Marketing strategies for travel agency and tour operators
What we do when we want to get out and need that must needed vacation?. We turn to our screens like laptops or phones (powerful these days) with intent and expect brands to deliver immediate answers. It’s all in these I-want-to-know, I-want-to-go, I-want-to-do, I-want-to-buy (i-want-to-book) moments that our decisions are made and preferences are shaped.
Do you know, the internet accounts for over 74% of both leisure and travel planning. According to a recent Google study 57% of leisure travelers and 64% of business travelers claiming that they always start their travel booking and shopping process with a search.
Having a better digital marketing plan is just the much needed lifeline considering todays situation. You cant go ahead without a proper digital marketing strategy for your tour and travel business.
The number of tour and travel agents who use digital marketing to find customers online is on the rise. The ultimate aim is to reach those potential customers who wander online and search for spending time with their family and friends in this wonderful land India. There are numerous travel agents and tour operators all over India who run tour packages.
You can see the tour companies bid for google search keywords, see an example below.
If you are doing it and not getting enough returns, you may be doing it wrong and you need a professional help to improve it. Or if your website or social planforms not getting enough attention organically, its time to improve your rankings.
The question is, as a tour operator how you would get their attention?
The answer is, to go online use digital marketing techniques to reach and get found by your next tourist gust from around the world.
Here is how digital marketing for the tour and travel industry works
Always remember, there’s no “magic bullet” when it comes to building a brand and driving traffic to your tour company’s online presence and sales.
What you can and what we do here for you is, build a strong base and step by step build a traffic magnet. Which involves time and money.
We do tourism marketing
This is what we do as a travel agency marketer
First: We build and implement a well structured tour operator marketing plan.
As a result: your prospects find you, and you reach to them.
Finally: It in turn builds your brand and grows your business.
This is how we do digital marketing for travel and tour operators
- First, we create an engaging tour package website for your tour agency.
- We create engaging content on your tour agency website (to drive quality unique users).
- We reconfigure all your online presence like Google Local Business and social accounts.
- We do paid PPC marketing to build your brand and get some leads of your own.
- We do social media management and social media marketing for your travel agency.
- We implement Google and Facebook retargeting system to drive efficient leads and spending much lower marketing budget.
We do all the above VALUABLE travel and tourism marketing activities at an affordable cost for you!
If you need help in tourism marketing
Contact us now we will send you a quote for marketing your tour and travel agency business.
Leverage all those travel searches happening
According to Google research, 60% of leisure travelers go on just one or two trips a year. But they do a lot of research before booking those trips.
Every month, millions of people around the world are searching to find and visit a travel destination using a variety of travel keywords.
On an average monthly travel search;
- 16 million people searched for vacation packages.
- 14 million people searched for car rentals.
- 10 million people searched for cruises.
And many of those people are buying:
- 11 million people rented a car.
- 6 million people bought a vacation package.
- 3 million people booked a cruise.
Travel agent / Tour operator marketing tip:
Many tourists plan far ahead. Make sure you have content and ads that drive them to your offers that appeal to people who are ready to book long before they travel, as well as last-minute travelers.
Let’s understand traveling customer online journey
See, for example, one person did a search on a travel keyword (tour packages to Kerala) from within India or from anywhere in the world, saw your paid search ad, clicked, and filled your lead form immediately converted? Unfortunately no, today’s customer journey is often far more complex.
In fact, as detailed by Think With Google, one person can have hundreds of interactions with a brand while researching their travel needs. And they want to know each brand in detail, how they work? what are the personalized services they offer? which destinations do they cover? what are the best tour packages they offer? and what their previous customers say about their tour experience?. By taking all into considerations they make their final decision.
Let’s understand what is traveler micro moments and how to make use of it
For travelers, these moments tend to fall into four categories
- Dreaming moment: I-want-to-get-away
- Planning moment: Time-to-make-a-plan
- Booking moment: Let’s-book-it
- Experiencing moment: Can’t-wait-to-explore moments
Please make sure you’re showing up for the searches people are making in these micro moments.
