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Five steps to booking success, Step 3 Know what’s what

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; the second step was about you and where you could be in the future. This is the third step.

Know what’s what

Strengths and Weaknesses are very much about you while Opportunities and Threats are generally factors external to you. Hopefully you were able to answer the Opportunities and Threats questions in your SWOT matrix, but whether you were or not you can never be complacent about what is happening around you.

You need to keep abreast of trends (and not just travel trends) and you need to know what questions your clients are thinking but afraid to ask.

The biggest game changer for our, and pretty much every, industry this century has been the internet. And with technology developing at a rapid rate none of us can afford to take our eyes of that virtual ball. It isn’t enough to use technology every day but we also need to understand where it is all leading. As a minimum you should read the travel media coverage of technology but we recommend you read wider than that: for example TechCrunch reports on the business of tech.

When it comes to travel itself then recent trends have included Glamping and Airbnb. Your client might be thinking about booking an Airbnb but of course they aren’t going to ask you about that because booking Airbnb is something they would do direct on the internet. But by engaging your clients in conversations about the latest trends you will understand them better and what presses their travel buttons. If you know, for example, they like the idea of a home experience then you can suggest something appropriate like a home-stay.

An old, but seemingly reliable trend, is movie location tourism. From Jaws (Martha’s Vineyard) to Lord of the Rings (New Zealand) to Game of Thrones (Northern Ireland and Croatia). Do you know what the latest blockbuster is likely to be and where it is set?

With information like that you can get ahead of the curve. And being ahead of the curve is a great place to be when it comes to answering those unasked questions.

And if you can give them ideas that they might not even have thought of, then you secure a place in their mind as the go-to-person for travel inspiration.

Finally, whether we like it or not, we need to keep abreast of politics because at some stage it will have an impact on us and our industry. From terrorism to trade deals we need to assess the potential threats to our business.

You know your market (Step 1), you have your SWOT analysis (Step 2), you are aware of what’s what in the industry and the world at large (step 3), the next step is to set some goals.