Is Your Travel Agency Going Down? 8 Tips to Skyrocket Your Travel Agency
The travel industry has been hit the hardest due to the outbreak of Coronavirus. Many countries have decided to shut their borders in an effort to control the spread of this pandemic. Airlines, hotels, and other travel businesses have been forced to discontinue their operations for a while, they have no choice left. At a time like this, even the successful travel agencies are suffering losses.
Many travel startups may have had to completely close down, having to pay high costs without making any revenue. However, if your travel agency is still holding on, you can save it from going down. Here are 8 tips you can use to skyrocket your travel agency and grow your business rapidly once everything gets back to normal.
Tips to skyrocket your travel agency
Social media engagement
The best medium to attract more customers and increase your brand visibility is through social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. Almost all travelers are active on social media and share their travel experiences and their preferences over these platforms. Therefore, to grow your travel agency, it is important to engage with your customers on social media. Social media engagement can be done by uploading images, videos, and travel-related posts to get customers to interact with you. Nowadays, instagram is a much popular for sharing images and videos. You can use instagram name generator to pick a trendy name for your business page that reflects your business clearly. Starting various campaigns and offering exciting deals and discounts to customers will motivate them to book their travel through your travel agency. You can also receive feedback from customers through social media engagement and alter your travel products accordingly.
Upsell your product
One of the most common methods of increasing your sales is upselling. Upselling is often missed while selling travel products to customers. For instance, when selling a tour package to a customer, you can also offer meal options. The customer is more likely to buy the meals as otherwise, they would have to look for restaurants to eat when they are on the tour. Similarly, you can offer drinks to your customers who have chosen to spend an evening on a cruise ship.
How to upsell your products is for you to explore and find out. Based on the travel packages that your customers are booking, you can offer them add-ons and lure them.
Get a travel portal software
If your travel agency is still not online, you have missed out on a lot of opportunities even prior to COVID-19. The modern-age travelers prefer booking their travel online, therefore, it is crucial for your business to have an online presence. Offering your customers a responsive website and mobile app to search and book their travel will help you increase your sales and attract new customers. An online booking software provides the convenience to book their travel at any time and from anywhere, without having to visit a travel agent.
If you require travel portal software, you will have to find a travel portal development company that can build a travel portal for your business. Travel portal development companies provide custom development as well as white label solutions that are readily available for use.
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Build strategic partnerships
The worldwide quarantine and lockdown have had a huge impact on all travel businesses. Therefore, to revive the travel industry, it will be important or every business to leverage strategic partnerships. A strategic partnership is an arrangement between two businesses that benefits both businesses. For instance, a travel agency can build a strategic partnership with hotels to offer discounts to its customers for the hotel rooms. This way the travel agency’s customers will book the hotel while the hotel will benefit from having fewer vacant rooms.
Building strategic partnerships help travel agencies to attract more customers, reach new markets, and find new ideas for development.
Encourage customers to leave reviews
From a simple fact that you yourself would look for reviews and ratings before visiting a particular restaurant, it is quite evident that your customers will also trust you more with good reviews and ratings. As per studies, 90% of customers are influenced by reviews when it comes to buying something, and 87% of potential customers don’t transact with businesses that have low ratings and reviews. These reviews and ratings can be earned only from your customers who have used your services before. Also, it doesn’t matter if you have a few bad reviews amongst a lot of good reviews. It only proves that the reviews are genuine and helps potential customers trust the reviews. Therefore, ensure you ask your customers to leave reviews and feedback of their experience with your travel agency.
Craft unique travel packages
Selling a package is always better than selling individual products. You can show some creativity and combine different travel products to craft a unique travel package for your customers. The travel package should be influenced by the travel behavior of the particular customers you are creating the package for.
Many travelers especially families also prefer all-inclusive travel packages, while some travelers prefer experiential travel packages. To be able to provide unique and attractive packages, you will have to analyze the market, competitors, and the travel behavior and needs of your customers. With travel packages, you will be able to sell more travel products in comparison to selling them individually.
Improve your website design
Another important tip to skyrocket your travel agency is improving your website design for enhanced user experience. If you have already gone digital, there is still room for improvement. You can utilize this time of inactivity to improve the performance and design of your travel website.
You can also add the latest features to be able to provide a better booking experience to your customers. Having a responsive website and a good UI/UX helps customers navigate easily through your website, search for their travel needs, and proceed toward completing their booking.
Use SEO techniques
Lastly, you can leverage the power of SEO to get your website to rank on search engines. A high ranking website is easily accessible by potential customers and is trusted to provide good services. There are many digital marketing companies, such as iTonic, that can help you to boost up business digitally by using various on-page and off-page SEO techniques to improve your ranking on Google, and get more visitors on your website. Focus can include writing keywords-enriched blogs for your travel website, indulging in guest posts to create backlinks, or answering travel-related questions on platforms like Quora and linking your website in the answer.
