Travel Agency Owners: Stop Being a Jack of All Trades

You're the captain of a ship sailing the vast open seas of the travel industry. Like a captain, you live for the thrill of reaching new destinations. 

Your small but dedicated crew is working tirelessly to keep your ship afloat. But there's a catch – the daily grind of marketing, customer support and administrative tasks make you feel like sailing a ship in a rough storm. 

Turns out, running a travel business isn’t anything like an idyllic sailing trip.

The good news? You’re not alone. Many travel agency owners feel this way.

So in this article, we’ll dive deep into the different tasks you can delegate or outsource to free up your time and ramp up your revenue at the same time.

5 Tasks OTA Owners Should Outsource to Free Up Time

1. Content Creation 

Travelocity, a big name in the travel industry, hired NY based marketing agency Assembly to spearhead their efforts in staying relevant and differentiated in today’s competitive market. 

You might say that Travelocity is a big brand, so they can afford an agency. But you don’t have to hire a whole agency for your marketing. You can hire one marketer or one writer to do certain tasks for you. 

Yes, you can do it yourself too. But marketing requires a very specific skill set, such as ideation, market-research, writing, branding, etc. You can’t just slap a few pictures together and call it marketing. 

If you want your marketing efforts to result in inquiries for your travel agency, you need to work with a pro—preferably a marketing pro with experience in the travel niche. 

A good campaign is tells a story and isn’t just about promoting the touristy spots at a destination, such as this cute reindeer sledding reel:

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Or this campaign from rental company HomeAway that gives cheeky reasons not to use other accommodation sites:  

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2. Customer Support

Because the travel industry is big in hospitality, clients often expect their agents to solve problems that arise from their travel arrangements. They’re on vacation, after all. 

About 44% of airlines have customer service teams that handle social media inquiries, an 18% increase from the past year. It’s not just big companies like airlines though. Three in five companies surveyed also offer customer service via chat, proving there’s a big demand for better customer service from travel agency owners.

Giving top notch customer support is crucial for OTA owners, lest you get bad reviews on Yelp because a client didn’t like their hotel or missed a connecting flight. 

That’s why you need to outsource your agency’s customer service so you can provide round the clock help to your clients, even when you’re already off the clock. 

Agoda, Booking.com, and Expedia hire thousands of people to outsource their customer service, so that means there are already thousands of customer support agents out there that have the experience you need. 

These people can fix booked up hotel fiascos, missed flights, and whatever problems your clients can throw at them. You just need to find them. 

Contact us to get in touch with some of our experienced travel customer support specialists. 

3. Graphic Design and Multimedia Production

A picture is worth a thousand words, and in the travel industry, a picture may as well be worth ten thousand words.

Virgin Holidays get this. 

Their websites and social media profiles are filled with stunning pictures that capture attention and give you a sense of wanderlust. 

Their feed doesn’t just look like a travel brochure of destinations, which is very cliché and not a good way for a travel agency to get attention. 

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Investing in high-quality graphics and multimedia content, such as stunning images, videos, and infographics, will make your promotional materials more visually engaging. 

It will set you apart too from other agencies using the typical destination photos. 

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It’s not just pictures, great graphics can make a difference in your promotional offers too:

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4. Tour planning and itinerary creation

Crafting memorable travel itineraries require local knowledge and extensive research. Besides, it takes time to plan a whole vacation, including flights, tour recommendations, and hotel bookings. A good travel assistant can help your agency create packages that not only satisfies guest requirements, but also gives you a good profit margin. 

By outsourcing this task to an experienced travel agency assistant, you can save time on research and create travel packages quicker.  It’s a win-win. 

5. Digital Marketing: Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Management and Pay Per Click Ads

Searches with the phrase “near me” grew 150% on Google Maps last year, showing that locals and travelers alike use it to get travel related recommendations. Meanwhile, 40% of travel agencies showed an increase in budget spend according to IBIS world data. 

What do both of these statistics mean? 

That there’s money for travel agencies that know how to use digital marketing, such as local Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and pay per click (PPC). 

Showing up on the first page of Google Map or Google search recommendations will boost your travel business, whether you’re an AirBnB property manager, a restaurant owner, or a travel and tours operator. But this requires a specialized strategy that you can’t just do by posting more and more content online. 

You need someone with experience and a good strategy that knows how to use Facebook Meta or is familiar with Local SEO.

Here’s a good example of a sponsored ad:

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And at 930 views, whoever’s doing this Facebook reels for this travel agency knows what they’re doing. 

Don’t be a Jack of All Trades

The saying, “Jack of all trades, master of none,” holds true for travel agencies. Yes, you can try to do everything in house but you won’t get far unless you’re hiring specialized talent for the tasks you need.

If you don’t have them, there’s no shame in outsourcing so you can get the help you need. Outsourcing specific tasks will allow your travel agency to get expert help without the overhead costs of hiring someone full-time or in-house. 

With us, an outsourced social media manager or experienced customer service operator can cost 50 to 75% less of what you’d pay. Contact us for more details.