As a travel advisor, you’re deeply engaged in the joy of crafting extraordinary experiences for your clients. It’s the highlight of your job: the magic of turning travel fantasies into reality. But once those itineraries are set, there’s a perpetually looming question: How do you keep that magic going with a steady stream of new clients?
Just as you rely on savvy strategies to ensure every trip is perfectly tailored, you need innovative approaches to attract fresh clients and stay busy. Here are some of the secret ways seasoned travel advisors stay ahead of the game and keep their client lists growing.
1. Never Stop Talking
For luxury travel advisor Jonathan Alder, the secret to keeping the client pipeline full over the past 15 years is simple but powerful: “Never stop talking.” As the founder of Jonathan’s Travels, Alder has planned more than 30,000 trips for over 100,000 people. “Mention what you do and talk about it with anyone, anywhere,” he said.
This doesn’t mean you’re constantly selling — it’s about letting people know who you are and sharing valuable travel insights. Alder recounted a time when he met a young woman at a concert who was already planning a trip to Australia. Alder gave her a few offhand tips for her trip and handed her a business card, just in case she needed any help.
Two years later, that move paid off big time when the woman’s father was searching for a new travel advisor and called Alder. “He’s now my biggest client in the last nine years. It’s shocking she kept the card for that long,” Alder said.
He recommends sharing your expertise generously, even to those who aren’t paying clients (yet!).
“You never know when you’ll open your mouth to someone who will become your next big client,” he said.
2. Don’t Forget the Power of PR
Speaking of sharing your expertise, another great way for travel advisors to find new clients is by speaking with the press, Alder says. The morning of our interview, he had just received a call from a prospective client who heard about his business in an article in Travel + Leisure. One of his top clients came as a result of a Forbes article he was featured in.
“Get a great PR firm behind you to get your name out there, and have something unique they can work with,” he advised. “The press coverage we’ve gotten since working with PR has helped us grow tremendously.”
Even if you don’t have the budget to work with a PR firm, you can connect with journalists directly by subscribing to their newsletters, following them on social media or introducing yourself via email as a potential source for upcoming stories. You can also use free and low-cost tools like Qwoted and Source of Sources to find out what stories reporters are working on and offer your expertise.
3. Host Group Trips
Tracy Thomas, luxury travel specialist and founder of T. Thomas Group, swears by the power of group trips to find new leads. Her LGBTQ-centric trips and solo-friendly adventures have become a significant source of referrals and new business.
“I run into a lot of people in the LGBTQ community who aren’t partnered but don’t want to travel by themselves, so group trips are a really great option for them,” Thomas said.
These group trips aren’t about filling a travel calendar — they’re a strategic opportunity for Thomas to showcase her expertise and build trust with people who might be hesitant to travel.
“If people have a great experience on a group trip, next time they want to travel, they’ll call you,” Thomas explained.
By creating memorable and inclusive travel experiences, Thomas not only addresses the needs of travelers in her community but also fosters genuine connections that develop into long-term clients.
4. Experiment With Marketing Approaches
Taking an innovative approach to marketing can help prospective clients learn about your unique expertise and the benefits of working with you. Exactly how you market your services depends on the clientele you’re trying to reach and your personal strengths.
Eva Grodberg, luxury travel specialist and founder of Epic Experiences, says her consortia is a great source of help for marketing and sourcing leads.
“My best leads come from my consortia’s marketing efforts, which means I have to have a really good profile that attracts the right kind of customers,” she explained.
Grodberg notes that travel advisors should be careful to choose a consortia that focuses on high-quality leads — not just names gathered from forms people fill out at events to win a prize.
“It’s important to have a clear understanding of what a consortium is offering when they say leads are provided,” she said. “What is the level of quality of those leads? Are they filling in a sweepstakes coupon?”
She has built out her profile to showcase her expertise in planning travel to France and St. Barth, including explaining how she lived in France with a local family and has insider knowledge of French customs.
Then, the SEO experts at her consortia worked their magic to help her profile appear high in search results for travelers planning trips to those destinations.
“Advisors need to figure out what their unique selling point is and use it to differentiate themselves from the competition,” Grodberg said.
Thomas, on the other hand, has decided to buy ads in traditional media. She found that advertising on a TV commercial helped her build brand recognition with a new community after relocating from the Philadelphia area to southern Delaware. She runs ads in local newspapers, too.
And you can’t forget about social media. While it’s not Thomas’ favorite marketing tool, she has found that occasionally sharing photos of her trips drives new business.
“When I’ve posted travel photos on my personal page, people will call me and tell me they want to go there because it looked so pretty,” she said.
Social media has also been one of Alder’s most effective marketing tools for finding new clients. He receives a lot of new inquiries when high-profile clients tag him in their posts while they’re on trips he’s planned — sometimes as a result of being gently asked and other times completely unprompted.
“We’ve never paid for a single tag. Every celebrity who has tagged us has done so because they wanted to, and we’ve gotten a lot of new clients booking many trips because of those tags,” he said.
Alder adds that the leads coming from social media tend to be strong, since they’ve already seen the experiences he’s capable of planning on their feeds.
“This virtual relationship takes things a lot farther than when someone reaches out after finding you via Google or your website because engaging with your social media content already shows interest and intent, making these leads significantly more viable,” he explained.
5. Study Your Website Analytics
Google Analytics has become an essential tool for turning leads into clients in Thomas’ business. The software allows her to see who’s looking at her website and what they’re searching for. Once she has their contact info (such as from an online form), Thomas can send them a follow-up email that’s tailored to their trip interests.
In addition to giving key details about prospective clients, your website can help you efficiently engage with new clients while you’re busy working with others, Alder says. He uses Mailchimp to automatically respond to people who fill out the contact form on his site.
“They get a whole description of what we do. All they have to do is reply back and it goes directly to me,” he said. “Previously, we were manually answering every single email that came in.”
6. Ask for Referrals
Here’s a secret from experienced travel advisors: The simplest way to keep growing your client base is to tap your existing network for referrals.
“Most of my great clients have come from referrals. It’s a reflection of the service you give people when they refer business to you,” Grodberg said.
She uses a three-sentence approach to get referrals from clients after a trip: “Thank you for booking your trip with me. I’m so grateful for your business. If you know any wonderful people like you who need a vacation, please send them my way.”
Making a direct ask for a referral can be uncomfortable at first, but it’s critical to spreading the word about your business, Alder says. It’s also well worth the effort to finesse your approach.
“A referral is almost guaranteed new business because it comes from a trusted source,” he explained. “You have a huge leg up immediately.”
Originally appeared in the Winter 2024 issue of The Compass magazine
Joni Sweet
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