You need to get ready with the above micro-moment touchpoints to influence your prospect’s needs. If you plan it well and implement it, these traveler micro-moments can be connected with touchpoints like blog contents on your website, posts on your social media, and videos in your youtube channel, etc.
What people search during micro moments
Dreaming moment: I-want-to-get-away
People who are thinking about traveling are searching to find ideas and inspiration for vacation destinations based on geography or on a type of trip in mind.
Dreaming moment search terms
best time to visit Kerala
best places to visit in Kerala
what to do in Kerala
best places to visit in India during summer
best places to visit in India for honeymoon
best places to visit in India with family
best places to visit in India for adventure
Do you need travel industry search terms?
If you want my team to help you getting massive amounts of traffic to your travel agency website, just contact
Planning moment: Time-to-make-a-plan
People are in consideration mode, deciding which hotel or airline to book, which local tour operator based on parameters like location, cost, and timing.
Planning moment search terms
best tour operator in India
best tour operator in Kerala
best tour packages in Kerala
package tour to goa
package tour to Kerala
kerala tour package with price
rajasthan tour package price
Booking moment: Let’s-book-it
People already made their decision and now they are going to make their reservations now like air tickets, tour packages, book cruises, etc.
Booking moment search terms here we will do retargeting
The prospects already visited your website during the research phase, so we can easily retarget them with Facebook or google retargeting ads to bring them back and get their final booking lead.
In the booking moment, they will book the tour package with the particular tour operator who gave them the best available information in their research phase. Ie they will book only the one tour company whose website has successfully managed to intercept or grab the attention of the traveling prospect.
But this is not always true off-course, even if you got the prospects attention and if you do not treat the prospect well and not given a better tour package and explain everything correctly on time the prospect may slip in to your competitor hands.
Therefore be ready with all your resources to nurture your lead.
Experiencing moment: Can’t-wait-to-explore moments
People already booked your tour. Its not over yet.
While your customer is in a tour or at your country, they will search for things that might interest them. People are searching for things places and stuff near to them or real-time searches during their trip.
Experiencing moment search terms
things to do near me
things to do goa
things to do in munnar
places to visit near me
places to visit near mumbai
places to visit near bangalore within 100 kms
places to visit during monsoon
places to visit during rainy season
How you can make use of these micro moments?
You need to make content to match the micro moment, Like blogs with images, text, and video on your website and share it to social platforms with a clear call to action. In this way, you are increasing your chances of being present in the result for a search query of a traveler for a specific travel micro moment.
Marketing strategies for travel agency
Get travel searchers attention and grow your web traffic for more leads and booking.
Now you got an idea, what people search for and how to find the vacation destinations and tour packages, and the micro moments that drive the search, and the intentions behind those searches.
Now its time to understand what marketing techniques and to whom you should market your travel agency
Define your target audience, (travel customer demographic)
Lets build your ideal travel customer persona now.
Let us examine the search term “kerala tour packages” which have an average monthly search volume of 14,800 within India.
The age group of people searching for Kerala tour packages
- 16.4% of searches are from 18 to 24 age group
- 3.3% of searches are from 25 to 34 age group
- 64.8% of searches are from 35 to 44 age group
- 8.2% of searches are from 45 to 54 age group
- 7.4% of searches are from 55 to 64 age group
In this way we can analyze and suggest you all keywords related to tour and travel industry in India.
By taking all criteria into consideration the demographic shows women account for 59% of all travel-related searches and 41% of them are male.
So from each set of search data, we can identify the demographic of people who can be your ideal prospects, from those ideal customer data we can easily plan your travel agency marketing.
A sample travel customer persona
Now you identified your ideal customer now lets market to them
Now you have identified your ideal customer, let’s find the prospects by giving them what they are searching for. As I explained to you earlier you just need to tap into the traveler micro-moments. Make content on your website that answers their concerns, queries, and gives the answers in a way that is easily understandable. Also, share those valuable content into your social media accounts where they can be easily found and can reach you from those digital platforms.
