by Summer is finally here, but it won’t last forever. That means you need to get the word out about your company’s best summer travel deals and bundles fast!
But whether you’re a one-person travel agency or work for a larger travel company, you need to know how to both plan and promote the ideal summer trip to your target customers. Luckily, there are many ways you can leverage modern tools and social media to do just that.
Create Guide Books
Firstly, you can and should create guide books for the summer destination locations you want to advertise. Guide books can familiarize people who aren’t well-seasoned travelers with exotic locations, especially island resorts or places far from the US.
Guide books are also opportunities for you to showcase your expertise as a travel agent or agency. Include some fun tips and facts that would-be travelers can’t find by googling the location in question. It might pay to hire a great photographer to take some photos for you or to locate the best pictures of each individual location before putting together a book.
Highlight the “USP” for Each Trip
A USP is a unique selling proposition, and it’s usually used in reference to businesses or products. But you can apply the same principle to summer trips and destinations.
What makes Hawaii different from Bermuda, for example? As a travel agency, you should know this by heart. Highlight it both in your guidebook for the location in question and for any other marketing materials you put out.
In other words, you should make each summer trip or destination attractive to travelers for unique reasons. Remember, anyone can visit a beach by driving or flying for a few hours if they live in the US. You have to give them a real reason to use your services and take a summer trip they’ll remember for a lifetime.
Special Destination Deals
Naturally, cost is a major factor that Americans consider when deciding whether to go on one summer trip or another. So you can make a given summer trip more attractive by promoting it with a special destination deal.
Consider bundling a bunch of fees into a single travel offer, for example, like a combined cruise and beach destination vacation. Or package multiple natural parks into the same summer trip, like a tour of both the Rocky Mountains and Yellowstone National Park.
It’s all up to you and your agency’s deals. The right deals can bring people to your business for summer trips in droves.
Customized Travel Posters
Here’s another idea: create your own custom travel posters. Travel posters are great for both printing out and hanging up around the office as well as posting online, especially as part of your social media announcements.
Travel posters can be engaging, enticing, and cause your target audience members to check out exotic destinations or consider new deals they might not have otherwise. Luckily, you can whip up high-quality travel posters using tools like PosterMyWall, even if you don’t have any graphic design experience yourself.
Local Giveaways or Drawings
If you run a relatively small business or are a freelancer, you might consider holding giveaway contests or drawings to give away free tickets or trips. These are great ways to promote summer trips that you plan to sell multiple times over the season, as wannabe travelers might get excited enough to enter the drawing.
Even if they don’t win the free ticket, they might be so in love with the idea of taking a summer trip that they decide to pay the full cost anyway.
Social Media Countdowns
Social media marketing is a major part of modern advertising for all businesses, including travel businesses. If you want to promote summer trips effectively, you should leverage social media countdowns on platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
Instagram in particular allows you to make interactive countdown timers. You can use these on Instagram posts to draw attention to when a special sale or deal is about to end, driving traffic to your website and urging people to decide whether or not they want to take advantage of your summer trip suggestions.
Influencer Marketing
Lastly, don’t hesitate to reach out to a few influencers, especially in this market. Influencers can be highly effective for advertising to Millennials and younger travelers, especially since younger people are heavily interested in receiving experiences rather than physical products.
Work with influencers to plan and promote summer trips by having those influencers go on summer trips themselves, then take a bunch of pictures and advertise your business at the same time.
All in all, planning and promoting the ideal summer trip means marketing to people across multiple channels. Pull out all the stops as you bring traffic to your business during this busy tourist season!
