What are Today’s Travel Business Challenges?

What challenges is your travel business facing today? Knowing them is critical for continued success against growing competition, who are also studying your target customer.

The travel industry is changing, especially with the market aging or seeing more young people who love technology and online marketing. Let’s take a closer look at common business hurdles—and explore together how improved marketing will help you roll right over them.

Before we dive into 12 significant business challenges below, I hope you’re in a positive frame of mind where you’re confident you can resolve all of them. Together, we can integrate them within a powerful travel marketing strategy.

I think the “we” team attitude is important because it spurs a lot more confidence, resourcefulness and determination. Alone, we feel disempowered. If you’ve got a hunch you can master this, then it’s a matter of doing it.

There is no guarantee that a digital marketing agency will understand your issues deeply or have the integrated talent to grow sales long term. Buying PPC ads for instance (travel companies spend 55% of budget on ppc ads) might be a huge waste of money if the PPC agency can’t comprehend your UVP and target customer (By the way, I perform PPC campaigns for free in a major contract with you).

Anyone you’re considering working with should have this discipline to dig deeply — to discover what’s really not optimal in your business and what might work better. It’s not a service really, but a collaboration with you.

Your Marketing Challenge is Not Unsolvable

Many travel companies face the challenge of finding marketing consultants who truly understand the travel sector. My approach cuts through that skepticism, and with your help and insights, the best content strategy will be exposed. Then your marketing strategy can be improved to make your agency/business the only one your audience will ever want.

What I hope you’ll achieve is not just exclusivity for your customers — it’s more like you being joined at the hip.

You’re targeting Gen Zs, Millennials, Gen Xers, Baby boomer seniors, wealthy/families/business travelers, nationalities, male/female, and other marget segments. But the solution is in a sophisticated mix of content, messaging, tone of voice and more to persuade your special mix of traveler types.

The real goal: To create new, highly qualified, long-term and truly loyal customers. You’re spending on marketing so it should not be temporary leads involving temporary, poorly qualified prospects.

The core travel marketing challenge? Reaching and persuading a prospect to make them believe your company is the only one they should consider, even one they trust to shape their understanding of their travel desire. Your content can be designed to achieve this.

The customer’s sole preference for your company/brand makes all other travel companies vanish into thin air. It creates the first sale and sets up continuous purchases in the years ahead. It means maximizing the LTV performance of your marketing spend.

It will be exciting to work with me to understand your UVP much better, and how to position it via great content so it’s the “only travel company for me” result you’ll appreciate achieving.

What are the 12 Top Travel Marketing Challenges Today?

Let’s draw up 12 of the most problematic now. I draw them up in a flow chart to be more clearly aware of them and how they connect to the solution. Through this visual, right-brained/left-brained brainstorming technique, we can identify sore spots and then distill out the most important solutions.

