Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 129 - The Travel Advisor's Untapped Opportunities
Transcript
- Rachel K: Welcome to the Travel Agency in a Year podcast. I'm your host Rachel K. It is day 129. Thanks for stopping by. Coming back, whatever's happening. If you don't know who I am, head over to elevatewithrachelk.com, see how I can help you. I'm a travel agency owner and I help travel advisors figure this whole thing out without draining their life savings and then still getting nowhere. Okay. Today's episode is, you can also just listen to this podcast and be like, this is a lot of information. It's fine. The untapped opportunities for travel advisors. What? What untapped opportunities? There's a secret? No, it's just untapped opportunities. ⁓ So. Let me talk about a little bit about my history as a TA. I started back in like 18 as a secret side hustle for another agency. And then I went kinda on my own but hosted in 2020, if I remember the timeline correctly. It was like end of 2020, but I was still with the other agency. It was weird. It was weird because I had a couple bookings. I was waiting on the commission before I could quit. Shh, secret. Because this agency had the dreaded non-compete agreement that wasn't even legit because it listed like three counties in one state. I'm like, I don't even reside in this area at all. This is stupid that I'm signing this. Anyway. Back then, there was a big revival in, I don't know, it was like a big boom era. It felt like out of nowhere all these people, young people, wanted travel advisors. And there was a lot of business that I generated at the beginning of 2020. And they were from in-person events. And then COVID. And then it was like, well, now ⁓ what am I going to do? Because that was like my primary lead generation source. was like, ⁓ my gosh, I can make a real living just doing this like twice a year? This is amazing. And it was bridal expos. And then COVID changed everything because no one was able to do anything for several months. And it really ushered in the work from home slash work from anywhere. Slash can't socialize with people and if you do you better have a mask so they can't even read your facial expressions It was a pretty I mean guys we were all traumatized if you did think about how badly we were traumatized like you can't even look at anyone Unless they're in your house good luck For quite some time, some areas of the US at least, it was like years. Where I lived, it was people nobody cared. It was kind of weird. There were some people that cared, but for the most part nobody cared. But it was still weird because it was like, I used to love Steak and Shake, 24, 7, 50s diner vibes. I love the old Steaky Shakey and then they had to shut down their 24-7. I didn't even know it until I was coming home from the airport and I was like, I'm starving, I just want a Frisco Melt. Frisco Melts are the bomb if you don't know what they are. It's sourdough, two kind of like smash burger patties, American cheese, Swiss cheese, Thousand Island, lettuce and tomato. Delicious. Anyway, I was like, just give me a Frisco belt. Had a horrible travel day. Oh, they're no longer open 24 hours a day. And I was like, I hate the world. Anyway. It's all changed, is what I'm saying. And there is a huge drive to bring back more in-person connection. It's the third space. So, Steak and Shake, when I was like a high school kid, and I could only afford an 85 cent Junior Dr. Pepper, because I was 15 and didn't even have a job, I could sit in there with my friends, smoking Clove cigarettes like dorks, and just act like, oh my gosh, I'm not gonna get into it. Just be silly teenagers. and not be at home and not be at school and those who were old enough to work not be at their job. It was the third space. As people got older, like my parents, had certain, they really liked live music and like blues. So they would hang out at like certain bars ⁓ that often have had live music, but they'd also just go there just to hang out when there was no live shows. My grandparents, went to like one of three restaurants every Friday and they'd just hang out. Those were the third spaces. We all had them. It could be a library, it could be a coffee shop, it could be like, there's a reason there's a movie barbershop that was like low key a third space that you could go hang out at all day. So that is coming back and has been trending. Definitely last year and into this year for sure and I've even felt the itch myself and I'm like I need a third space especially for us most of us travel advisors work from home When we're doing the travel side you might have a job, but you're pretty much at home, and then you live at home There was a winter storm. This is how much of a hermit I have become and I'm like I gotta get out of the house a few months well probably probably in the last year. There was a winter storm and my girlfriend came by before the storm hit so we could have our usual weekly coffee. And it was like barely snowing and she was like, ⁓ it's so beautiful. And I was like, it's snow, who cares? Like yeah, it's nice but I don't care. And then she left to go do whatever she needed to do with her family. And it snowed probably, I don't know, six or eight inches over the course of. that day and