Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 125: Red Flags Travel Advisors should note during monthly reviews
Transcript
- Rachel K: Welcome to the Travel Agency in a Year podcast. My name is Rachel K, your host. If you have any questions about who I am, head over to elevatewithrachelk.com. Today is day 125. I really want to thank you for joining and tuning in, tuning in on the old radio dial, because it's 1995 in my world. And if you would like to receive daily notifications as new episodes are aired every single day in the year 2026, first year of this podcast. hit that subscribe button. Today's episode is an expansion upon the monthly review. Yesterday we discussed pattern recognition. Now we're gonna discuss like when are the patterns red flags in your business? Because I know people are like, wait a minute, I'm fine. Let's talk about it. Identifying red flags when you're doing your monthly review as a travel advisor in your travel business. We're gonna do red flags first. and then normal fluctuations. So yesterday was about pattern recognition, right? and how to spot the patterns and do it during your monthly review. Because you don't have enough data on a weekly review. I'm gonna say this because not everything requires immediate action. And so the red flags are gonna be more of like, these are the things you need to focus on putting at the top of your to-do list for the following month, the following quarter, whatever. Hopefully you won't be doing this once a year and being like, holy shit, I need to do all these things, because then you're gonna overwhelm yourself. If you do the red flags during the monthly review, then you know you're gonna have maybe five additional tasks on a monthly basis, maybe nothing. on top of your regular workflows and your workday. So red flag number one, consistent decline in any aspect of your business over the last four weeks. This could be customer satisfaction, this could be revenue coming in, this could be client consultations being booked, this could be the overall trip spend. That is kind of a red flag because, and like I said yesterday, is this like, we nationally kind of in a recession? Maybe that's why the trip spend's getting lower. And maybe you need to focus on increasing the number of trips booked if you want to maintain your revenue goals, right? But a consistent decline over four weeks. And that's just those areas. Also, you consistently declining in your level of service, failing to follow up in a timely manner or in general, taking people on and then never sending proposals. That happens a lot. That's a red flag. That is something you need to take one step next month to improve that, whatever department that is in. So if it's multiple departments like that, you need to find the root cause. It's probably something you're doing, because most travel advisors are just like working from home, don't have a whole lot of staff. So it's probably one thing you're doing that's causing all of these things. Don't. Go into spiral panic attack. It's okay. It's one month, okay? It's one, maybe two months of this happening. You can turn it around. You've just kinda gone off path a little bit. It's kinda like when you're driving and you're really tired from a road trip and you could be fully awake. You're not experiencing highway hypnosis, but you're just like, you slip a little bit and you hit your tire on those little grooves they have on the side of the interstate. And then you're like, ⁓ whoop, I'm off path. That's all this is. It is a red flag though if you do not, like, if you just stayed there on the highway, that could be a problem down the road. But if you're just like, ⁓ I need to get back in my lane. If there's a sudden drop of like 50 % or more in any area, that is also a red flag. Now, if this is like due to a personal crisis on like an individual or family level, that's just ... You need to focus on healing before you can get back to it and you just need to understand ... Things are gonna suck in my business for a minute. I've gotta focus on healing or taking care of my relative who needs to heal, whatever that case is. But if there's no personal crisis going on, there's a sudden 50 % drop, what's going on locally, regionally, nationally, globally that could be causing it? Because again, it may not be you, and also it's probably something you're doing too. If you implemented a new system and have zero results from that and you followed it consistently, that's probably not a system that works for you and that's okay. There might be a need to tweak it, and that's okay too. ⁓ If you have multiple clients complaining about the same thing over the last four to six weeks, that's a red flag. Something is bad. Even if it's not you, let's say you do have staff helping you. You are the captain of the ship. And this is something I learned from a friend of mine who's a pilot for like private jets. And we were having a discussion about leadership and team management and he said, You know, I'm the pilot, I'm the captain, you know, of the ship. If any of the flight attendants do anything wrong, if anything goes wrong, it is all on me because I run that show. And so I have to make sure, A, when I get feedback to take accountability because I didn't properly communicate it with the rest of the staff on the plane. And you need to do the same thing in your business. And I was like, interesting, because we were just like having this discussion. So when you have staff, and they aren't doing, ⁓ you're getting negative client feedback from things that they are or are not doing that you have promised this client, that is your problem. You either need to get rid of that person, replace them, or discipline them. Okay, missing revenue goals for three or more months, that's a red flag too. Like you can have an off month, maybe an off two months. When you've been in this industry long enough, we all talk about wave season, but your wave season can vary based on your niche and the time of year your clients book. You know what I mean? Like some of you experience a lot of fluctuation in new bookings over the summertime, a lot of people have the typical January to like March-ish