Lack of digital marketing strategy – weak targeting without a unified strategy means campaigns don’t generate the impact expected. The strategy includes items below, and synchronizes them to deliver branding and offers that make travelers take notice in a specified time period. Create a one-page strategy document that simplifies how yours will work.
Weak understanding of the target travel customer — the ideal set of customers can be reached if you fully understand them. Travel audience research needs to be deep enough and tailored to your specific market/customer profile. You might subscribe to a variety of top industry research sources, and then re-examine your customer behavioral data (web analytics, sales stats). This is just hard work and determination to drill down until you get the insights needed. You may need improved funnel analytics software for this.
Price transparency — travelers want to see their itinerary broken down to verify costs (because they don’t trust you yet). We can present this gently within blogs and product pages that highlights unique value rather than going into price consciousness.
Lower profit margins — costs are rising and are difficult to communicate and pass onto customers (the value added benefit to justify added cost hasn’t been proven to them). You need to do more with less.
Trip and service choice — travelers have a massive market of products and services available and some of them have good points that you should use to improve your own offering online (visitors don’t feel an affinity to your company yet. Your brand value must be proven in your blogs, social messages, emails and travel videos). Is the challenge beating their offering, or is just improving your marketing and sales communications?
Lack of control over your travel product — reselling other travel company’s products on their schedules and pricing creates friction and risk. For that reason, building your own special branded travel products, separate from major tour companies and aggregators is wise. It lessens the worry over losing your entire travel product selection when they change their business models. (you haven’t moved your customers away from the aggregators to your branded niche packages). The tour aggregators could destroy your business.
Competition from other travel companies — competition for growing numbers of freelance agents and giant travel portals/conglomerates squeezes travel agencies both ways. Big international corporations leverage massive marketing funds and online platforms to dominate advertising and reach. (how about acquiring funding to raise and improve your marketing/advertising and customer service quality).
Traveler independence — travelers want more than planned travel packages and wish to be independent, adding other activities as they venture into the destination (you must create a helpful brand that says you’re not just a reseller, but are the enabler of any experience they want, and not committed to only one channel/service provider. You must show you have the financial/product power to reassure them of your ability to deliver, anytime, anywhere).
Decreased customer loyalty — with price and trip selection being important and since many products appear to be commodities, travelers feel less desire to stick with one agency. (Build a magnetic, unique brand nurtured via high quality, unique content, with persistent delivery to your client list, that speaks to their specific dreams and values).
Online connection — travelers get their info from Google search, multiple travel website visits, online reviews, Youtube, and well-used forums which skews perceptions of packages and destinations thus agencies must overcome that to present their packages anew and untainted (showing credibility, expertise, knowledge, experience, authority, helpfulness and authenticity via content that’s viewed via Google search, your blog, YouTube channel, and Facebook page).
Digital marketing channels — modern content types well-designed and presented via SEO, blogs, PPC campaigns and social media promotion are vital today. This brings us to the challenge of travel content strategy, credibility/trust and brand presentation, and relationship building online. (The message is that you are savvy, connected, up-to-date, reliable, and are delivering messages when they count).
eCommerce — being digitally e-commerce-friendly with your travel packages available online for immediate purchase is expected by travelers, and allowing additional upsells is necessary now. Selling during the shopping experience is important thus AI-powered chatbots and predictive content presentation might help a lot. (You must show reliability, manageability, convenience, and 24×7 service so they can resolve their issues, questions and needs quickly. It means you really are their (BTBE) best travel buddy ever).

Going Nichey is a Smart Choice

It appears that successful agencies are going nichey in many ways to win battles for travelers. They may be into Blue Ocean Strategies to find unique market opportunities. New niche markets might help you differentiate and develop more successful products for your unique targets.

BTW, with me, you have a key asset and resource to help you carve out traffic up against the mega-travel sites with me. There are ways to compete with content and you shouldn’t avoid competing head-on in some ways. I’ve made a living competing head-to-head with them for clients, and we can do it.

If we win new traffic, they will need to be presented with a content storyline that fits their profiles (traveler type). It’s a storyline/narrative that affirms their choices and desires, while presenting them as the heroes of their travel dream, and that your company has the power to make this customized travel experience come true.

If you’re just sharing any of your own stories and recollections on your blog or social media pages, it might not be effective. They need the storyline that’s most significant to them. Significance goes way beyond relevance.

Travelers must be persuaded that their travel dream is a customized experience that only you can provide. Right now, they believe Expedia, Travelocity, TourRadar, or Booking.com can give them all they need.

The thing is, if they’re not familiar with your brand and packages, they won’t regard your communication highly. Unfortunately, they will consider Expedia more genuine and authoritative! We can build your brand respect and authority to counter the big portals, using engaging, impactful and authoritative content. Travelers should be romanced and entertained, then they open up to your influence and communications.

Identifying Your Key Challenges and Solving Them Together

With all of these factors in mind, what’s the biggest challenge for your business?

Is it reaching new audiences, impacting visitors, deepening customer loyalty, or refining your nichey, unique value proposition?

Let’s clarify it together because understanding this will shape the next steps in your strategy. My role is to support you in turning this challenge into an opportunity—whether it’s creating tailored, effective content or optimizing your digital marketing efforts. By combining your insights and my versatility/expertise, we can craft an affordable plan.

Let’s transform obstacles into growth, making your travel company stand out in an ever-competitive market as “the only travel company for them.”

Read more on travel marketing and discover my flexible travel marketing service packages.