the following days over the weekend. And I had already gone to the grocery store and stocked up my months worth of groceries. So was like, I don't need to go anywhere. She came back, okay, she came by on a Friday morning. She came back the following Thursday and she was like, Rachel, there's no tracks in your driveway. You haven't left the house. I was like, nope. She was like, that's... Sad. Snowa's like, well, yeah, you're right. So I have built my house to be everything that I really need. yeah, I don't go out and talk to people. Or I wasn't at that time. I was like, ⁓ my gosh, I'm really messed up. I'm a hermit. I'm a complete hermit. And now I go out a lot more. But I'm trying to figure out where my third space is right now, what I'd like to do. People are tired of only having social media as company. People are so tired of when they get a break of like a three day weekend and they're like, ⁓ I'm gonna rest and relax and then they open up their phone and start playing videos and it's glued to their face and they aren't interacting with the people in their household if there are people in their household. And it provides that instant little dopamine relief, but it is also very stressful at the same time on your body. And so people are moving away from that and want a third space. Because all of a sudden it's been four hours and you're like, I've got nothing done. Now I really hate myself because this just told me I'm too fat, I'm too old. No one's ever gonna date me. Can you tell by algorithm? It's weird stuff. The world is ending, everyone's at war. ⁓ Maybe some funny skits occasionally. ⁓ I need this new furniture from Tmoo. I've never even ordered anything from Tmoo, but this is like the stuff we all see and it's like, the market's gonna crash, whatever, doom and gloom, crazy stuff that just makes you feel like that you aren't enough. Please comment. your algorithm. don't like, it can't quite figure out who I am because I've searched so many different things. So it's kind of funny for me because it's like the stress of being pregnant and I'm like, I'm not even seeing anybody. Nor do I have a desire. What is going on here? All right, that was a 10 minute rant about social media and the third space being gone. Social media is not your friend, it's a distraction. Okay, so the third place, space, is like I said, not work, not home. If you're old enough to get this reference, it's cheers. It's the bar of cheers. Norm walks in and everyone says, hi Norm. It's central perk in friends. Somebody's always just hanging out in there and you can just run in and be like, ⁓ my gosh or check out this new thing I bought and you don't have to be in their home They don't have to be in your home. You don't have to be on the phone You don't have to be on an online meet like FaceTime or anything like that. You just go and If they show up great, but there's gonna be somebody you know there Leverage your humanness, especially with all of the AI slop advertising inundating all of the social media apps Because you have the opportunity to have untapped lead sources Okay, and we're gonna talk about a list of them right now. Number one, local events. You can even create your own. Yes, it's another app, Meetup. You can check Meetup. Meetup is terrible in my area. It's all like, we're alchemists. That's all it is. Or like D &D gaming, like, no, no, that's it. My Meetup is terrible. But I could create my own Meetup. ⁓ and then have people meet up at a park or another public space like the Central Perk coffee shop or the library maybe or But you can also look up other local events if there are areas of interest that you actually like and you're like, well, maybe I can connect. Maybe my ICA also likes that and I can connect with them there. presentations, small business organizations. Many local libraries have, like one of the libraries in the area should have like a business development kind of person on staff to help develop small businesses in the area. And you can ask to be featured as a guest speaker. You can... ⁓ maybe work with someone at the library to set up like a little travel club and find guest speakers and create that in-person community. Or you could just start a travel club. Who knows? ⁓ Podcast guest spots. I have had advisors on my podcast as guests and not this podcast, other ones. It can help you build authority and it can expose you to whole different audience. ⁓ Client appreciation events. You can put those on if you want to. Local festivals, don't sleep on the craft fairs, don't sleep on local whatever community, the German Oktoberfest. Hello, get involved, volunteer, help them, and then also you have the opportunity, especially if you like niche in European travel and river cruising, because a lot of them are like on the Rhine and stuff, you could be like. Come to this other event and we'll have more sauerkraut and brats for you. Maybe some German potato salad or black forest cake. Who knows? Who knows? Who knows? And then give them the opportunity to be interested in working with you on that type of travel. Okay. Now don't do it all at once. Again, we're. Baby steps to developing habits. It's not complete revamp and then crash and burn two weeks later because you're like, I'm doing too much different. Baby steps. Choose one