, focus on customer service, and a brand image of continuous value grow customers’ confidence and optimism about their connection with you.
Pricing Strategy: Developing a pricing strategy that lets customers access better value will help. With their increased expenditure, they receive a menu of added value features and benefits. This could be done to help differentiate your service packages and your brand and help ward off competitor offerings and encroachment.
Digital Marketing: The ultimate medium to grow exposure, market awareness, engagement, customer loyalty, impact, and sales touchpoints. All the other growth strategies need digital marketing tactics to be successful. It’s the swiss army knife of growth tools. A multi-digital-channel approach can help achieve the reach, frequency, and impact you need.
Employee Development: After you’ve identified the right growth strategy, you can work to train and boost the skills and capabilities of your staff. Certainly, with new travel management software tools arriving, talented staff become more capable of helping prospects, closing leads, and providing better service to customers.
Customer Feedback: Tapping your current base for insights on satisfaction and areas of improvement can help guide growth plans and product development.
Continuous Innovation: Adapting and optimizing your travel business processes, product marketing, and business model helps you to keep ahead of the wolf pack and perhaps set you apart as the market leader.

Many Pieces of a Giant Travel & Tourism Market Available to You

As you saw, Intrepid Travel Tours innovated and grew in 2023. They jumped on the trend of tour travel and solidified their current customer base while growing out many new ways.

The truth for your small travel business is that a much larger market is available whenever you feel like accessing it. Whether you’re a SaaS travel management software developer, tour operator, travel agency, hotel or resort, or travel destination, a growth strategy seems natural and wise.

The solution involves building small, unthreatening successes that build confidence and mastery. By using digital marketing strategies to their fullest, you will capture wins, grow sales, run experiments and gain valuable insight.

Hopefully, the strategies discussed peak your curiosity about improving. At the very least, you’ll earn much more revenue while keeping your marketshare and customer base.

Let’s build some urgency and new sales revenue and grow your travel agency.

📞 Contact Gord at 416 998 6246 for a free review of your digital marketing and how a new approach will make a big difference.

See more on the Travel & Tourism Market outlook, strategy for increasing bookings, how to build trust with travelers, how to  create great travel experiences, and techniques for optimizing customers’ path to purchase.