7 Things Every Tour Operator Needs to Start Selling

Are you thinking about buying leads on Touristlink or upgrading your account to premium? Before you do read this article and make sure you are prepared to sell. If you don’t have basic business essentials in place you’re going to be wasting your money promoting your business. Getting leads and finding new customers is just part of the process. Our experience with numerous tour operators shows that if you want to be successful in making sales you need to have these 7 items in order.

• • 1. Website: A professional mobile friendly website that is well designed with great content and photos is an important trust builder. All of your tour packages should be clearly navigable to the potential customer and highlight the itineraries you offer along with inclusions and exclusions. This blog post covers the basics that every travel website site should incorporate.

    5 Steps Tour Operators Can Take to Create a Powerful Website

• • 2. Reviews: Third Party reviews are extremely important when it comes to building trust with potential guests. We suggest you set up your own profile on Touristlink to collect reviews along with other websites such as Tripadvisor. Making sales without reviews from past customers is extremely difficult, but once you get 8 to 10 excellent reviews the sales process becomes much easier. Even one bad review can severely impact how guests view your company. Asking past guests for reviews can be a good way to jump start things if you don’t currently have any reviews online. Here is a great post on how to get good reviews from your customers.

    6 Steps for Getting Great Reviews from Travelers

• • 3. Communication: Sales is all about professional and timely communication. When sending emails to guests make sure to keep your content concise, personalized and properly formatted. Poor formatting and presentation are not a way to build trust with potential customers. Make sure to use a spell checker or better yet install a free plug-in like Grammarly. Set up and test different email templates and different content so you know what works best. If email is not working jump on the phone or Whatsapp but check time zones first. Preferred methods of communication may vary depending on where your guests live. Most Americans for instance don’t use Whatsapp but in Africa and Southeast Asia it might get a better response than email. Check these blog posts that go into more details on how to send and format emails.

    10 Effective Email Strategies to Increase Travel Sales 3 Ways an Email Tracking App Can Increase Your Travel Sales

  • 4. Timely Responses: Time is everything when responding to guests and answering questions. You should try to have an average response time of around 3 hours and never more than 10 hours even on weekends. This means checking your messages several times a day as well as when you wake up and go to sleep every day of the week. If you are not working on the weekend you can bet your competition still is. I am continually surprised how often a takes tour operators several days to respond to an email. If you are slow answering emails it’s a good way to lose the confidence of your potential guest.
  • 5. Follow-Ups: Very few sales are made on the first or even the second email. The sales cycle on higher priced multi-day tours can take several months or even more. These packages represent big investments so be patient answering questions and use it as an opportunity to build trust. If you’re not getting any response keep following-up and we use an email to see if your email is being opened and read. A recent study by Hubspot shows that 44% of sales people give up after just one follow-up and that 80% of sales require five follow-ups. Here are some tips on the best practices when it comes to following-up:

    Email Tracking App Can Increase Your Travel Sales Triple your Travel Sales: Master the Art of Email Follow-Ups

• 6. Pricing: The first product you have to sell is yourself and your tour company. You can offer the best pricing, but if you have not established trust and have not sold yourself to the customer you won’t make a sale. Pricing is important but establishing trust comes first. If your pricing is good and you have established trust and communication you can be assured of making sales. New tour operators will have a hard time charging higher prices but as you become more established and trusted you can also raise prices and charge a premium.
• 7. Payments: Offering guests an easy way to pay that is secure and trustworthy is a key part of the sales process. Friction during the payment process can cause a loss of trust and even the sale. Make sure that you accept credit cards online and have other ways of collecting payments including bank wires and checks. Your checkout page should only collect the required information, be well designed and mobile friendly. Offer guests the option to make deposits, schedule payments or pay part of the balance on arrival.

Think you have everything in order? Will if so it’s time to up your marketing game and start using Touristlink to generate new leads and business. You can read this quick blog post on how our lead system works or feel free to drop me an email at davidurmann@toursitlink.com

How to Find and Buy Leads on Touristlink