Use of internet in travel agency marketing (concept paper)

Prateek Sapra (2015), Sustainable Competitive advantage through integrated marketing approach, Bharti publications, New Delhi, ISBN-978-93-85000-42-3

Abstract : Travel agency is a organization which provide access to all travel products under one roof. Globalization has changed the trend in every sector, now commended to create a user friendly website along with awareness among adays customers wish to receive maximum service with minimum wastage of time so travel agency business has captured by online travel agency portals in recent past. In this era of tough competition it is re customers through different marketing tools. Data were collected by multi-methods approach both primary and secondary resources were involved. The findings of the research indicate that digital marketing work as booster for travel agency business. Finally the concept paper provides useful findings for industrialists to improve the existing policies.

Use of Internet in Travel agency marketing

Travel agency is a organization which provide all travel products under one roof whether you are looking for Air ticket, Hotel booking, Train ticket, Cruise ticket, Holiday package etc. Travel agent will do necessary research work and assist you with best available options. Travel agency also play vital role in promoting tourist destinations (Dogra, 2011).

If we look virtually we find that trend has changed in recent past. Now consumer don‘t bother to visit travel agency or travel consultant who can assist him to plan his trip rather consumer today expect to browse, research, solicit feedback, evaluate and push the ―Book‖ button. Consumer has also become brand oriented because brand give them mental satisfaction that he will receive good service for sure and majority of business is captured by few organizations.

In this era a tough competition it become very difficult for new company to step in or survive in industry, they have to think out of the box. Building strong consumer relation require lot of planning along with strategy and marketing tools for example, they must create user friendly website, must interact with customer on regular basis in order evaluate and adhere their valuable feedback, must design different type of itineraries to attract potential consumers. Marketing messages through text message or e-mail play vital role in maintaining a customer as it cost more to make a new customer as compare to maintaining a old customer.Organizations must formulate marketing strategies and formulate objectives or they may seek assistance from marketing organizations to plan digital marketing model.

Since these big brands provide bulk number of bookings to Hoteliers and Airlines hence Airline or Hoteliers also provide good amount of commission to them. Hence, small travel won‘t able to beat their price and loose potential business in order to convince customer to try services of a new comer instead of his old brand require lot of marketing and personal selling skills. Travel agent also plays an important role in making dreams possible. Selling a holiday package is just like selling a dream to customer, since customer neither see or feel the travel

products before buying it as these are non-perishable products. Travel agent has to create a picture of destination in customer‘s mind while explaining the product.

Here are the few steps which travel agent must follow while planning business strategy.

• Design of website – Keep in mind that entire population is not literate enough, design a simple and user friendly website which everyone can use easily.

• Mobile website / Application – Most of users today use smart mobile phones in order to access any information, so designing mobile website or application has become equally important.

• Work with travel aggregators – Millions of travelers buy travel products from travel aggregators website like kayak, trip advisor etc. Although its chargeable to list yourself on these websites but it is quite fruitful to access large and potential audience.

• Work on specialization – Since lot of suppliers are already available in market for every product, Hence target a potential area and become specialize for that particular product.

• Offer excellent customer service – It is easy to maintain an existing customer rather than attracting new one, It is equally important to make sure that customer is enjoying the service offered by you. Example- Just give a buzz while customer is on trip to make sure that everything is fine or take his feedback post completion of trip.

• Be active on social media – This is the best way to access large number of population, keep posting about your product features, updates and services on social media websites.

• E-mail – E-mail is one of the leading marketing tool, ask for e-mail address from every customer and keep posting them about your new products, upcoming events etc.

• Blog – Ask your customers to write a blog about your service or product as you will get to know about customer‘s appreciation and dislike about particular product, which helps you to rate that supplier accordingly.

• Offer Memento – Offer memento to every customer so they must remember you even after completing their trip.

Usually it has observed that most of travel agents focus on selling what they have rather they need to focus on demand of customer and supply what they are willing to consume. There comes the difference between selling and marketing.

Appearance matter a lot in terms of business since today‘s industry is based on online transaction so it has become crucial to work on development of website as website describe the profile and potential of company. Website has to be user friendly with no hidden information.

Developer also needs to work on search engine – suppose you have good air fare deals but people don‘t even know who you are and where you are, you need to contact search engine

and need to avail their service so that it will become easier for peoples to find you. The most popular search engine use worldwide is google and they charge per user click.Search engine capture data through crawler, index, snippet or HTML information provided during designing website.

Service provider must clear services or products offered by them as single agency cannot specialize in every field. Agency must clear their goals and tell customer who they are and what they serve, just increasing publicity or getting popularization among social media is not going to help them they need to set their goals first.

Business Analyst

Analyzing business also play a crucial role in development of business, how much comfortable do consumers feel using your website? Are they facing any issues, what is growth/decline rate of sale an why? How can you improve your website? How can you attract more consumers to purchase from you? What attract consumer and where are you lacking? In what terms your rival is competing you and ways/ remedies to come out of this?

Business analyzing plays a crucial role in business growth regular analyzing of business is very important.

Business can be analyzed by several ways like amount of revenue generated vs amount spend on marketing, search engines, toll free number etc. it is a team work where co-ordination among several departments – it, marketing, sales is must required.

