How To Build Your Own Travel Business On The Internet From Complete Scratch

BUILD YOUR ONLINE HOLIDAY & TRAVEL FIRM

Many people love to travel throughout the year to a variety of locations. Whether they are going to a local establishment and need information on hotels or they are visiting a city overseas for the summer, these people will often use the Internet to their own advantage when it comes to making plans for their upcoming trip or vacation.

If you are considering a business venture for yourself and your business partners, it might be worth your time and investment to consider creating your own travel brand and business that is suited for online use.

This type of business is an essential service to those looking to get help when making plans for an upcoming vacation, business trip or just a quick flight to another state or country.

What You Need for a Travel Business

1). A Domain with Easy-to-navigate Website

Other than establishing connections with car hire companies and local hotels, you are going to need a prominent website that is easy to use and quick for your customers.

Image credit: Wikipedia

When establishing yourself as an online business, one of the most important things to put emphasis on would be your website. This is going to be what people visit when they want to make their travel arrangements. Because of this, and in addition to having an easy-to-use site, you also need a good quality domain name that is easy for your customers to remember.

2). Getting Hosted

You are also going to need a good hosting company that provides hosting packages large enough to accommodate your entire site. Keep in mind that when your site grows, it is going to get a lot of use by those who want to make travel plans for themselves. You need a web host that is going to be able to keep up with these types of demands.

There are many types of hosts and packages out there for you to choose from, so be sure that you do your research to figure out which option is the right one for you.

3). Working With the Web Designers

Whatever your vision is for the web design project of your site, remember that the web designer does this for a living. You should trust their judgement when they show you each iteration of the site. The best way is to spill all of your inspiration for the site, and detail it as much as possible, and let them get to work.

The design may never be perfect, but you have to remember even big brands such as Expedia and Zuji never get it 100 percent right. Every time you ask for a revision, it costs you more money, so aim for an attractive design, which is also functional.

If you can’t afford a web designer, you can have a go at it yourself, by throwing up a quick Wordpress site and going from there. Don’t worry, once the money starts rolling in, a professional web design firm will be able to go in there and completely revitalise it, without you losing the essence of what made the website good in the first place.

4). Marketing and Advertising

Once you've established your website and have added a variety of quick search tools such as car hire, hotel rates and flight fees, you will want to put the majority of your emphasis now on marketing and advertising your new business. Any new business can be a success as long as it is advertised properly and often. You cannot simply send out brochures once and expect your business to boom right after people receive them.

Making the Connection

There are many different ways that you can easily and quickly market your new company. You can affiliate with others in your field, make connections with airplane companies, car rental companies and even hotels. You will find that the more connections you make with other companies and business owners, the more likely they will send customers your way when they are in need of making travel arrangements for themselves.

The Marketing Mix

You also want to make sure that you get your name out there by doing some advertising and marketing with some of the other travel companies that happen to be available to you.

5). Social Media

Social media can drive plenty of traffic towards your site, but it can be a tangly mess to sort one channel from another. Initially, a Twitter and a Facebook should be required to handle enquiries. Although you may have a website, people often turn to these two channels to complain, to ask about offers and to commend you.

Image credit: www.teplis.com

Make sure to log in at the same time every day, and deal with any complaints or enquiries as soon as possible. Leaving a disgruntled customer's social scribbles unattended will just cause more people to comment on their complaint, and your inability to fix this issue. Deal with it, and leave the resolution and the satisfied customers response out there for all to see. Transparency is key.

Once you get to the point where you have a bona fide deal, such as a special on car hires, or cheap flights, this is the time to throw some money into advertising. You can throw up a lush image of a dreamy beach background, and say something to the effect of “Wish you were here, flights only $199”. Post this as a status, and put some money into promoting it as a status on FB, or a sponsored Tweet. You will be amazed at the amount of reach a few dollars can get you, just make sure you brush up on how to target the right people. Age, gender, interests; it’s all relevant.

6). Blogging

Aim for at least one blogpost a week. Posts don’t write themselves, so set a schedule and stick to it rigidly.

Initially, it’s safest to just write about the destinations on offer. For example, if you are a specialist on the Caribbean, then you’ll have no trouble pumping out one post a week on the many different island nations that make up the area.

Once the business has captured a core audience, and you want to branch out further, you can make more general articles. Offer practical, broad reaching articles like “What to pack When You’re heading to the Tropics”, or “How to Save Money By Joining Frequent Flyer Programs”. Once the core audience is satisfied, you can afford to become more experimental by capturing a more general market.

This is a great way for you to take a stand when it comes to creating a wonderful travel business from complete scratch. It is all about having a great website that is incredibly easy to navigate with a wonderful view on different platforms, and the sub-topics discussed above attended to.

Author
This post comes from Aew, who writes for the Orange Digital blog. As a web design agency, they have worked on launching quite a few travel related websites.