Ideal content to attract your travel prospects
Vacation Package Pages: Tell them all about the different sorts of tour packages you offer from family vacations, adventure tours to weekend getaways.
Boat Cruises: If your travel agency covers cruise packages its a best thing you can promote. So be rady with all the content.
Destinations: Make sure you have all the possible destinations your tour package covers show off with a cool map on with every destination page.
Itinerary For Tours: Give future clients an idea of where they can go and what they can do on their next vacation.
Customer Reviews: Nothing is better than having references! A page with quotes from your happy customers not only makes you seem legitimate but also enhances customers’ trust in you.
Blog: A blog is a great way to promote your website. If you have time to dedicate to posting frequently, a blog is a great way to promote your website. Posting those blogs to social media platforms like Facebook and Pinterest can also increase traffic to your website. Consider blogging a form of free advertising.
Travel marketing tip:
Make your offer clear:
Make sure your offer clearly tells people that you have what they want or the facilities need for their trip. That could mean tailoring your content for people who need affordable deals, want an all-inclusive tour package, or tour that includes outdoor activities.
Here are some blog ideas if you’re interested in getting a MASSIVE traffic:
- Dedicated blog about a trip you or your client took from start to finish
- Advice for first-time travelers to your destinations
- Why destination weddings are the best kind of weddings
- Top places to go with your family for the holidays in your country
- What to pack when you’re going on a long trip to a particular location
- What things to do if traveling to a particular destination
- What is the best time to travel to a destination
- And a lot more (contact for more…)
There are so many great things to blog about the travel industry. This gives you a way to tap into the traveler’s micro-moments and present them with what they are looking for.
Don’t forget, content is key when selling travel!
See how my agency can create and drive MASSIVE amounts of traffic to your Website
SEO – get massive amounts of SEO traffic. See real results.
Content Marketing – our team creates content that will get attract traffic, get shared, and get links.
Paid Media – effective paid strategies with clear ROI.
Social Media – stay connected with your clients and get new ones.
Social media content ideas for tour and travel agents
- Photos (Trips, Locations)
- Videos of destinations and guest reviews
- Share useful links
- Share blog posts
- Destination fun facts
- Travel polls
- Local event announcements
- Top lists, like destinations, tours, local lists
- Contest announcements & updates
- Travel updates
- Trip reports
- Client tour stories
- Answers to common travel-related questions
- Opinions on travel
- Travel tips
- Behind-the-scenes updates
- Favorite travel quotes
- Staff picks
- Interviews with local experts and famous people
- Funny travel stories
- Updates from the road
- Milestones
- Travel deals
Now that you know how to have the content for the travel business. What’s next?
Let’s build a brand and reach more prospects with paid ads
Google Ads (formerly known as Google Adwords) is paid Google advertising, which can help you get more guests and sell more tours, as you will put yourself on the first page of Google search results for the keywords you choose for eg: “Kerala tour packages” and appear on many other partnered websites and mobile platforms.
In paid advertising you can even control who can see your ads, and target locations, like countries, cities, etc.
The prime advantage of AdWords is that your ad for the offer is shown at the same moment when the tourist actively searches for it.
Let’s say that someone searches “kerala travel packages” on Google.
Here’s how it looks like:
If you closely look at the image above, you’ll notice that even the first four search results are, actually, paid ads and that only 5th search result is the usual organic first search, and it would be the first search if there was no one to advertise for this search phrase.
Organic search results for travel packages
That’s right, Google Ads gives you the possibility to be in the first position on Google, and all that at the same moment when a tourist is looking for the exact thing you offer.
Facebook ads for your tour company
As you know search ads are great for instant leads by harvesting on existing demand, on the other hand, Facebook ads are for brand building and engagement.
You can promote the content designed for your target audience on Facebook. It will work in a way to boost your brand value, Even they didn’t convert after seeing your ad, they just touched you or your brand. Your prospects will recognize you instantly when they see your ad the moment they search for needs like dreaming moments like, they search for best locations to spend their vacation with family. If you were present for that search in paid google ad listing or in the organic listing they more likely to click. They already experienced lately on Facebook, they knew your brand, that’s the power of Facebook ads.
