Award Winning Tour Operator Dan Austin Shares Sales Conversion Secrets with Tourism Tim Warren
Have you ever been to a travel trade show booth or visited a travel website, left your name because you are interested, but never heard back? Or it took forever to get back to you?
How did you feel about that company? What if you were that company, that didn’t follow-up with the leads you generate…?
This is a tourism marketing mistake that is costing you lots of money and time.
The sad truth is many tourism professionals suck at prospect tourism marketing follow-up. And what is even worse is that you spent a lot of money to market in the travel trade show, build a travel website and get ranking in the search engines. If you are not building relationships with prospects, you are hurting your bottom line.
Can you relate? You are not alone.
If want to know how to increase your sales, increase referrals and repeat business, you have to listen to this important tourism marketing TV interview today. My guest is long time friend, former client and award-winning tour operator Dan Austin, founder of Austin Lehman Adventures.
The 3 Most Important Steps of Tourism Marketing and Travel Sales Success
Dan and I discuss one of the most important aspects of tourism marketing and sales – follow-up. We will give you the pitfalls and strategies of how to convert more travel shoppers into buyers. And when you do this right you can radically increase your sales and lower your marketing costs guaranteed.
Effective follow-up (and relationship building) works so well for Austin Lehman, that repeat and referral business represents the majority of sales for this highly respected mid-sized international tour operator. They’ve even had one couple come back 52 times! If repeated referral business is not a big part of your bookings, you really need to listen to this and learn. You will be amazed how simple yet effective this is in growing your business.
Tourism marketing TV: Sales Success Series Highlights
This interview was so important it took Dan and I four separate attempts spread out over eight months to complete this. (Notice Dan and I both lost quite a bit of weight. Yeah!) Dan and I hold nothing back. We laser in on the very specific steps you need to convert more strangers into friends, and friends into lifetime guests. This includes:
- The three specific steps of marketing and the “sales funnel”.
- Why today’s travel shoppers want instant results.
- How to build rapport fast and win the “foot race“ over your competitors.
- Why you may we be wasting your tourism marketing investments.
- How to use technology and CRM best, and when not to use them.
- What is “prospect triage” and how to use it to increase sales conversion.
- Why it’s important to rate prospects and disengage a bad lead.
- How many “touch points” of contact does it take to convert a lead into a guest?
- Lifetime value of a customer: what is the value of a referral or repeat business?
- Where does direct mail fit in now and in the future?
- Online website chat: is this helping or hurting your business?
- Plus much more.
Do not miss this important tip filled mini-training. No matter if you are a small tour operator, travel agent, B&B, Lodge or large resort. What Dan Austin and I share today on relationship building and follow-up, always has been, and always will be, the number one strategy to grow your travel business and have more fun.
Attention Tourism Stakeholders: We Want To Hear From You
What is working or not working in your follow-up process? Please post your suggestions and questions below in the “Speak Your Mind” box to get answers and help fellow tourism peers succeed.
Hi Tourism Tim, we are a very small tour operator with about 7 staff who offer a few different tours. We would like more of our business to come from referrals/ repeat visits as this is currently very low.
I would like to know how we could improve this. I agree that keeping in touch with previous clients and regular email communications with them is important but I am stuck for ideas on what email communication we could send them. Some companies send newsletters, updates, offers etc, but as we are so small we do not have much news to send. We already have a facebook page, but would like ideas on other ways to stay in touch.
Also, for many clients our type of trip is a ‘once in a lifetime’ so after the trip is completed they may not feel the need to stay in touch. However our guides do create great friendships with clients, and I wonder if this could be some kind of channel that could be leveraged. Thanks in advance for your much needed advice.
Great questions Melissa on how to increase referrals / repeat business for your tour company.
You do offer awesome trips and have many positive reviews in Tripadvisor ( #5 in sightseeing tours in Chang Mai Thailand). Good work. SO leveraging that, when done right, you can earn more referrals.
I believe that tourism marketing is like a big circle. Most of us put our effort in two finding, connecting and converting prospects into sales. Part two we do a great job on the tour or while they’re visiting our destination. Part three is were most people fall short, staying connected with alumni community so that they are giving more reviews, talking about you, activity or social media, and more. When you put as much effort as you do in marketing and sales –or more – into maintaining and building your alumni community, you absolutely will increase referrals and ultimately lower marketing costs and time.