new lead source to test. Research it now. Whenever you found this episode, it's technically like May 9th is when this episode should be played if you go like January 1st is day one. This is May 9th, I think. Yep. Research now in your spare time. Stop the doomy scrolly. Research on your phone. And then implement it for the next quarter. So for like local events or local festivals, it's May 9th. You've missed the opportunity if you have a lot of like flower festivals and summer festivals. They're already done anyway. So now you need to look into the fall festivals, like Oktoberfest. I don't know why I'm like, Oktoberfest is gonna change your travel business. It might, who knows? See if there's like a way to register your business. See if there's a way you can volunteer. Who's running that festival? Like do this research now, make decisions. October is technically the beginning of the fourth quarter, but if they have a registration deadline of September, you can make that decision by July 1st and be like, boom, I'm doing it. get catch my drift here we're in the middle of the second quarter you can start it the third quarter for like the end of third quarter early fourth quarter events Okay, if you are doing things like presentations at the local library, client ⁓ appreciation events, or travel club type stuff, give it a minimum of eight to 12 weeks to test consistently. Don't do monthly travel clubs, do weekly, because not everyone can meet once a month. I mean, I'm just saying that, that's my opinion. You could be like, bitch, I already do this once a month, it's fine. Okay, I'm wrong. And then from here while you're in this phase before you implement it, your minimum good, sorry, create your minimum good and excellent success metrics for the first 30 days. minimum number of leads you wanna generate from this. Then what you would be like, ⁓ pat yourself on the back, Rachel, you got a good amount of leads. And then what would blow your mind, excellent. This is whatever number in your head, your minimum should be at least one. Okay? And if you have no minimum, metric for lead generation then we talked about this as spirituality nothing is being put out into the universe or spoken to with God whatever therefore they're like yeah you're doing this but I don't know why we're not gonna you're not in alignment have goals all right Have that for the first 30 days and know, even if you just get one new lead, it's a nice little dopamine hit and congratulations, you put yourself out there and you tried something new. Okay, eight to 12 weeks minimum, I recommend quarterly. But decide when you're gonna keep doing what you're doing. So, you're like Rachel, local festivals. or like once a year. What are you talking about? We can't keep doing this. Great, awesome. So you could also look at like bridal shows too. If you look at the bridal shows in your area, they almost always have the winter bridal festival season and they'll have the spring. Like they have them pretty much every quarter. They'll have like the big, big one once a year, almost always during engagement season, like the most common time for engagement season, late January, early February-ish. and then they almost always have a fall one because summer engagements are also the second most common time of year. But they might have the spring and the winter festivals as well, or not, sorry, the autumn. There's another season, I'm missing a summer. There we go, that's the season. They might have summer, but summer. festivals for bridal shows. Bridal shows usually don't go on if they are. It's like late summer maybe, but summer, spring and summer is like height, height, height of wedding season, especially like in the US. So. It's almost always one or two organizations putting on multiple festivals a year. It could be hosted by the chamber. It could be hosted by the wedding festivals I've done, like bridal shows. They call them wedding festivals now in many places. It's usually one company that does it regionally, multiple states, and they'll have six or seven a year for you to sign up for. ⁓ because they want to make sure they get all the vendors in a tri-state area. So don't think that Oktoberfest is only, yeah, it is only once a year. Who's gonna, I mean, maybe they'll do like, I hate winter, hurry up, spring, Oktoberfest, but they'll have Oktoberfest and probably something to do with St. Patrick's in March. So that's two a year that you could at least test out that are seasonal, kind of holiday-ish related, but non-secular. So there's that. Okay. Review it after you've done it. Was it worth it? Would you do it again? Did you hit your minimum? If you hit your minimum and you enjoyed it, probably do it again, because it could be even better next time. And you could be like, now my minimum's two leads. ⁓ If you did very, very well and you fell in your excellent category of success metrics, you definitely want to do that again. So that is the untapped opportunities. The third space is coming back. How are you gonna leverage that as a human being running your travel agency? You could even, like, I wonder about doing like a brick and mortar office. Would that help? Question mark? I don't know. All right, thanks for tuning in and we will, I'm gonna have a great day. See you tomorrow, bye.