How working offline keeps you behind the game

The travel services sales process has several specific stages. Each stage has some important parts that can be optimized to increase sales. In this short article, you will find out what these stages are, allowing you to optimize your travel agency sales process.

Every tourist planning to travel begins a process that takes 42 days on average, a number made known in the industry by researchers from Expedia. Let's see what these stages are and how you can optimize them.

Discovery

In the first stage, the tourist becomes aware of a possible travel destination. Sources of influence here are: friends, media, advertisements, etc. In this stage, the person is not ready to buy and is not even searching for possible options. They have just had an idea. A profitable travel agency should address this step by always bringing destinations and travel ideas to tourists’ attention. They don't have to be something new, but they have to be diverse and attractive. You can achieve this easily by posting frequently on Facebook and on your travel agency blog. If you don't do this, you will lose a lot of potential customers. If you are a travel agency that works mostly offline, it might be a good idea to use an online platform to help you generate content for Facebook and your blog. If you are working only offline you are limiting yourself to only a part of the market.

Searching for a solution

In the next stage, the tourist actively searches for a solution. They can search online to find the best price, call their preferred travel agent or visit travel agencies. This is a big hassle for the travel agency. You know those difficult customers who keep you busy for two hours asking questions and changing their minds and in the end don't buy? That is one place where having an online booking engine on your website comes in handy. By using such an engine, you can serve most of the customers who are actively searching for solutions without wasting your precious time. Of course, in this way you can serve many more people than through the traditional way of doing business.

Ready to buy

In the final stage, the tourist is ready to buy. The actual trigger for this is often the solution that comes to mind when he or she is ready to buy. Here, if you have an online booking engine on your website you can send ads to the exact customers that visited your website. In this way, your offer will be at the top of their minds each time they reach the web via Facebook or Google. This process is called remarketing. A modern online platform should have many tools dedicated to remarketing to your customers. How many customers have you lost by not being top of their mind?

So the main idea of this article is that if you want to increase your sales without wasting human resources, online is the way to reach way more customers and automate your sales process. If you want to receive more articles like this, you can subscribe to our series of 25+ emails that teach you the nuts and bolts of a successful online travel agency. These strategies are very easy to implement and highly cost effective, if you choose the right platform.

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