Sure, sure, you are so busy that you just have no time to even think about marketing. Yet, marketing is the foundation on which all businesses rely. Smart travel advisors with whom we spoke are blocking out time on their schedules to do some outreach, finding new ways to connect, and turning to SEO algorithms and Pinterest to “meet clients where they are.”
“I’ve not had much time to do any marketing,” says Cathy Udovch, owner of Travelstore in Irvine, CA. With some cruise lines offering great deals for Wave Season, “I send an email here and there to existing clients where I think the promo is precisely geared toward their interests,” she says “But I’m scrambling to keep up with my paperwork after making the bookings.”
Yet, many say marketing is the cornerstone to growth, and they are not ready to give it up.
Rob Walters just paid $6,000 for a new website for his agency, Worldwide Travel Associates Inc. (www.wwtainc.com) – and “I love it, but now I’m wondering why I did it, because I don’t need the business,” he says. “My huge problem is that I can’t get help, so I’m turning away business, and not taking trips within 60 days of departure. But the website is the gateway to my office, and I wanted a nicer-looking storefront.” His biggest change from the old website? In a high-end neighborhood with luxury clients, he removed all mention of prices and special offers and focused on “wowing my clients with videos and photography.”
At Bridie Travel in Chicago, meanwhile, Megan Amelio has been getting a new customer a day from her blogs and posts on social media, including Google and The Knots, as well as local Facebook groups for moms. And she is getting so much business from Pinterest that she has hired a marketing company, Ava and the Bee, to handle posting for her.
“They see me on Pinterest, and then they search other keywords and my website pops up and they reach out,” she says.
The key to Pinterest, Amelio says, is new, fresh content every month. Rather than just posting generic content, the marketing company researches trends and SEO keywords and then posts four blogs a month based on what’s trending.
For example, the marketing company’s research showed Sandals was trending 350%. “I’m not opposed to selling Sandals, but it is not a preferred brand so we did a twist on the idea to drive traffic to my website. We wrote a blog on tips about vacationing at three Sandals resorts and added in the cultural aspects of the different islands featured.”
November through February, for example, is engagement season, so she is focusing on destination weddings, “where I make the most money and what I like to sell,” she says. She asks every couple if they will share their photos and fill out a questionnaire, and includes that unique content in every post and blog.
“It’s nice to use real wedding photos instead of stock images—and after a year of honing in and blogging, there’s a huge difference from when I just did a blog here and there,” she says.
Of course, once the client calls, Amelio is free to suggest other properties as well. “Often with honeymooners on Pinterest, they’ve never been out of the country, and Sandals is all they know. I’ll give Sandals as an option but also suggest other resorts.”
The marketing company comes up with four trending topics each month, and then either Amelio writes the blogs or the company does, and Amelio edits them. For “Montego Bay activities,” for example, she gave them bullet points and they wrote the blogs. She also has added a lead magnet to her Pinterest and social media pages—a destination wedding guide she gives potential customers free in exchange for their email addresses.
Suppliers, too, are looking at new ways to market in 2024. KHM Travel Group supplier relations manager, Charlie Thompson, notes that many suppliers aren’t spending as much on co-op marketing, but rather are “holding onto their revenue and spending more time and energy making sure they have face time with travel advisors in the marketplace.” Rather than handing out brochures and marketing to consumers through cruise nights, smart companies (like Royal Caribbean) have built inside teams doing weekly phone calls with travel advisors through their host agencies, where they reach 400-500 agents at a time.
$5 Million in Sales
But for Chi Tarver, owner of Extra Vacations Travel, 2024 is all about the most boring of social media, Facebook.
In her 16th year in business, Tarver sold almost $5 million in travel in 2023 by shifting her focus from her website to the 3.5 billion folks who log into Facebook every single day.
“We’ve ramped up our marketing this year because of the way the world is going,” she says. “So essentially we abandoned our landing page and just use it as a presence, but we intensified our focus on meeting people where they are—and they are on Facebook. Everybody has some budget to travel—even if it’s just a $250 getaway to the Poconos—and many of us share a hatred for planning. But what if a trip just landed in your lap and it nailed your time off? What if someone said, ‘Are you thinking about Spring Break with your kids? How about this Disney Cruise that fits into your budget?’ If you do all the work and all they need to do is message you, then they’re in.”
Tarver starts with the calendar, looking at the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, then in February looking at Mardi Gras in New Orleans or the Super Bowl, and starts posting and creating cruise groups in a timely fashion. She schedules posts to go out every single day, using the Facebook algorithms to ensure that “anyone who’s ever clicked on ‘Mommy and me’ or anything that has family in it gets a Spring Break post; anyone who talks about being pregnant sees our Mommymoon. Facebook wants to keep people on the site, so leaning into its social media algorithm, following the trends, we’ve become a marketing-driven travel agency.”
For 2024, all her 80 ICs are required to understand artificial intelligence (AI) and AI marketing, and attend the training sessions being offered by her consortium, Travel Planners International. In a training session she calls “Chasing Algorithms,” for example, they look at trending hashtags together–not just the generic “travel” but “spring break travel.”
In the first 15 days of January, they sold $500,000 worth of travel, Tarver says—perhaps 30% Wave Season cruises but also “a lot of FIT and customized packages, escorted guided tours—more of everything than we’ve ever sold before,” she says.
Tarver is happy to serve as a mentor for other travel advisors looking to grow their online sales “because I realize that if we professionalize the industry together, we can all prosper.” Her advice?
Her advice for growing your business in 2024?
“Lean into the algorithm. And if you are not seasoned, find a mentor. There are plenty of us in the industry; I can give you a list of mentors in your specialty. Find someone to help you who isn’t apprehensive about passing down the secrets to benefit the industry as a whole.”
Cheryl’s 40-year career in journalism is bookended by roles in the travel industry, including Executive Editor of Business Travel News in the 1990s, and recently, Editor in Chief of Travel Market Report and admin of Cheryl Rosen’s Group for Travel Professionals, a news and support group on Facebook. As an independent contractor since retiring from the 9-to-5 to travel more, she has written regular articles about the life and business of travel agents for Luxury Travel Advisor, Travel Agent, and Insider Travel Report. She also writes and edits for professional publications in the financial services, business, and technology sectors.
