Sell More Tours And Activities Following 3 Easy Steps

Time, effort, and persistence are only some of the virtues necessary to expand a tour-based business. Operating a well-established destination won’t just attract travellers but it’ll leave them wanting more. To sell more tours and activities, there are simple steps that you can follow to overpass competitors and get a greater share of bookings.

There’s a wealth of opportunities that can get your business high-quality, relevant traffic, regardless of the season. Following up, a simple, proven process you can take advantage of to market your brand in new ways, increase sales, and build a loyal customer base.

Succeeding in the Tourism Industry

Travel is a booming industry.

Who isn’t enticed by the intoxicating call of foreign heat, gorgeous landscapes, and ancient port towns? The allure of travelling cross country, backpacking alone to see the mysterious mountains of Thailand, the Islands of Indonesia or floating along the canals of Venice for a romantic evening with your loved one?

The travel and tourism industry is growing substantially, and with it come trends that influence travellers decisions. For example, according to reports, sustainability is driving accommodation decisions in 2019.

The thing is – people have caught on. Tourism is one of the leading sources of income for many countries and companies, making it a great way to not only change how people see the world, provide them with lasting memories, but make a killing, too.

Yes, it’s tricky to succeed in the tourism industry: Countless new tour operators promise to provide travellers with ‘authentic’ experiences, whilst established international agencies promise cheap ‘all-in’ package deals. It might lead you to wonder how you can keep up with your competitors, sell more tours and encourage customers to partake in more activities.

Well – we’ll let you into a little secret.

It doesn’t need to be difficult to compete. You, too, can cleverly market your brand, company and the packages you offer – just follow these steps and watch as you experience growth like never before.

Marketing your tours and activities

As a tour operator, a large part of your job will be to sell tours and activities to people looking to experience the world. This doesn’t have to be a daunting task, the secret sauce here is to develop an effective strategy to market your products and services.

With that as your foundation, you’re off to a good start.

Customers are drawn to marketing: This is what will guide them to make any purchase. If your marketing is remarkable, relevant and targeted, you’ll benefit from A LOT more sales than if they weren’t.

Audience targetting matters, and it is one of the biggest elements to influence the results of your marketing efforts. (Image source: Foundation)

With a clear focus, helpful resources, and previous planning, putting your products in front of the right people will be an easy job. There are a few ways that you can promote your business to attract new and returning customers using organic or paid strategies across different marketing channels.

From building a great website optimized for search engines and making use of social media communities, all the way down to targeting your products to a very specific demographic using paid advertisement.

Now that we’ve touched on just how important marketing is, let’s jump into what you came for: How YOU can sell more tours.

1. Create an appealing tour package

This will be your bread and butter. If you were to action only one thing on this list, make sure it’s this one.

The tour package you create will be what initially draws a potential customer to your company, so you need to make sure that its fantastic – luckily, there are a few ways that you can optimise this to create more engagement, which in turn will lead to more sales.

It’s essential that you know your audience before you create your tour package, as this will then enable you to target your ads and marketing to one specific demographic.

Don’t worry – you won’t be limiting your sales options by casting out a smaller net. You’ll appeal to a higher number of individuals within the same target audience – you can then plan a marketing campaign based solely on how you will interact with this demographic.

Once you know who your buyer is, how to contact them and want kind of tour packages they’re looking for, you can begin to work on advertising your messaging.

The key to creating a killer marketing ad is by using CLEAR, CONCISE messaging.

Don’t make your audience have to work hard to know what you’re selling – they should know exactly what you offer within the first two lines of your ad. Better yet? Do it with a picture.

Finally, you need to make sure that your marketing campaign is personalised; make your audience think that the advert is aimed exclusively at them. This is much, much easier to do when you’ve narrowed down your audience to a very specific niche.

Social media platforms such as Facebook will make it easier for you to create targeted ads, as they will only show your company to people within a certain age range and who already follow certain brands or products.

But, promoting your products don’t necessarily involve PPC or paid advertisement. Some of the other marketing channels you can use are:

• Online travel agencies or OTAs
• Tour booking software (Such as Tashi.Travel)
• Email marketing
• Social media marketing
• SEO

1. Optimise your website

Your website absolutely MUST be optimised in as many ways as possible: This doesn’t just mean that it looks pretty and is easy to use, but that it naturally draws visitors from other sources (such as Google or other of the major search engines).

Your website needs to make use of search engine optimisation or SEO. This is an entire topic of its own, but it essentially means that your keywords, internal links and content work harmoniously to gain online visibility and also draw new clicks.

As for the main body of your website, there are a few things that you can do to encourage more sales:

• Prioritize user experience – to start with, it needs to be easy to use, intuitive and simple to understand.

• Accept online bookings – as this will make up the majority of your income.

• Use visual content – especially video! People are visual learners, and video content has been proven to be more engaging to the casual user.

• Enable mobile-friendliness – ensure that the website is mobile-friendly. It’s a good practice to use flexible web design, this will ‘re-size’ your website based on what device is used to access it.

Are these checked off your to-do list?

1. Share, share, and share!

Social media is bigger than ever before; countless platforms exist that allow you to show off your product to millions of people around the world.

It’s always a good plan to engage with loyal customers online, be it through Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. This will add an extra layer of personality to your brand, whilst showing genuineness and creating more opportunities for people to stumble across your business.

As more people interact with your posts and videos, your network will exponentially expand. Don’t be afraid to ask influencers to help out, either.

Yes, influencer marketing is a pretty big deal!

Instagram is known for being a travel-friendly platform, with millions of new posts cropping up EVERY day. Some travel bloggers, also referred to as ‘influencers’, receive hundreds of thousands of unique likes on every post.

For instance, a tour operator might offer a high-profile Insta-celeb a free (or heavily discounted) tour or activity in exchange for them sharing it with their followers. Pretty simple, right?

Boost Your Sales

So, there you have it. A tried-and-tested guide that will enable your company to grow – don’t let yourself be held back by bad marketing campaigns or your competitors. Take action now!

Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day. You won’t see results instantly, but just give it time.