A travel marketing software company has created a free travel agent survival guide as it highlights the importance of digital communication with clients over the coming weeks and months.
Steve Rushton, director of Net Effect, which has more than 200 travel agency clients including The Travel Network Group and Global Travel Group, decided to come up with practical steps to help agents to cope in the current climate.
The company’s travel agent business action plan adapts advice given by global management consultancy McKinsey and Company on how to ‘survive and thrive’ during the coronavirus pandemic.
The company is also producing free marketing materials for the trade to use, such as e-templates, to send to their databases as a way of keeping in touch digitally as clients avoid coming into travel agencies.
Haslemere Travel is among those agents to have already used the service, sending clients an e-mail suggesting they do some ‘armchair travelling’. It includes a link to travel shows and videos to keep clients inspired to travel once the crisis has passed.
Others, such as Swords Travel, have created a page on their websites about the coronavirus to tell customers what their rights and options are in the current circumstances.
Rushton said it was critical agents protect their main asset, their databases, and stay active online as clients change their behaviour to the new circumstances and spend more time at home.
He warned agents against abandoning their online presence, adding that keeping customers close via digital means was the best way to ensure clients return to them to book once it is safe to do so.
He said: “Everyone will be having to think creatively and it will be more important than ever before to keep in touch. We did get some people saying they wanted to stop their website.
“You also have to think strategically, about your employees and make sure they are happy, and look at your finances and negotiate with landlords to see if you can defer rent payments. I am very conscious agents need real advice.”
He added: “Many agents don’t do email marketing properly and there are some that don’t do it at all. If agents continue to talk to their clients on email and the phone then in three months’ time their clients will come back to them. Agents need to use their time wisely and not sit fretting; they must be proactive.”
Access the guide here