Social media is about being social. A conversation. This is an active exchange between you, your alumni and all their friends. Plus comments, reviews, pictures posted, etc., are all seen, read and influence the purchasing decisions of many. So your job is to create his many opportunities to stay connected with alumni frequently and in various modalities.
Here’s a list of some of the tourism alumni community building techniques, some of which you are already doing at some level.
– Nothing works better than sincere gratitude. A simple thank you card and a small gift on the pillow of your guests on their last night, or some parting gift with a note from you, and or your guide goes miles. You can also add to that note a phrase like; “The greatest gift you can give us is a top review and a referral.” Another is ” Sharing is caring’. Most alumni have good intentions but often need courtesy reminders to get off their butts and give you that great review and referral. Sometimes the courtesy reminder has to happen multiple times…
Also let them know in every communication that they are part of your community now And you want to stay connected. Always give them links and encouragement to actively post comments, pictures, like and share. Building relationships – and growing them after the trip – takes effort. But the rewards of quality relationship are the highest for everyone.
– Encourage more Tripadvisor excellent reviews, picture posting and get alumni to Facebook like your trip advisor listing too. are you sending out an e-mail with a link to your tripadvisor listing? You can also embed the trip advisor review widgets on your website so your alumni can go directly back to your website and make a review. Plus prospects can read all your great reviews on your site to.
– Don’t you get detailed e-mails in stories frequently from your former guest? Publishing these are some of the best things you can integrate into your e-mail marketing/social media/community building efforts. People love to read stories. And when someone reads a heartfelt story from a fellow alumni, they will reflect and remember the incredible time they had too. the writer and the reader share a common bond. They are part of the THailand Hill Tribe Holidays community. when an alumni reads the article, or sees a photo, they will be more inclined to comment, like, share and post their experiences too. When you do this right, you are building a ” tribe” of like-minded alumni who have had a shared experience. This is extremely powerful and at the very core of the reason why social media has exploded.
– Direct mail. In this day of e-mail, and the overwhelm most of us have with it, going back to basics can be extremely powerful. getting people to open and read any correspondence from you is job one. A nice postcard or greeting card these days is 100 times more likely to get open and read.
I would start augmenting your e-mail with some automated direct mail options that keep you connected with your alumni. You can share photos, stories, notified them of upcoming special trips, wish them happy holidays, send a birthday card and so much more. I use and recommend Travel Marketing with Sendout Cards for quality, ease, low cost and complete customization options. This also rocks for helping convert prospects into sales.
The point is you want your alumni to know they are part of your tribe and you really appreciate them staying connected and being involved with your community. Every time your alumni receive an effective communication that they read, they are 10 times more likely to revisit your social media community and talk to a friend about their awesome trip with you.
– There are more things you can do, but it is important that all this social community building, referrals, reviews etc. leads people back to your primary marketing tool – your website. And if your website is not one that is going to quickly and clearly communicated why a new prospect should consider you your efforts will not yield the referrals you seek. I have visited your website and although it has some of the tourism marketing elements I preach, the position and clarity need some help. I really recommend my Tourism Marketing Success course to increase your overall sales conversions especially from your alumni community referrals.
We will have to address how to get more repeat clients at a later date.
Thank you so much Melissa for being a reader, your question and sharing my website and videos with all your fellow tourism peers worldwide. I really appreciate it. Everybody wins.
To your success, Tourism Tim
Hello to all, the contents existing at this site are really awesome for people experience, well,
keep up the nice work fellows.
I think that everything posted was very logical. However, what about this?
suppose yyou added a little content? I am not saying your content is not solid., however what if you added a post title that
grabbed people’s attention? I mean Top Tour Operator Shares Tourism Marketing Sales Conversion
Secrets is a little vanilla. You should peek at Yahoo’s front page
and note how they write news titles to get viewers interested.
You might try adding a video or a picture or two to grab readers interested
about what you’ve got to say. In my opinion,
it could make your posts a little bit more interesting.