A steady flow of client associations is necessary to keep one’s travel company up and running. The quickest and most efficient way to make sure your travel agency is making good money is by clocking as many bookings as possible. The holy grail is where you are generating passive income through travel by setting up your brand, your value proposition clearly and not trying to be too cute with product/ pricing/ brand.
If you are looking to diversify your portfolio in order to raise your income flow, you may not have to look far. With the widespread use of technology, getting your hands on those extra bucks has just got easier. All that is required to give shape to passive income streams is a bit of creativity mixed with industriousness.
What is Meant by Passive Income?
The term ‘passive income’ denotes money that requires little to no day-to-day engagement to sustain. When someone has an hourly job, the amount of cash that is earned is directly linked to the time spent working. On the other hand, passive income streams can get you money without your direct involvement in the process constantly.
However, this is not to say that one does not spend any time building the platform which opens the channel for money flow. To get to the point where money works for you and gives you great returns with minimum effort, you have to set up the right conditions for that to work.
How Can you Generate Passive Income through Travel?
The best possible way for a travel company to get a healthy dose of revenue is via direct bookings. That being said, in order to increase the chances of earnings made from passive income streams, one has to look for a variety of avenues. One of the time and tested methods for this to see the light of day is through reselling your products.
In other words, your travel company should be willing to allow the agents who work for you, independently or otherwise, to be able to resell the services of your company. When travel agents are given that licence, the mother company gets to keep a share of the profits collected by the agents. One of the greatest advantages to having experienced travel agents working in tandem with your general house staff is that the former can have better access to niche markets.
Even after all the time and investment in spreading the word about your travel agency, it is nigh impossible to penetrate certain pockets of the consumer market. But if you shake hands with agents who have been on the ground for quite some time, you will automatically get hold of the market that they get to conduct business with.
If you are the owner of a tour and travel outfit and have been wondering lately about how to make more money out of your business, then you are in the right place. In this article, we have listed our top five picks of passive income streams that will give travel agents and tour organizers the option of multiplying their channels of revenue generation.
Generate Interest Among Your Clientele with Seasonal Offerings
What the smart and successful tour operating companies do regularly is fashion seasonal offers for their customers. By doing so, they bring something special to the table from time to time and initiate additional impetus from the side of the company.
So, keep putting special tours and packages during the holiday seasons apart from the standard ones that you already have in place. One such idea will be to host a city walk during Christmas. This would no doubt instil a sense of fascination among your clients, and they would have a big reason to avail of your unique festive services. So, try using this technique to see your online and offline bookings go up with a bang.
Keep a Hold on Returning Clients with the help of a Loyalty Program
It is always great news when you find a new person turning into one of your clients. However, what comes as a greater joy is when you see that same person come back to you for a second or third time. Under these circumstances, the head of a travel company should note that all types of travellers are routinely motivated by loyalty programmes.
So, when you implement a prized loyalty programme, you ensure that the revenue that you earn per client takes a forward plunge. Therefore, at your next company meeting, make it a point to take the help of your teammates in formulating a neat loyalty programme with an eye to customer retention.
Have a Separate Souvenir/ Curio Store for Your Travel Business
It is an established truth that when people travel they like to buy things from foreign shores. This is mainly because almost everyone loves to keep something from the places they have been to. These items act as souvenirs and remind them of the jolly good memories they have had in faraway lands.
While it is not always feasible to build a permanent souvenir shop at a tourist spot, nowadays several travel brands have their own online stores. You too can take a leaf out of their book and build an online store with a fine range of collectibles waiting to be collected.
The curio shop/store will have the potential to become a good source for additional earnings alongside your regular business. Clothes, handicrafts, fridge magnets, and miniatures of famous monuments are some of the items that most tourists will pay good money to buy and take home.
Pitch for Trip Upgradations for an Additional Fare
When your target is to raise the amount of return that you accrue out of each booking, providing your clients with the chance to upgrade their tour packages after requesting an extra fee can be an astute stance. You can select one or more out of a pool of added services to cater to the demands of an enthusiastic client pool.
These days the favourite add-ons offered by travel agencies include special equipment rentals, photography and videography services, exclusive experiences, and lavish facilities like spa and gymnasium access. By keeping the option for upgrades, you will keep the door open all the time for your customers to avail of the services they would deem fit for them. This is a sure way to keep your clients happy and at the same time enable your travel company to earn those extra bucks.
Create Tour Packages Aimed at Particular Niche Market Segments
The travel and tourism industry being one of the most competitive ones out there, you have to come up with ideas from time to time to keep your customer base from not losing interest in your enterprise. This calls for constant retouching and remodelling of the travel packages that you are putting out in circulation for interested parties.
Since packages are one of the simplest ways in which you can tone up the travel services you are selling, it becomes all the more vital to design packages for target audiences. To take an example, solo travelers will have a different taste than families consisting of little kids. So, coming up with novel ideas in order to satiate the traveling specifications of diverse traveling sections will shore up the demand for your packages.
The Advent of Technology has Allowed for the Diversification of Business Strategy
Apart from the five passive income streams that we have discussed above, you can also research newer ways to grow your business. The task at hand should be to keep learning about passive income streams from genuine sources, and then try to see if that is feasible for your business or not.
Nowadays, the internet is buzzing with podcasts, books, and snippets that give you a better picture of looking at money more inventively. There are plenty of YouTube channels that are devoted completely to this particular topic. Another brilliant move can be starting your own YouTube channel, and posting your travel content periodically for your viewers to see. A number of industry leaders have been doing the same for the past several years now. If you become a recognized source for information, you can generate advertising revenue a constant stream of passive income through your travel knowledge.
Getting a strong foothold on the sundry social media platforms, such as Instagram, Twitch, and YouTube can open up fresh new routes for extra money to make their way toward you. Here, you will need to know how these platforms can be monetized.
The common techniques that a lot of YouTubers use these days are by selling signature products, advertising through mediums like Google AdSense, and through something known as affiliate marketing. So, the more one learns, the better the possibility of finding the gold mine.
A Final Word about Pathfndr and How it Can Help your Travel Business
With that, our piece on ‘passive income streams’ comes to a close. But before leaving, give yourself the pleasure of going through the Pathfndr website. Pathfndr happens to be a revolutionary AI-powered travel operating system that will change the way you communicate with your clients.
With the advantage of all the tools and features you will find at Pathfndr, your travel business will surely have higher customer bookings and more prolific revenue creation.
If you have enjoyed reading this blog about ‘passive income streams for travel agents and tour operators’, then check out more amazing travel blogs on the Pathfndr website.