wave season. Romance travel, there's two different main engagement seasons, so you should have two kind of wave seasons if you're in romance travel. ⁓ specifically like honeymoons and destination weddings. So you might have low revenue one or two months. for me, when I was doing destination weddings, wouldn't, ⁓ let's see, my revenue was fairly consistent because my bookings would come in based on the final payment dates of the room blocks, right? And then my weddings would always be like, January 6th-ish would be the first start of wedding season for me traveling. and it would just be like, February, couple of weddings. March was when it really starts to pick up and it'd just be chaos mode until about mid-June. I wouldn't book weddings mid-June till about mid-October. So my revenue was really, really strong, especially in May and June. I was getting, like my highest commission check was $72,000 in one month because of the number of weddings that I had that month. But then I got nothing except maybe some fees coming in over the summer. You know what I mean? So you will see the fluctuations. So I was never concerned about revenue going down in like July, August, and September. I was like, I'd be lucky if I get anything. Like I might get a few planning fees. ⁓ But then it would pick back up in the fall and I knew my pattern over the years. But when it's more than three months, that's when it's a red flag that your business is going downhill and you got to do something to change it. Another red flag is consisting running, nope, can't read my own handwriting or pronounce anything, consistently running out of time for your important tasks. That is a you red flag. If you are consistently running out of time. for the important tasks that bring in revenue in your business and keep your clients satisfied, that's a red flag. That's a red flag that things will start getting out of control very quickly and going downhill. Okay, normal fluctuations. A few slow weeks throughout the year. That's not anything to worry about. before I get into these other ones. So those red flags that I listed, those are things that you need to figure out some things to do in the following month to alleviate that and will improve it for the next monthly review. All right, back to normal fluctuations. A few slow weeks throughout the year, that happens. One slow week in an otherwise steady month, also going to happen. One... crappy performing piece of content or like if you're posting every day four or five pieces of content that just tank. Who cares? Like it's gonna happen. If it's consistently not converting, that's the problem. Missing one weekly task. I've said this in other episodes. We are not saving lives here. We are not putting out actual fires. We are not emergencies. So if you miss one weekly task, don't be like, I gotta immediately fix this on Monday and then worry about it all weekend. Or like work on the weekend to get it, like it's not an emergency. ⁓ Receiving lower engagement over holiday weeks, that is super common. Now, if you do a lot of weddings, I will say, When you're trying to get people to book, you have to be very strict with your time off and your boundaries, like if you're new to weddings, by the way. Or group travel in general, family reunions, things like that, anything that's like room block requirements, right? So you wanna like notify in your email signature your out of office dates, and you also want to have an out of office email, clearly. And also you need to understand wedding guests. or group travel guests, a lot of times that's when they finally catch up on all the emails you've been sending them, like, you should deposit on your trip. And that's why you need to have your out of office set up for at least that time and start putting it in your email signature because even if they check the email, like, two weeks later when you're enjoying your time off for a holiday, it's gonna be like red, bold, italicized, upcoming, important, out of office dates. And also, If they send you anything, hey, we're out of office. We're going to be back on this day. Like they had been warned. I will say that's common in my experience. Like if I have a deposit deadline, let's say of December 1st, like December was always like a common deposit deadline for me somewhere between Thanksgiving and Christmas because I had scream, scream, spring groups traveling. Right. And so people over Thanksgiving break, that's when they're like, hurry up and help me. It's like, we're closed for Thanksgiving. This is a Monday problem. OK. But social media-wise, you might experience lower engagement. You might experience people not checking their emails if it's like proposal follow-ups or whatever the case may be. if it's not like, I just know that I've experienced that with my weddings and groups. Okay, when you're doing your monthly reviews, it's important to look for... Red flags, there we go, I wrote RF. Red flags and norms, so that you can understand what needs immediate actions. So yesterday was all about pattern recognition, and if you see that this is a pattern developing over the last few weeks or months, and it's really harming your business, that is a red flag. You need to look into resolving and implementing something to help resolve that for the next month. Try it today. Have you noticed, I wrote that down, try it today. While I was listing off men's, red flags, why did I say men? While I was listing off the red flags, did you notice any that might be going on in your travel business today? Hmm, if yes, how long? How long do you think it's been going on? Is there anything that you can start doing tomorrow or maybe next week to change that red flag? These are some great questions you can ask yourself. All right. Nothing else is immediate attention outside of the red flags, okay? So we have had several episodes about the monthly review, then we went a little bit of spiritually woo-woo for a second and came back to more monthly review stuff. Tomorrow is ⁓ kind of a mindset episode, not woo-woo. Perfect as the enemy of done. It truly is. And the optimization trap. Okay, have a great day. Thanks for stopping by. See you tomorrow.