Tips to Modernize your Travel Business
There isn’t a person alive who doesn’t rest on their laurels.
It’s human nature to rely on our strengths, expertise and experience. You’ve likely developed some excellent capacities that power your agency.
Unfortunately, at some point, our strengths can become our biggest weakness. Because such rallying around our strengths leaves us unable to stay open to market changes, try new things, expand repertoires, and build out new opportunities. In business, the over reliance on our established brand, customer base, and lead generation sources leaves us straightjacketed.
And if you are generally unreachable and your social profiles are invisible or unwelcoming, you might realize you’ve made yourself isolated and irrelevant to modern travelers who use social media strongly.
Not having a flair of connecting and engaging is an example of a modern marketing liability. So although you have strengths, you may possess glaring weaknesses too which leads to your business is be less accessible and visible. And to that point, you might evolve from “exclusive connections only” to “approachable and helpful.”
Is Your Target Demographic is Disappearing?
A good example to reflect on is a long running travel agency and the key founders and owners with their established relationships with customers of a certain demographic. As that demographic changes, ages, or sees lower income, sales begin to tail off.
The correct response to the loss is to build out new travel experiences for new growing audiences and market them in a style they prefer.
But too often, a travel agency owner doubles down on their current market, come hell or high water, refusing to admit to the full context that’s playing out. Maybe sales are still okay, but the market trends speak clearly — a shrinking customer group pursued more aggressively by old rival agencies in the very same circumstance.
If this is your situation, your travel packages, website, and travel content experience should be revised along with your agency’s brand and tone of voice.
Yes, a professional, stable, sincere voice is still expected, but travelers always yearn for something fresh and new. It might be the same vacation their parents bought, but they see it a different way and this viewing angle reflects how they want to experience it psychologically.
Converting Your Travel Expertise to a New Audience
For small to mid-sized agencies, adjusting your offer is a must. As you know, the major OTAs are appealing to that new, often younger demographic with tailored, personalized itineraries and benefits via their trip catalogs.
What’s more frightening, is how your current customers are receiving the big OTAs and tour marketplaces’ value proposition persistently throughout the day as they search or visit their favorite social media channels. They will capture your customers at some point and they may not come back.
Old channels such as TV and radio don’t work well either. Too many travelers have cut their TV cable to watch YouTube. I myself only listen to YouTube tunes live when I drive, via cell connection or mp4s on my smartphone. I don’t watch TV anymore. And I’m a laggard by the standards of the younger crowd. I use Google primarily for any travel research I do, looking to bloggers/influencers for insights I need.
Convert Your Strengths: It’s All Marketing Messaging
But your strength is still a strength if you convert your brand to appeal to this new audience. Your authority, expertise, photos, videos, personality can all be converted to the new visual marketing formats and new blogs written to convey your solid awareness of your chosen destinations.
New startup travel companies have no one on staff who has visited most destinations, don’t know it’s history and culture, or the changes that have take place. And since travelers today want immersion, they would be captivated by someone who really does know the destination.
But if they read something that sounds like it’s for their Dad or Grandma about things they’re really not into, they will leave your site.
What changes is how your expertise and knowledge are presented to these growing volumes of Gen Z’s, Millennials and Gen Xers too. They all like modern online digital travel management software and apps now, and this taps into how they want to experience “authentic journeys.”
Your new approach offers up an authentic transformative experience of the joy of travel, to help them achieve their personal goals of rejuvenation, growth, and meaning.
But How Would I Transform My Travel Business?
That’s the key question — how to transport and reposition your excellent brand and expertise to a new audience and maybe becoming iconic?
The first step would be to do extensive research on your travel market and which demographic groups or profiles are buying trips and tours. Then research the top competitors in those markets to see what they’re offering and how they’re marketing and promoting their products.
This mean analyzing their advertising, website, brand positioning, content, and lead sources.
Then you’ll want to review any other long-running travel company you know of which has gone through this transformation. You can view their old website on archive.org to view their changes through the years.
Crafting New Travel Experiences, Trips and Tours for Them
With a view of the specific target customers you’d like to reach, you can begin building out new travel experiences for them, and repositioning your brand to appeal to them. This might involve hiring branding consultant to plan your new brand and a website developer for travel ecommerce options.
With that completed and a new brand positioning statement, you can build your new travel website, design your social media pages, and build new creative content with a unique style, flair and quality that makes your company “the only one for them.” There is nothing preventing you from rising to preferred brand status in their minds. It’s all in smart strategic marketing.
13 Ways to Transform your Agency
- Adopt Digital Technology: enhance your online presence and improve the trip booking experience including an adaptive website, booking engine, tour marketplace integration, and developing a web app.
- Leverage Your Experience in Storytelling: Convey your deep industry, connections, and destination knowledge in collaboration with your content writer to create new engaging content that tells compelling travel stories in a modern style.
- Develop a Strong Social Media Presence: Establish active profiles open to connection on popular social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Twitter. Share visually appealing content, travel inspiration, behind-the-scenes looks at destinations, and customer testimonials.
- Collaborate with Influencers and Bloggers: Partner with travel influencers and bloggers who have a strong following among the audiences you’re targeting. These influencers can help you promote your agency’s brand and products via their agreeable style.
- Offer Personalized Travel Experiences: Provide unique, personalized itineraries to maximize the journey according to their wishes and preferences. Weave in whatever events, attractions and experiences they like including adventure tours, eco-friendly options, cultural immersion, and off-the-beaten-path destinations.
- Implement a Loyalty Program: Create a loyalty program that rewards repeat customers with discounts, special offers, and exclusive experiences. This can help build a strong community of loyal younger travelers.
- Provide Instant and Accessible Customer Service: Utilize chatbots, social media messaging, and instant messaging apps to create their “best travel friend” kind of assistance and support to younger travelers who may need such support as they’re a long way from home.
- Focus on your Value-Added Revenue Opportunities: Highlight the added value of booking through a travel agency, exclusive private guided tours, expert advice, personalized service, exclusive deals, and support during emergencies (travel or health insurance).
- Live Steaming Events: Host live streaming events via Facebook or Zoom and create virtual tours to engage with potential customers. Travel workshops, Q&A sessions with your travel expert team, helps you immerse prospects in your destination packages.
- Collect Customer Feedback: Use online surveys, SMS messages, emails, and social media polls to learn more about younger travelers preferences, fears, satisfaction and challenges.
- Modernize Your Brand and Marketing Materials: Update the agency’s branding to reflect a the new expanded value proposition to each audience. Redesign you brand image, messages, graphic style, logo, website, and your marketing collateral specifically to your new target audience.
- Highlight Authentic Experiences: Create and promote authentic and immersive travel experiences that resonate with each new traveler type.
- Encourage User-Generated Content: Encourage satisfied customers to comment and share their travel experiences on your blog, social media pages and to share posts with their connections. Social media has extensive reach and each connection is point of contact for many more prospects.
Done skillfully, you can segment your travel marketing strategy for each identifiable group, including your loyal travelers who may not prefer the new style or messaging. Then you engage them through a dedicated path or “special club” with rich content they’ve always trusted and enjoyed from you (new material too).
Next Steps: Have me conduct an insightful digital marketing audit then try a digital marketing pilot project. Then with the results of that, you might move next to assembling a small team of designers/analytics/CRO specialists and travel marketing experts, to welcome more eager travelers and keep your travel agency or tour company thriving.
Contact Gord if you’re ready to progress with the transformation of your agency. I’d be delighted to participate in something this rewarding. You can reach me at 416 998 6246.
Title graphic designed by Wannapic.com