Become a Home Based Travel Agent

You and Your Digital Presence
By Mary Pat Sullivan

As a member of the Travel Professional Community and a consultant in the travel agency market, I wanted to tell you all that this community has some of the best discussion in the industry. Topics are varied and answers run deep, with true recommendations from colleagues on best next steps for business development.

Many threads seem to focus on technological needs for today’s travel professionals. What website provider do you use? Who’s into Facebook? How do I start to blog? Do your customers respond to email ads? I wanted to take this opportunity to talk to you about all of those things in the context of your “digital storefront.”

As an industry consultant, I work with several different companies in the travel agency space. For the past four years, I have been working closely with Passport Online Inc. They have been in the travel agency website business for 15 years. Over that time, tens of thousands of individual agents and thousands of travel agencies have started their websites, or digital storefronts, using their technology.

Many, however, have also just let their websites sit. They have not gone back and refreshed the store window, updated the content, made the site more inviting and more welcoming to their customers and potential customers.

I also see many conversations about supplier content on the discussion boards. Having up to date and accurate supplier content is essential for a customer shopping experience.

And of course social media is the hot topic for so many. Discussions abound about Facebook and Twitter and Blogging. We are all still learning the nuances of that space.

The website, however, is still mission critical in that picture. Where are your customers going after you have enticed them through social media discussion? Where can they shop your products and services online? The logical answer is your website.

Recently, ASTA released its 2010 Technology and Web Usage Report. According to this report, agencies are generating 27 percent of their client requests from their websites and attribute 18 percent of their actual sales to their websites.

Are you leaving money on the internet? Are you keeping your customers engaged and providing them with a satisfying online shopping experience? We know many of them won’t necessarily complete their buying online, but we all know that we like to at least start our shopping online.

This year, in working with Tom and Joanie and with the team at Passport Online, we expanded our relationship with the Travel Professional Community. With Passport’s 15 years of travel agency website experience, the company’s access to constantly updated content from nearly 100 of the industry’s top suppliers, a customer support team ready and able to help you in any way you need it, a social media product complete with content options, set up and connection to your website and the ability to upload actual supplier offers into your social media posts, Passport is ready to help you take your next steps in putting your best face forward in the digital sales environment.

Passport launched a new product called Agent SociaLink and we built a proprietary site for this community. It doesn’t allow you full access, but it does allow you to play with some of the tools. I hope you can take a look at the site, http://www.agentsocialink.com/hbta, and let me know what you think.

And visit www.passportonlineinc.com and take a look at Nexcite for a total website solution, Vacationport if you want access to the supplier product and Tandem if you have an interest in a cruise booking engine.

If you do nothing else, please be sure to pay attention to your digital presence and put your best face forward to your current and potential customers in this rapidly growing and changing online environment.