Grow Your Bottom Line with Event Travel

You may be sending most of your clients to a warm escape for their vacations but there is also a huge market for festivals and long weekend vacations throughout the year. If you aren’t selling event packages to your clients, chances are they are doing it for themselves and you are missing out on this opportunity. Read on to see how you can grow your bottom line by selling transportation, hotels and trip components when designing travel around an event for your clients.

Use Your Clients for Inspiration

Name a topic or interest and there are thousands of opportunities for a travel adventure relating to it. The best way to be able to sell these special interest vacations is to really get to know your clients’ hobbies and interests. This way you can approach them with a new and different reason to book a vacation package with you. Not everyone wants to just lounge on a beach in Jamaica!

Send out short survey to your clients to gather some intel. There are free online survey makers that are great for this sort of research. We at VAX like SurveyMonkey. Ask what type of music they like, their favorite sports and teams, favorite foods, when they like to travel and even where they’d like to travel.

Act on that Inspo

Their answers may surprise you. You may find that your client who goes to Punta Cana every year also loves bluegrass music and craft beer. Or your European-loving clients are vegetarians and have never been to New York City. Then it’ll be easy to suggest a trip to the Telluride Bluegrass Festival in Telluride, Colorado with a stop in Denver for some brewery tours or a long weekend trip to NYC to attend the NYC Vegetarian Food Festival and add on a classic trip to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.

Make sure your clients know you are their touchpoint for ALL topics of travel.

Showcase Events on Social

And always, work those social media muscles. Use your social media accounts to share stories rather than just "sell" vacations. Share stories about the destinations, festivals and events you attend. This will resonate most with millennials, who are always looking to social media for inspiration and wanting to have a unique experience. Posting regularly on social media is a great way to reach your customers, for free!

So get to know your customers, get creative and approach them on the unique packages you can put together for them. We’ve put together a list of events to help you start brainstorming unique ideas.