As peaks edges closer, now’s the time to be your most proactive

At last, we can stop for a breather here at Designer Travel after what has been a very busy 2025. I’m sure it has been the same for many of you. 

Sales are in double-digit growth, we’ve attended conferences, hosted our first-ever festival, filled our ‘FAB’ bank with information and sent many of our team on fam trips to enhance their personal knowledge. 

Now, as we head deeper into autumn, the kids are back at school and the weather is on the turn, so it’s time for our lovely clients to think about locking in their holidays for future seasons. We have seen a trend this year towards cruise, long‑haul and shorter breaks, as well as a much later booking pattern than normal. However, we as a business are now getting ready for peaks while also trying to entice our regular clients to book early for next summer before the turn-of-year rush.

Sometimes it’s about being in the right place at the right time and getting those enquiries in and converting them. Nowadays, more often than not, you have to work so hard to convert each and every booking. 

Being proactive is critical at this time of year. We make suggestions based on what we know our clients will love. Using past booking history and what we know about our regular clients sometimes helps to get those all-important bookings over the line. At other times, it’s a case of getting yourself out there and creating conversation, communicating the reasons for booking early and shouting about the early-booking offers from all social platforms, as well as making the most of your networking opportunities.

Adding value 

It’s worth suggesting shorter breaks to some of your clients who tend to book their main holiday with you, as many will not realise that you can help them in this area too. We love a double dip at Designer Travel, whereby you can get two bookings from one enquiry. We work very hard on looking for new business and adding as much value as we can to each booking. We use information to create stories by picking up the weekly edition of Travel Weekly and reading it from cover to cover, after which we have so many talking points for conversations and inspiration for socials. These talking points will often lead to an enquiry, which will in turn lead to a booking.

Taking action

In this time before peaks, make sure you take the opportunity to get your house in order: go through your clients to see who hasn’t yet booked, drop them a line so they know you are still there and do as much business development as you can. This part of our jobs is the bit that excites me the most, but it’s the part that is often overlooked until it’s too late. We encourage our travel professionals to take five business development actions each week; these can range from small things to creating much bigger projects that will help them with future growth.

Being a professional travel agent now is not about order taking but about guiding, recommending and using your personal and professional experience to add value to your clients. You can help yourself too by constantly undergoing training, looking for offers and researching destinations. Ensure you know what’s new, whether that be routes or hotels, and make yourself an expert in these areas before someone else does.

I think we are all aware that we might be in for a tougher few months ahead as we wait to see the outcome of November’s Budget, so if you do get any downtime, use it wisely and be ready to strike when opportunities arise.