Analyzing can also determine from market potential / buyer behavior. Business analyst must check below points

 Number of visitors visiting their website (Graph)

 Pages viewed by visitors

 Time spent on website (visitor sessions)

 Conversion sale

 Bounce rate – Visitors come and leave website quickly

 Exit rate – Visitors who come and exit after just watching 1 or 2 pages

 Analyze segment of visitors – Old, New, Repeat visitors

 Type of traffic receive by website – Paid traffic- Visitors coming through paid sources like pay per click, campaigns, advertisements or Non paid Traffic – Visitors coming through free of cost search engine, referrals

Next step of Business analyst is to prepare reports

 Most popular product sold on our website

 Analyze rival company prices vs our price (for all products)

 Analyze feedback taken from client (How to improve website)

 Top 10 pages preferred by viewers

 Increase percentage in repeat visitors

 Segment the potential buyers

After collecting data and preparing reports Analyst can analyze pros and cons and can help operations or marketing team to increase productivity.

Once marketing team will get to know marketing policies of rival company they will able prepare strategy to beat them. Operations team can set goals and start working on defects in website along with technical or IT team.

Operations team can collect data and make cold calls to Exit or bounce customers, even if they won‘t able to convert sale they will still get to know the reason of denial by customer which will again help technical team to develop website.

Marketing

Internet has change the trend of sales and marketing, I had observe usually companies insist on selling/promoting products in which they have good deal / profit margin. They don‘t even bother to know what customer is looking for. Some customers are psycho-centric they just need what they are looking for spending lot of money to attract customer is of no use. So before planning marketing strategy analyst must try to know the need / potential of market. Example – promoting corporate deals in a residential area doesn‘t make any sense.

Analyst may conduct surveys (online/offline), refer to researches. What required is to understand the market their needs and provide resolution to the needs by delivering what they are looking for. Creating urgency is equally important like I have seen on most websites alert – last 2 seats left, sale – last day to book with discount. If we don‘t create urgency then buyer will not take it seriously and make further search on other websites and we may end up with no sale even after spending lot of money on marketing. Seller also needs to keep in mind that offering lot of options may give him trouble like I had seen a customer in flight shop looking for a flight from Delhi-Mumbai for 21st of next month, Executive offer him 2 options i.e. morning flight for Rs.5000/- and Evening for Rs. 4900/- customer agreed to buy evening flight then suddenly Executive offer him 3rd option which is a late night flight for Rs.3600/- then customer ask him to wait as he wish to contact his family now so customer suddenly change his mind and advice him that he will get back to that executive then executive try to pitch him lot of rebuttals like fare is subject to change, last seat left but customer simply said he need time to think and hang up. So moral of the story is to not to offer too many options to customer as it may puzzle his mind and you may end up with no sale.

Role of content in E-marketing

Always mention content relevant to your business only. You need to have clear vision / audience target in your mind before implementing marketing techniques.

Keyword similarly play important role in content building as most of search engines are looking for relevant content to offer to their users so make sure that you use appropriate keywords while designing snippets, crawlers, index of website. Avoid using industry jargons while designing keywords focus on what customer think while looking for products offered by you. Suppose customer just type cheap flight and you had mention economical air tickets in your snippet, then you know the result.

Tools like Google webmaster tools, Firefox free tools can also guide you to improve crawling of your site on search engines.

It is not mandatory that you always have to pay to search engines to list your name only few top links pay to search engines rest of them are found by search engines from their keywords itself.

Content is portfolio of your products which may include images, audio, video gallery. Customer reviews also matter a lot in rapport building you must have seen many aggregators and blog sites like tripadvisor where customers share their feedback it help as one of the core element of marketing similarly social media websites like facebook, twitter, linkedinetc also work as a power booster to attract potential customers but make sure to stay active on these sites and revert back to all queries.

Architecture of website also play vital role and may impact sales of website, Don‘t make your home page a destination rather make it a navigation and introduction page with links to different products and company services like flights section, hotels section, holiday packages, about us etc

Don‘t just let your customers buy and bye rather make your website more innovative one offer free advice as well like where to go in which season, famous spots of a particular destination, how to reach and present information in a innovative way offer audio search option, image map links, text zoom, focus on color and contrast combination too and offer material in a pdf file to make it easily accessible to users.

Proper designing not just help in increasing sale rather it will help you in improving ranking of your website as well. post starting social media advertisement, information content, appropriate keywords, proper architecture you start analyzing increase in sales conversion of your website very quickly. These tools will give you fruitful results in coming future.

Conclusion

Travel industry has completely change from a room with travel products to a portal with all travel needs. Nowadays customer don‘t wish to spend lot of time in queues to buy rail tickets, bus tickets or they don‘t even bother to visit travel agent office to seek advice rather today‘s customer trust on user friendly travel websites which result into establishment of end number of travel websites. So in this competitive era it has become very difficult for a newcomer or small travel agent to beat the existing travel agent. This research paper provide several ways to stand out of the mob using different electronic tools and ways to gain popularity online which include lot of things like design of website, use of travel aggregators, customer relationship management techniques, E-mail marketing, social media marketing, website architecture, role and importance of Business analyst, Marketing, Technical and IT team in a travel agency

References

Singh Ratandeep (2008), Tourism Marketing: Principles, Policies and Strategies, Delhi: Kanishka Publishers Distributors.

Bailey, M. (2011), Internet marketing: an hour a day, John Wiley & Sons.

MN Mishra (2014), Sales promotion and advertising management, Delhi: Himalaya publishing house.