What are Today’s Travel Business Challenges?
What challenges is your travel business facing right now? Likely, they’re the exact same issues that plague all the others.
It’s all part of changes in the economy and travel industry. I can help you respond to your lead, revenue and loyalty erosion with improved marketing — strategy, content creation, SEO, social media engagement, PPC ads, and more.
It’s not about a slick end-to-end program, although we’ll set that up. It’s in the quality. That means creating the right content and messaging for your specific target audience to harvest the best. And there’s another layer too. That’s content and strategies for those who don’t know you, and to establish your website as relevant, credible and trustworthy to Google. Google delivers the lion’s share of traffic and we need to respect what they want.
Your Real Big Picture Goal: Is to be the only travel company they will ever want — satisfying, comprehensive, trusted, and loved. Everything else is details.
What are the 12 Top Travel Marketing Challenges Today?
When I conduct my research, I draw them up in a flow chart to be more clearly aware of them and how they might connect to the solution. Through this visual, right-brained/left-brained visualization-brainstorming technique, we can identify sore spots and then distill out the most important solutions — and how they serve your brand and offer. Works so well.
- 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).
You’re competing with the big OTA’s hotels, tour marketplaces, airlines and others who are slowly squeezing you out of the market. Using travel marketing strategy, we can persuade travelers 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 travel packages, they won’t regard your communication highly. Your content persuades them of your credibility, respect and inspiration. To them, you are your content so it needs to be good.
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.
Identify Your Key Challenges and Let’s Solve Them Together
With all of these factors in mind, what’s the biggest challenge for your business?
Are you 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.
📞 Contact Gord at 416 998 6246 for a free review of your travel company’s digital marketing and how my affordable, powerful approach will work.
