My hubby and I are in LA at a marketing conference learning some the newest and most effective online marketing strategies. I love these conferences, I always come away bursting with new information and strategies to share with you!
My oh-so-awesome hubby had the brilliant idea of hopping over to Hawaii for a few days after the conference. We have a bucket list of destinations we want to visit before we start having babies, and Hawaii is on the list (neither of us has ever been).
From where we live on the east coast, Hawaii is an 18-hour journey and requires at least one connecting flight, but from LA it’s only a 5-hour direct flight. And because we will be in LA all week, we’ll be accustomed to west coast time, which is just a 2-hour difference from LA (win win!!).
Then on the way home we’re spending a night in LA to make the journey home more fun and less exhausting.
This is a great strategy to suggest to your clients, and in your e-newsletters. For your clients who take business trips, offer to plan out a fun add-on adventure to some of their business trips. If they are already packing and getting into travel mode, and then traveling across the country or overseas, why not take advantage of it by tacking on a few days, or even a week or two, of vacation time which you can plan out for them.
Most likely you have at least a handful of clients that travel on business from time to time. Maybe they’ve never considered the possibility of tacking on a vacation, or maybe they thought about it but never had the time to actually plan it out, so they’ve never done it.
Suggest the idea to them and let them know that you would love to handle all of the details for them, and that you can plan it in such a way that they will come home feeling refreshed and rejuvenated instead of exhausted as we so often feel after busy business trips across multiple time zones.
If you have clients you know travel on business, send them a personal email this week with this idea. You could write about this idea in one of your upcoming newsletters and on your blog.
Be sure that you let them know specifically which destinations you book so that they don’t respond back asking you to book something you don’t specialize in. Or, you could leave it open to any destination and if they ask for one that you don’t specialize in, simply refer them to another agent who does specialize in what they want and then get a referral fee from that agent.
It’s beneficial to your business and to your clients to have a network of travel agents who you know and trust, and who all have different specialties so that you can refer to one another. I recommend that you pay each other referral fees after you’ve received the travel commission on the referral. Establish ahead of time what the referral fee is – generally 10% of the complete travel commission earned is a fair referral fee.
If you’re in the Travel Expert Marketing Academy we recommend that you charge your clients a planning fee. Usually a referral commission is not paid on the planning fee unless it’s the type of trip that has a very low travel commission and a very high planning fee (which is uncommon).
Inside the academy is a fantastic group of travel agents who are movers and shakers and committed to having a thriving agency filled with happy clients, so that is a great place to start establishing your referral network.
If you’re not yet in the Academy, you can register for a FREE preview of it here.
I’m going to head back into the freezing cold conference room to learn some new online marketing strategies. Take a few minutes this week to reach out to your favorite clients. You just may land a few new bookings! And consider putting together a referral network if you don’t yet have one.
Love & Success,
Heidi and Your Marketing Team
P.S. If you want to see some pics of us in LA and Hawaii, hop on over to my Instagram page and follow me.
Did you read last week’s blog post about The Truth About Charging Planning Fees? If not, check it out here.
Such a nice and informative blog.
Thank you, Ria!