Starting a Travel Business: How to Grow Incrementally from Where You Are + Work Within Your Ideal Client Base
Have you ever taken on a difficult travel client simply because you wanted (or needed) the money?
Perhaps in your early days as a travel advisor, you worked for low fees, reduced fees, or *cringe* no fee at all? You’re not alone. A great number of small business owners start with a warped sense of value, believing, “I’m not an expert yet and need to prove myself before I can start making money.”
The truth is, the only person you need to prove yourself to...is yourself. Potential travel clients perceive the value you project. Project an air of inexperience, affordability, and bent-over-backward-for-peanuts behavior, and you’ll attract clients who seek cheap, easy access to someone who gives a lot for very little.
The good news is, your travel business doesn’t need to operate this way. You can build profitability into your business model by defining your values, building and projecting confidence, and ultimately, attracting your ideal clients - and we’ve pulled together a few advisor-backed pointers on how to do all three.
Your Business Values
The first step is to identify your goals, organizational culture, and truly define what your ideal client looks like. Get honest with yourself and answer questions like:
“What type of travel do I enjoy doing?” Do you prefer group travel? Destination weddings? Maybe you’re passionate about all-inclusives or cruises? What do you want your travel business to be known for?
Now imagine your ideal client. Sketch out their budget, destination, number of travelers, their reason for travel, and their communication style. The goal is to connect internally with your own needs and values, then tailor your strengths to not only appeal to those values, but give you the power to turn down paying work that goes against those values.
One of our Masters in Travel featured podcast guests, Emily Lockard-Furry of Traveluxe Official, shares one of her favorite approaches to determining whether or not your client is a good fit:
Take a post-it note and write down four of your most important client characteristics. Maybe you write down the words, “respectful, friendly, realistic, and passionate.”
Keep that sticky note handy when reading through inquiries and refer to it often, especially if you start to sense some red flags during communication. There’s an advisor for every travel client on the planet, so it’s ok to say no when you’re approached by one who isn’t for you.
Your Confidence and Fee Schedule
The hardest part of any small business is setting your fee schedule. You need to be profitable to survive, but affordable enough to reach your target audience.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking you need to be the most affordable to get the most clients and consequently, the most money. This is simply not the case, especially in the travel industry!
As a travel advisor, you provide a service that cannot be replicated or replaced. Your value exists in the ease and effort by which your clients can spend their hard-earned money and time off from work. You intrinsically absorb these stresses for them, working to bring them the easiest, most enjoyable experience possible.
Spend time connecting to the reasons why you joined the travel industry and determine your uniqueness both as an individual and advisor. There is no reason, especially in a field as competitive as travel, for you to start off working for free. The “affordable” model is unsustainable, unreflective of your unique service and talents, and easily builds resentment.
Identify a dollar amount that justifies all those stresses we talked about above. What amount of money justifies the work you do every day? This number is likely to change over time as you take on more business and dig into your areas of expertise. Take into account the long nights and weekends, being on-call 24/7 while your clients are traveling, the costs of administrative upkeep like system subscriptions, accounting software, legal documents, and payroll.
Don’t cheapen your value; if you’re more comfortable starting at a lower introductory rate while you’re just starting out, do so, but be clear it’s an introductory rate that is going to change soon.
Once you’ve set your fee schedule, be it a per trip model, per person model, flat rate, or percentage-based, own it. Own your decision and never apologize for your fees.
There is a fine line between educating clients and opening yourself up to criticism by over-explaining your prices. You can feel confident in your fees when you’ve done the work in determining why you charge them and how important they are to the longevity of your business. Clients who aren’t willing to pay for your time, energy, care, and experience are simply not your clients.
Attracting Your Ideal Clients
Now that you’ve determined your business values, identified your ideal client type, and feel confident with your fee schedule, it’s time to draw your clients in.
What’s the single-best way to market your talents in the travel industry? Give your travel clients the time of their lives.
Travel clients are absolutely blown away by the simple gestures. Adding little touches to your trips unlocks a special area of your client’s memory, one where they remember how it felt to have someone looking out for them, going above and beyond to ensure a fantastic experience. These small details are remembered and discussed well after the trip is over.
Booking group travel allows you to touch multiple clients with one trip. It’s a fantastic opportunity to not only showcase your strengths but impress multiple points of contact who will go home and individually talk about their trip with entirely separate groups of people. Group travel can be time-consuming, complex, and require immense focus - but with a few simple tricks, a little extra effort, and common sense sensitivity, you can invest in your marketing without spending a dime.
Want Some Examples?
Tune in to our podcast, Masters in Travel, to hear firsthand, industry-expert suggestions on ways to make your clients feel special, appreciated, and individually cared for.
Our travel advisor expert and host, Whitney Schindelar from Undiscovered Sunsets, joins guest expert Emily Lockard-Furry of Traveluxe Official to discuss fee schedules, confidence in your rates, and how to attract your ideal clients. Together they outline how to create long-term relationships from simple, personal touches designed to serve your clients beyond scheduling a simple room block.
You can listen to the entire episode here, and be sure to subscribe to gain access to weekly, business-forward, and resource-focused podcasts made for travel advisors, by travel advisors.
