10 Strategies For Travel Businesses To Boost Tour Sales Performance

Every travel company wants to maximize tour sales. Even more so now, where the travel industry has seen a great deal of change and quiet time: finding ways to boost sales performance is critical.

With a tactical approach, it’s possible to set your business up to reach more of your ideal clients. Now more than ever, paying careful attention to the finer details is going to be a priority.

Below, we’ve listed some of the best strategies to help your travel business stand out, get more leads, and drive revenue.

Strategies To Boost Tour Sales Performance

1. Point Out The Unique Benefits Of Your tour

One of the essential strategies to increase tour sales is to highlight the benefits of the tour clearly. Instead of listing the tour features, paint a picture to show travelers what they can expect to see, feel, and get from the experience.

A good tactic to help achieve this is to include positive reviews and testimonials from existing clients. Happy clients are your biggest advocates. Usually, they are more than willing to write a positive testimonial for your tour.

2. Add A Little Extra Enticement

To really highlight the benefits of your trip, offer extra snippets of information that clients might not typically expect to see in a tour description.

For example, they may not be thinking about where the best places to eat in Tuscany are at this stage of the funnel. But, give them a compelling glimpse of what to expect (al-fresco, organic dining in a grape vineyard overlooking the rolling hills), and this can act to entice their curiosity.

The result--a tour inquiry that can lead to a booking!

3. Find Your Niche In The Industry

To sell more tours, you need to understand your customers. The tourism industry is vast, so it's essential to really get into a niche. This will help you establish a more specific target audience and market your tour to the right people.

Carve out your corner and create a unique product for your business. Your goal should be to sell something that other tour operators aren't selling. Or to find a different angle to your competitors on the product that you sell.

So, find what makes your business unique, shout it to the rooftops, and explain the benefits to your clients. This will help you to really distance your business from competitors.

4. Ask For Client Referrals

Referrals help extend your network and reach, allowing your tours to become more visible to more potential customers. If you can get your clients to refer your tour to their circles, you will get access to a whole new market.

You can simply ask your existing biggest fans for referrals. Another tactic is to incentivize referrals through promotions. For example, you could run a tour giveaway that offers a bonus entry to each referral. This will soon help you to reach a larger audience.

5. Establish Strategic Relationships

If you want to boost tour sales, try selling across several different channels. A great tactic is to establish strategic relationships with vendors, partners, and agents who can market and sell your trips to their clients.

You can establish these types of relationships with local DMOs, tourism boards, local business partners in your community, travel agents, OTAs, etc.

6. Use Technology For Bookings

Offering online bookings is a great way to boost tour sales without much effort. In fact, by not offering online bookings, you are potentially losing out on a great number of sales. People rely on technology more and more every day; self-service transacting and processing reservations online go part and parcel to this!

Importantly, give your clients a streamlined and straightforward online booking using a variety of payment options. WeTravel’s payment and booking management platform is great for this. It is designed especially for travel companies, multi-day, group, and international tour operators, giving them excellent payment processing abilities, beautiful booking pages, and streamlined booking management.

7. Make The Most Of Social Media

Every travel business needs to have a clear content marketing strategy, which includes your social channels. Social media is full of opportunities to promote your tours and increase your sales. Plus, it is where many of your potential clients hang out online.

Engage with people on social media, target the right audience, and post engaging content to reel them and get a conversation going. You never know; it may well lead to making a sale.

You should also encourage social proof. Try to get people posting about the experiences you offer, and make sure to share their posts. User-generated content on social media can help you gain exposure and get more people excited about your offering.

8. Use Online Marketplaces

There are plenty of websites and online marketplaces that sell tours. Loads of people check these to see what activities are on offer in the place they are visiting. So, it can be a good idea to list your products on these platforms. The trick is to find a balance with your direct bookings and not rely too heavily on OTAs that charge hefty commissions.

9. Encourage Customers to Leave Reviews

A significant factor that influences tour sales is trust. Your tour needs to excite customers, but they also need to trust your business before they go ahead with making a booking. Positive reviews and feedback are essential for this.

After your clients finish up your trips, encourage them to leave a review on your preferred platforms. The more positive mentions you have, the greater the number of new clients you can attract.

10. Upsell Other Tour Products

It’s a good idea to boost tour sales by upselling to existing customers. Instead of leaving a booking as it is, see whether there is an opportunity to add other beneficial upsells. This could include things like a room upgrade or add-on activity for your participants.

This strategy works well because you sell to people who already trust your business and want to support it.

Final Thoughts

You can have a great tour to offer, but you still need to sell it. The major challenge for many businesses in the industry is to stand out from their competitors. We hope the ideas above have given you some inspiration to try out.