For any travel business in the world, the start of the journey is one of the most fascinating phases. However, to scale your travel business from there, you must go through various challenges and make tough decisions. In fact, scaling is one of the most challenging aspects of the process as they lie in areas such as business development rather than travel management.
The idea behind this article isn’t to burst your bubbles of dreaming but rather to educate the audience about how to scale your travel business correctly. By following these essential tips, you might find scaling challenges much easier and not let them hinder your revenue either. So, without any further adieu, let’s get started:
Finding and Connecting with your Audience
Unsurprisingly, ‘audience’ is generally the first step to the success of their entrepreneurial journey. The same concept applies to travel businesses as they also must be aware of the right audience for their products. For instance, to scale your travel business, your upcoming products or packages are perfect for solo travelers. However, if your marketing strategies are designed to attract corporate travelers, your next big plan will most likely fail.
Apart from choosing the right audience, building a connection with your core audience is another challenge. As a travel business, ensure that most of your content is developed so that it eases their difficulties. Through your social media platforms, do not focus on how your business has multiple packages but instead focus on how you make them feel comfortable.
When promoting any specific product, make sure your audience is inspired enough to purchase that product. And lastly, do not hesitate to share the experienced challenges, customer reviews, and achievements either.
Alternative Products with Traditional Offerings
Undoubtedly, revenue per customer is one of the most helpful financial KPIs to scale your travel business. And by suggesting some additional services with traditional plans, one can easily increase their revenue per customer. Remember that offering such alternatives will not always result in success. Thus, it’s crucial first to gather the attention of your audience and only then make such upselling offers.
Let’s imagine a scenario where one of your clients is looking forward to booking a trekking package with your agency. In such cases, you can offer that client a secondary location that’s also quite nearby and will not require too much time or preparation either. With such kinds of offers, not only you’re improving your client’s experience but also increasing your revenue per client. And in case it doesn’t work out, make sure to try something else or experiment with different plans until you find the right way.
Choosing the Right Tools
When focusing on how to scale your travel business, one of the most common solutions is getting automation tools. However, as a small travel agency, it’s not possible for you to try different tools at the same time. Moreover, with the right tools and applications in your arsenal, scaling can prove to be quite easier. Remember that scaling any business means generating improved output with minimal input.
From using common chatbots to using standard ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) tools for your daily operations, all such mechanisms can keep your business on the right track. A few more examples of such tools include –
- Marketing tools like WP Forms, OptinMonster, etc., for acquiring customers
- Platforms like HootSuite and Buzzsumo automate your social media tasks.
- CRM systems such as Salesforce for managing your customer database carefully.
Preserving your Customer’s Reviews
In any industry, whether it’s related to travel or not, reputation is considered the biggest revenue. And hence to scale your travel business, always focus on getting reviews of your business. Before planning a trip, every traveler tends to read online reviews of different hotels, airlines, restaurants, agencies, etc. And once your social media platforms or Google Business is filled with such reviews, it’ll become much easier for the audience to trust your services.
Above all, make sure you are not only gathering reviews but also taking action as per the requirements. Through such reviews, businesses are likely to find some of the most creative ideas for complex challenges. Further, even if your customers aren’t satisfied with your service, still respond to them politely. Your responses shouldn’t only empathize with the customer but also reflect that you’re using their words as a learning opportunity.
Understanding Horizontal and Vertical Scaling
To scale your travel business, it’s quite crucial to understand what scaling stands for in the first place. Generally, the meaning of scaling a business involves creating the ability to grow even further without damaging the current progress.
Horizontal Scaling for any business is about entering bigger markets but from the same niche. Suppose you’re currently offering trekking tours only in Northern India as a small travel company. Moving into the newer adjacent market, such as ‘trekking plans in Southern India’ or ‘honeymoon packages’, is the perfect example of horizontal scaling.
On the other hand, vertical scaling involves some changes in your core business model and exploring upcoming or trending niches. For instance, solo tours and women-only tours are a few examples that are currently on the rise. Now, despite being a luxury travel agency, you ultimately decide to release some women-only tour packages. With such decisions to scale your travel business vertically, you will likely enter a new market with rapidly growing demands.
Tracking the Right Metrics
Before deciding how to scale your travel business, it’s important to learn how to measure scalability as well. Luckily, there are a few key metrics that can let you know whether your travel company is on the right track or not. Moreover, with such detailed insights from these metrics, you’ll finally be able to align your budgets and overall business goals.
One of those key metrics is the percentage of advance bookings, re-bookings, or cancellations. From such data, you are more likely to understand the reason behind all those last-minute changes and how you can tackle those situations.
As we mentioned earlier, revenue per customer is another of those key metrics that can truly define your travel company’s future. Apart from this, Traveler satisfaction is another metric that can be considered key to success. Many travelers are usually unsatisfied with travel agencies due to their program policies. But with insights from this metric, not only can you work on creating better policies but also identify areas for further improvement.
Picking the Right Partner
When you are trying to scale your travel business for the first time, it’s quite obvious to be innovative and yet a bit scrappy. However, such scrappiness can sometimes lead to bigger risks and issues. Thus, having strategic planning for the next level of your company becomes crucial, and with the right type of partner, things can become much safer.
With a travel-tech partner like Pathfndr, your travel agency can ultimately scale in such ways that it doesn’t hinder your current revenue either. Moreover, Pathfndr’s global reach allows such small travel agencies to not only maximize their reach but also automate most of their daily business operations.
Summarizing How to Scale Your Travel Business
Remember that no financial or theoretical metric is a bigger indication of positive scaling than a happy customer who’s choosing your products time and time again. In fact, all the ideas mentioned above can ultimately bring such loyal and satisfied customers. Despite being a small or medium-sized travel agency, it’s crucial to understand the importance of automation.
With such tools, not only can you manage day-to-day operations but also scale your travel business successfully. Lastly, with a partner like Pathfndr, you can eventually ensure that there’s no more looking back and only positive results from here. Once you have started creating memorable experiences for your customers, you can consider your company on the right path of scaling and success.