I read this article on Travel Weekly UK about travel agent websites.
http://www.travelweekly.co.uk/Articles/2010/04/28/33610/how-to-keep...
I assume the target audience of the article is UK high street travel agents as that is who Travel Weekly is aimed at (in the main). Here is my attempt to rewrite it to be more useful as I couldn't find much in the original article that could be directly applied to a highsteet travel agent situation.
What is a high street travel agent?
High street travel agents tend to sell human expertise, product experience and personal service. This, to a proportion of the general population, has value. In particular there is value to consumers for complex or high value bookings - such as cruise or luxury long haul tours.
What is the service agents sell?
One customer comes into the shop. The challenge is to, using the agent's experience and knowledge, find a handful of products that match that one customer's needs on that occasion. It is a sales challenge and requires a great deal of connections to product suppliers and powerful (read expensive) technology.
The opposite is true for tour operators. Tour operators start with a small set of products and must find customers who are looking for those style of products. This is a marketing challenge. Technology needn't be so expensive.
What website strategies?
We hopefully agree that high street agents sell a service. Services are notoriously difficult to promote online (vs products like tour operators sell). You can summarise in one paragraph what you do "we sell flights from 100 airlines, tours from all the leading tour operators and have some great cruise options". That is your website in one line. Dull.
Some travel agents therefore try to create product centric websites based on the same products they sell on the high steet. However these websites are tough to build AND MARKET on a low budget because they are taking on the big OTAs head on with exactly the same products. Sorry small travel agents this is not a fight you can win.
Instead small travel agents choose to become specialist tour operators - specialising in specialist destinations or activities. That can work online very well indeed. Key point for these agents is to contract with suppliers in the ultimate destination. If a UK travel agent contracts with a UK based company to sell a remote destination then there are too many UK profit margin layers to make the transaction price competitive. These forums are full of agents who have taken this strategy.
But lets assume that the travel agent wants to keep selling their traditional service - human expertise and personal service selling widely available travel products from leading suppliers....
Promoting a service on a travel agent website
The key points here are humans and efficiency
Humans
I would want to see heavy use of LOCAL social media for this. All the time reinforce that you are human and what the humans are doing.
Run evening events focussed on destinations - fronted by your staff - showing their expertise. Reinforce your service not your products.
Talk about fixing travel problems (due to ash for example) and what the humans are doing.
Run schemes to get people to come into the shop as part of a competition.
All the time focus on humans (not products, not destinations). Products / destinations are the hook, but humans are what you are selling.
Stay positive. Don't bash other ways that consumers may choose to book travel. Remember your customers may book with you for their complex travel but book online with a leading OTA for a weekend city break. They won't want to see you bash that approach.
Efficiency
Rather than making all your customer touch points automated (which may cause the customer to forget they are dealing with a local agent) make the touch points efficient (from your perspective). Send personalised emails with information (not automated ones) but make the emails templated so you can stay on top of who needs what emails - and they take 1 minute to write rather than 10 minutes.
Create a customer login on your website so that they can see the status of any work you are doing for them. Where are you tickets? Can you download pre-departure information? When is my balance due?
Humans have common sense. Make use of it. Making a web system efficient is much less costly than making an automated system. Having to put all that human logic and expertise into an automated system will take months of configuration and a big budget.
In the meantime I have published 55 tips for travel agents and tour operators in a free ebook which covers these topics in more detail.
http://www.tourcms.com/company/travel_ecommerce_tips.php
Plenty of advice around these days for the humble offline travel agent, but here are some important points to take into account when considering or reviewing a website strategy.
What is a High Street (Main Street) travel agent?
High Street travel agents tend to sell human expertise, product experience and personal service. This, to a proportion of the general population, has value. In particular there is value to consumers for complex or high value bookings - such as cruise or luxury long haul tours.
What is the service agents sell?
One customer comes into the shop. The challenge is to, using the agent's experience and knowledge, find a handful of products that match that one customer's needs on that occasion. It is a sales challenge and requires a great deal of connections to product suppliers and powerful (read expensive) technology.
The opposite is true for tour operators. Tour operators start with a small set of products and must find customers who are looking for those style of products. This is a marketing challenge. Technology needn't be so expensive.
What website strategies?
We hopefully agree that offline agents sell a service. Services are notoriously difficult to promote online (vs products like tour operators sell). You can summarise in one paragraph what you do "we sell flights from 100 airlines, tours from all the leading tour operators and have some great cruise options". That is your website in one line. Dull.
Some travel agents therefore try to create product centric websites based on the same products they sell on the High Steet. However these websites are tough to build AND MARKET on a low budget because they are taking on the big OTAs head on with exactly the same products. Sorry small travel agents this is not a fight you can win.
Instead small travel agents choose to become specialist tour operators - focusing on specialist destinations or activities. That can work online very well indeed. Key point for these agents is to contract with suppliers in the ultimate destination.
If a UK travel agent contracts with a UK based company, for example, to sell a remote destination then there are too many UK profit margin layers to make the transaction price competitive.
But let's assume that the travel agent wants to keep selling their traditional service, human expertise and personal service, selling widely available travel products from leading suppliers.
The key points here are humans and efficiency.
Humans:
- I would want to see heavy use of LOCAL social media for this. All the time reinforce that you are human and what the humans are doing.
- Run evening events focussed on destinations - fronted by your staff - showing their expertise.
- Reinforce your service, not your products.
- Talk about fixing travel problems (due to ash for example) and what the humans are doing.
- Run schemes to get people to come into the shop as part of a competition. All the time focus on humans (not products, not destinations).
- Products/destinations are the hook, but humans are what you are selling. Stay positive. Don't bash other ways that consumers may choose to book travel.
- Remember your customers may book with you for their complex travel but book online with a leading OTA for a weekend city break. They won't want to see you bash that approach.
Efficiency:
- Rather than making all your customer touch points automated (which may cause the customer to forget they are dealing with a local agent) make the touch points efficient (from your perspective).
- Send personalised emails with information (not automated ones) but make the emails templated so you can stay on top of who needs what emails - and they take 1 minute to write rather than 10 minutes.
- Create a customer login on your website so that they can see the status of any work you are doing for them. Where are you tickets? Can you download pre-departure information? When is my balance due?
Humans have common sense. Make use of it. Making a web system efficient is much less costly than making an automated system. Having to put all that human logic and expertise into an automated system will take months of configuration and a big budget.
NB: I have published 55 tips for travel agents and tour operators in a free ebook which covers this area in more detail.