Do you love planning trips & creating holiday packages? Then here are the best ways to monetize your passion and earn commissions from it.
Travel is back! And travel agents around the world are trying to bank on this opportunity by generating more leads than ever before and selling more packages. However, in an already busy world, putting in so much effort to do the same thing you’ve been doing won’t get you far. It’s time to get creative! The best way to sell travel packages and earn coveted travel agent commissions is to work smart, not hard.
The whole idea is to earn a commission on every single sale. You shouldn’t just be relying on airline commission to travel agents, which is often just between 2% to 5% on bookings.
Instead, you should look at each individual element. When you’re selling a holiday package, you’re selling an experience. The experience in itself, along with all its intricacies should make money for you. Here’s looking at 9 unique ways to earn more commission while selling tour packages.
First and Foremost – Create Good Packages with Variations
Have you wondered why some packages sell out quickly while others lie in wait for travellers? Well, the answer is simple – they aren’t that good. When creating a travel package, put yourself in the shoes of your target audience. Are you planning a holiday for a family? A couple? Or a group? It’s never a one-size-fits-all situation.
Every location in the world has something unique to offer to your customer base. Don’t hold yourself back by the budget that you’ve decided. Instead, create several variations. Add an underwater dinner for couples, even if it increases the overall package cost.
Clearly state that the price can fluctuate based on the experience offered. Add three different types of options – one low-cost, one budget-friendly, and one expensive. Do the hard work for your customers and then reap the rewards.
Earn Travel Agent Commissions by Selling High-End Options
Building upon the last point, selling high-end products will fetch you higher commissions. Therefore, you may change your entire business model to cater to an audience that prefers luxury. The benefit of this business model is that you have to work less to create good packages and selling one package will earn you a higher commission than selling three packages with low-end products. After all, it’s all about dreaming big!
Create Long-Term Partnerships with Local Businesses
One of the best ways to earn travel agent commissions is to widen your base. Don’t just stick with the listings of Online Travel Agents (OTAs) to create travel packages. Instead, connect directly with local sellers, these are people who provide accommodations, tours, and activities to OTAs.
Removing the corporate loop will help you build better B2B relationships and will allow you to create an experience that is different from anything people might find online. You will also earn better commissions and get a chance to create an overall experience that starts from airport transfers and ends with a moonlight dinner.
Ensure that You Can Easily be Found
Partnering with vendors and creating a great itinerary is all good. But, they won’t help you earn the commission that you deserve unless your packages are easy to find. When people book travel packages, they often head over to Google, Expedia, TripAdvisor etc. to book different products like transportation, hotel, activities, and tours.
This is a queue for you to understand that to earn a commission, you must first be visible. Therefore, you should increase your online presence by creating a website, listing your packages on different channels, running social media pages and shelling out a few bucks for ads. A few photographs, customer reviews, and detailed information can get you far!
Advertise, Advertise, Advertise
Writing it three times isn’t enough, so here goes – advertise! The reason advertisements are so important is because they often drive sales. Thanks to paid ads, you get a chance to rank higher on search engines, reach customers that you wouldn’t have otherwise had access to, and sell more packages than ever before.
Word-of-mouth marketing works, but it can only take you so far. Investing in advertising and keeping a monthly budget aside for marketing can make your average selling package, a bestseller. All you need are more people who like to travel the way you create travel packages.
However, before you do advertise ensure that:
- You have a website that takes 24-hour bookings
- Your payment gateway works without any glitches
- Your advertisements contain both short and long-tail keywords
- You create quality content for your social media pages
- You connect with customers once they’ve raised a query
- You follow up with previous customers to leave a feedback
Create Coupons and Discounts
While advertisements can take you a long way in building a new clientele, you shouldn’t forget your old clientele – people who have taken your services and have had a good experience. Reaching out to your past customers via email marketing is a great way to keep relationships intact and earn travel agent commissions.
When you reach out to an old customer, share a voucher code with them. This way, they will be able to talk about their experience and advertise your discount coupon with their friends, families, social media acquaintances, and others. In our opinion, that’s a great way to create a new customer and a repeat customer.
Think about Influencer Marketing
In the past few years, travel influencers have made a lot of money for hoteliers, tour operators, and cafes. They’ve done this by travelling to different locations, staying in hotels, eating at different restaurants, and doing various activities – all with a camera in their hand. They’ve then shared their experience with their humongous following.
Collaborating with a travel influencer will take you far! You can offer a discount or a free vacation to a travel influencer who has the same audience as the one you wish to target. This way, you will be able to showcase the experience that you’ve built and generate thousands of leads without actually doing anything. It’s a win-win scenario for everyone involved.
Lean Towards Groups than Individuals
While it’s true that getting group bookings is a tough task and doesn’t happen often – tapping into the market base can fetch you travel agent commissions much higher than individual bookings. This is because, logistics aside, you will be doing the same amount of work for 20 people, that you would for 2. However, the commission that you will earn will be much higher. To target groups, think about why groups travel together – weddings, family functions, retirement parties, staycations, etc.
Create a Reliable Website
These days anyone can create a website. However, not everyone knows what it means to run a good website. Some key features that make up an optimised site are – a mobile-friendly interface, high page speed, SEO-friendly content, and a clean and easy-to-navigate interface. All of these features ensure that your customer can search and book a package without any effort.
While all of this sounds easy, it isn’t! Creating a good, latency-free website, while creating tour packages, taking care of logistics, and generating more leads can be a tough ask! Therefore, you should look for websites that are ready-to-use and let you list all your travel packages. They should also offer secure payment gateways and no-nonsense terms and conditions. Pathfndr is one such example. It’s an AI-optimised travel website platform designed especially to make the life of travel agents easier.