Question

Topic: Advertising/PR

How To Launch A Home Based Travel Company

Posted by Anonymous on 10/3/2008 at 11:37 PM ET 125 Points
I have been a travel agent and tour operator in Chile for over 15 years. Our main market is the American 40+ adults and seniors. We do tailored tours for groups and individuals focusing on local culture, cuisine, wine tours, nature, wellness and learning.
I moved to Florida a year ago and I would like to take advantage of the fact that I am in the US to promote our services.
I want to advertise our company so people get to know us and sell directly to customers. We have a website that we are working on right now to improve it.

What would you do to achieve this with a limited budget?

Thanks for your help!

Patricia



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RESPONSES

  • Posted on 10/4/2008 at 7:57 AM Accepted
    First of all get your website up and running. Then use it to market to your audience since there could be nothing cheaper and more efficient. Let me detail out in the steps below:

    1. Find more about your target audience. What they are interested in, what they do for a living, what they search on the internet?... Ya.. you got it... Bid on keywords on google your target audience might be searching. There can be no easier and cheaper way to bring them to your website.

    2. On your website, prepare different landing pages based on different keywords people are actually coming from and show them to the right people. For Example, you have a special rafting package and you show them to the people who searched for say, rafting or water sports...

    3. With each page and travel package, include an incentive / discount which they will get if they come in groups of 4 or more. With this scheme, they might ask a friend even if they are not fully interested. Will help you get more referral traffic.

    4. Always place your contact information readily available on your website and an enquiry form which people can fill and generate leads for you.

    5. Get a Sales team to call those leads and close as many leads as possible.

    If the above 5 points are implemented and executed, there could be no stopping you with your travel company.

    I hope this helps

    Sumit
  • Posted by Jay Hamilton-Roth on 10/4/2008 at 8:21 AM Accepted
    It depends on who you're trying to target.

    If you're trying to do it strictly online, then spend your money on SEO and get listed in various directories (such as: https://www.placesonline.com/writers/home_company.asp)

    You could re-contact people that have booked with you in the past 1-5 years.

    You could pitch stories about Chile to travel magazines, or contact them if they have an issue coming up featuring Chile.

    You could target Spanish language groups (for example, Spanish-speaking schools/clubs).

    You can also target Chile's worker cooperatives (https://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/Americas/Chile-ORGANIZATIONS.html) to become the favored tour operator for companies visiting them.
  • Posted on 10/4/2008 at 10:14 AM Author
    Thank you for your replies. Great advice!

    We know what our market wants and how to give the product to them. We have done it for several years with excellent results. In the past our clients came from a travel agency that sold the product in the US and asked us to provide the services. They don't work with us anymore so we want to sell direct to the customer.
    Our main market is the USA and Canada. Europe comes immediately after. We don't cater to the Spanish speaking countries. Chile is not a market for our product. They like to travel to the Caribbean and we don't want to get into that yet.

    We have an excellent proved product, we don't have a middle man so our prices are very good, we know how to satisfy our clients but we need to be known out there.

    Besides our website I would like to know about other means to promote our business and create leads. I can think of many...but expensive.

    Thanks for your time!
  • Posted by michael on 10/4/2008 at 12:05 PM Accepted
    Since you know the travel agent market, you should focus on that. You know what they're looking for.

    That's what Call-in-Europe did and they've been very successful.

    Michael
  • Posted on 10/6/2008 at 12:52 AM Author
    Thanks a lot for your help!

    Patricia
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