Travel Website Ideas (Part Two)
Last week, Scott Klososky had a great presentation on designing travel websites at the Travel Weekly virtual tradeshow (you can see a summary of his top-10 ideas). I want to mention something that Scott did not touch on. Iβve heard a lot of debate over the last few years regarding consumer online booking of βcomplexβ travel, such as cruises and tours. One school of thought Iβve heard is to try and automate as much of the buying process as possible β try and get your clients to book as much online as possible, to lower your sales costs. And in fact, as consumers get more and more comfortable with buying bigger-ticket items online, weβll see more and more cruises and tours booked online, even on the websites of traditional agencies. The other school of thought is, donβt offer online booking AT ALL. Instead, try and get the online shopper to pick up the phone and call one of your experts. If you can get a prospect on the phone, you can leverage your high-touch, personal expertise to close.
My thought is: all of the above. Give your clients multiple ways to interact with you, and multiple ways to buy. As Scott mentions, you need to prominently display your contact information throughout you website. Let them pick up the phone and give you a call any time during their website experience. Let them send you an email, perhaps including a travel offer of interest in the email they send to you. And yes, let them book online if they know exactly what they want. Or better yet, let them start the online booking process and perhaps let one of your agents finish it for you (stay tuned for some new technology coming from us in the near future in this area).
Every consumer is different. But traditional travel agents have an advantage the large OTAs will probably never match. You have a personal level of customer service they canβt match.
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