Remarketing is the key to convert your new visitor to return and in turn, convert them as your client
You know, in order to buy a product or service just like a tour package, we do search a lot right?. It is not like just like you do a search and see one ad, the very moment you click on that ad and the next moment you book. It’s not like that. A customer’s journey includes several searches and visits to several websites, including yours. In this case, remarketing can be your most valuable weapon to get more sales. Remarketing ensures that one interaction someone has with your brand isn’t the only interaction.
They need more information before they open the wallet for you and they will search again and visit a lot of web pages before making their decision on booking that tour package you offer. To get them as your paid gust for the tour, you need to give them all the information your prospect expected to see, hear and experience.
Then you can reach them with the help of retargeting again with some offers they cant refuse.
Remarketing ads can do wonders to bring them back into your informative articles and educate them even deep and then you can easily turn them into a valuable lead and convert as your paid gust.
Set goals, monitor, and improve your travel agency marketing plan
As you begin implementing your online travel agency marketing plan, you’ll probably start to notice a change in traffic to your online travel business. After some time has passed, your analytics systems begin to start collecting data on the various online entities you implemented. Therefore you get an idea of what works and what not works for you.
Are the blogs that tell a travel story receiving the most attention? Do people prefer “top 10 places to visit in a city” is your pdf guide getting a lot of downloads? Are you getting very little response to your social media efforts? Have you received any negative reviews if so, what about? All of these things are aspects of your travel agency marketing plan that should be assessed and analyzed.
After you analyze, each report appropriate changes should be planned and implemented again.
For example, if one style of a travel blog is completely dominating over the other, then you should be considering adding another similar post type each week.
If your followers on youtube are on rice, but Facebook hasn’t been nearly getting any followers, you should think about re-adjusting your Facebook social media strategy.
This is how you can work on improving the marketing strategies for travel agency.
Marketing strategies for travel agency
Get travel searchers attention and grow your web traffic for more leads and booking.
Travel agency marketing FAQ
Create an engaging tour package website.
Make sure your website is on page and off page SEO optimized.
Create and write blogs on your website.
Use promotional videos.
Build a strong social media presence.
Use influencers to attract tourists as guests.
Run digital advertisements.
Create and run exceptional and exclusive tour packages.
Offer giveaways.
Provide customer-first service.
Content marketing for tourism.
Search engine marketing for tourism.
Social media marketing for tourism.
Video marketing for tourism.
Influencer marketing for tourism.
Digital marketing helps to connect your with prospective travel customers.
Digital marketing helps to get more customer engagement.
Digital marketing helps to get more exposure on search engines.
Digital marketing helps you cut down your marketing cost.
You can create your own website to market a tour.
You can create and post updates about your tour in social media platforms.
You can run Google and Facebook ads to get more guests and build your brand.
You can use Youtube video marketing to promote your local tour.
You can try the old style of making use of local travel agents as well.
You can promote your travel agency online with the help of digital marketing techniques, that will connect you with and bring in more travel customers. Travelers these days research a lot before finalizing on a travel agency. They do a lot of search and land on several websites, videos, social media accounts in order to find the best tour destination and best tour package to book. If you are ready with all the relevant information in digital form, accessible online, there are chances their query end up in your email, message or as a call.
You can attract more luxury clients by focusing more on premium tour packages and work more on exclusive tour packages that no one else does in your place. Show and place yourself in a position that radiates and markets yourself as a luxury travel agent. You can make use of various digital marketing techniques discussed detailed in the above article.
You can make your travel agency unique by design and running special and unique tour packages that no one ever planned or implemented ever. Like tour to unusual locations some hidden gem. Like some tour activity in your local area that excites you and feels so special. You can make your guests feel the same way by giving that special experience to them.
You can market your travel agency on Instagram by sharing the wonderful moments you share with your guests while they are on your tour. You can share photos of those special spots that you cover n your tours. You can post video reviews as an Instagram post that works like charm, will bring you in a lot of new clients. Do regularly review places of interest, post photos, and videos several times a week.
