Introduction
You do not have to be in the travel industry for very long to realise it is a highly competitive place to be. Travel Uni is dedicated to helping you get ahead of the competition and to stay there.
Here we are offering you some tips for booking success in 5 steps.
In the first step you considered your market. This is the second step.
Know yourself
If you have completed Step 1 in our Five steps to booking success you will know where you are in terms of your market, but if you want to grow your business you need to know yourself too.
What are your strengths, what could you do better, where could you go from here and what things might trip you up?
These are great questions and usually answered within a SWOT analysis 2×2 matrix.
SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and threats.
Thinking about you and your booking performance answer the following questions:
STRENGTHS – don’t be shy.
- What are you an expert in?
- What is your key skill?
- What do you do better than your competition?
- What types of travel do you sell best?
- What personal destination experience do you have?
- Why do your customers keep coming back?
WEAKNESSES – be honest.
- Where can your bookings improve?
- What experience or resources do you lack?
- What do your customers say you could be doing better?
- What costs you time and/or money?
- What does your competition do better?
- What areas of your business aren’t profitable?
OPPORTUNITIES – what comes next?
- How can you profit more from existing customers?
- How can social media and/or other technology tools enhance your business?
- What are the new customer targets and/or niches you can go after?
- Where can you upsell or cross sell?
THREATS – what are the potential pitfalls?
- What are the next industry disruptors?
- What economic or geopolitical issues will affect travel?
- What does your competition do better?
Now put this information into your SWOT analysis matrix (you can download a SWOT Analysis template here) and add any other information you believe is relevant.
Remember to factor in conditions that affect your market. Are you selling locally or nationally?
Once your analysis is complete you can set goals to build on your strengths, tackle your weaknesses and go after new sales opportunities.
We will take a look at goal setting in Step 4 but before that, in Step 3, we’ll explore Opportunities and Threats in more detail.
