Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / DAY 233: The Small Things That Keep Travel Clients Coming Back
Transcript
- Rachel: Welcome to the Travel Agency in the Year podcast. I'm your host, Rachel K, travel agency owner, helping travel advisors step into the CEO mindset, get away from the employee mindset, become the CEO. If you have any questions, you can head over to elevate with Rachel K dot com or ask me. I don't care. Comment. Like. Thanks for all of you who have come back and come back every single day. We are on day 233. Of the Travel Agency in Year podcast. We are expanding on yesterday's episode, which is all about the 2x rule. Every client should be two other opportunities: a referral and a repeat trip. Today, we're going to talk about the small little things. In case you're like, well, I send out my newsletter. It's going to be a little bit more than that. But so small things that you can do to bring those clients back. So we covered the foundational touch points back in day 202. Thank you, show notes here that I'm reading through. The pre-departure notes, mid-trip check-ins, welcome home follow-ups. We're gonna build past that with a few more specific personal touches worth adding. And I really think this is something because I mean, AI is great and all. AI helps keep me organized. And Yeah. I'm not I'm not I'm not totally hating on AI. but also these personal touches will help you stand out from AI because it's not this fake curated crap, right? not ultra filtered, like let's be human and let's have human interaction. People love the human interaction and we are all craving it since about six years ago when we were kind of not allowed to have human interaction. So here's some things you can do. A handwritten note. you could send an email, but if you have if you sent them in the mail like a card with a handwritten note, like for their birthday, it stands out, or just after the trip, you could send them a postcard from their destination or whatever. Like if you let's say you specialize, I'm gonna just go with Mexico. Let's say you specialize in Riviera Maya, Mexico. Why not every time you're down there, pick up 50 postcards and then send them to all of your clients after they get back from their trip? Wouldn't that be great with a cute little handwritten note for each one of them? All right, another thing you can do is remembering the small details, not just the big ones. Not how was your honeymoon, but did you end up trying that hmm, let me think. Did you end up trying that speakeasy that was at the resort? you get a chance to do that? you didn't? Maybe we should do another trip. I'm just kidding. Don't I mean Maybe you should go back and also book it with me. We could do it right now. But if there's a specific memory that you remember and you can put these notes in your travel CRM, there's a reason why there's notes for every single profile. It's for the little details like this. So that when you speak to them again, you can ask them these questions. And you always want to be asking more questions and telling people things. Back to the postcards, you could also get them a small thoughtful gift that's tied to their trip. Not just branded coffee mugs and bottle openers or something, but like again, if you travel to the region a lot because you sell that region a lot, maybe you could pick up some local specialty items to send to them for Christmas. you could also maybe do a book about the region if it was like a really high ticket client. But something that shows that you were paying attention to their specific experience. you could send like personalized maracas. If back to Riviera Maya. man. I know a chick down there who does party favors and decorations, but I don't know if she could do like just like one pair of personalized maracas for a couple. And I know if I tried to DIY it it would look terrible. It would just be like the ugliest maracas. I don't know. so another one is you could do anniversary check-ins from the trip itself, not just your business relationship. So a year after their honeymoon, a message like happy trip reversary, thinking about you too, and that sunset dinner on the beach. That costs you almost nothing. And it reminds them warmly that you're still there and it the memory brings them back to that trip and how much fun they had. Being the first to know. Give them that insider info. If s like a destination your clients loved in the past has a new development in the works, like a new resort. Like and sometimes here's this is what really grinds my gears about some of the DMCs and suppliers for destinations. They will publish stuff Publicly and then like three weeks later send emails from their BDMs and be like, hey, this new thing's happening. And it's like, I already knew all of this. But thanks for not keeping me in the loop. I've seen that happen with a few DMCs I work with. but then there are some who are really good about notifying travel advisors first. So if there's like a new development in there in your client's past favorite, destinations or if they cruise a lot and there's a new ship being added to the fleet or a new itinerary for a ship that they've sailed on and they like the ship. something that you know that they would genuinely want to hear about reaching out proactively with no ask attached reinforces that you're thinking of them specifically, not just when you want something. So what I mean by this is you can sort and group, you should be able to in your email CRM. Sort and group your clients, even down to the destinations that they went on or the brands that they travel with. And if you see a new development, you can write one email and send it to everyone on that client list in your CRM. but just make all of them feel like they're in the no because you should value all of your clients equally. None of these touches are expensive or time consuming at scale. Okay? They all share the same underlying quality. Specificity. A generic, hope you're doing well. What's up? We talked about Italy three years ago. You ready to do it? That does very little for them. But a detail tied to their actual experience does a lot because it proves you were genuinely present with them. not just processing a booking. So the catch of course is that you can't rely on memory alone once you have more than like twelve clients, right? This is exactly why your CRM has those notes I mentioned earlier. You gotta keep notes in the CRM for the profile. And you can even so I use vacation CRM, you can even set up profile reminder triggers in B CRM. So that you don't forget, you know what I mean? To like add these touches for these clients. It'll just be on your dashboard. And if you have a deadline of, I don't know, September 15th to do something, it's just gonna sit there until you do it. And then you can check it off your list. That's the beauty of a CRM. anyway, all those notes, their details, their preferences, their memorable moments. That matters as much as the touches themselves. Yes, you can brag all day long that you get them honeymoon packages, but if you can also remind them of that honeymoon and those special little add-ons that you provided. That does even more because it brings them back. Ooh, nope, I'm not gonna talk about scent. I was gonna talk about scent and how scent is so strongly tied to memory. But you don't know what their trip smelled like. Unless you can get like the scent of the resort they stayed at and then sell send them that room freshener. But the place that I like to go to a lot and I love the smell of the resort, their room fresheners pretty expensive. So if you're doing a lot of business, it might not be lucrative. It might just be a money pit. Anyway, we're gonna zoom out tomorrow. Thanks for listening to my thinking about that. And build the full system around all of this. Your outreach, your nursery ecosystem, and all so all these personal touches happen consistently. Kinda touched on it a little bit a few minutes ago, rather than only when you just happen to remember. Thanks for joining me today. Share this with a travel advisor that's like, I have all these clients and I keep sending them newsletters, but they don't re-book. They might need to implement some of these tips. I will see you tomorrow. Have a great day.