Group Tour & Niche Categories

As you well know there are numerous niche markets to be had. I believe over 325 or more. Once you identify a niche market by title or headline... what's next? Well the "what's next" is to create some eye-catching slogans, develop tour titles and of course prior to that analyze your audience, size of that audience, local to international, and how you would market your ideas / concepts.

Here's a few Niche Markets to ponder along with Tour Slogans & Themes, Comment & Key Points. Hope you can find something that jogs the revenue your way! In future blogs I'll be reviewing more of the 325 niche ideas - so come back soon.

Academic Educational Tours

1. Best Universities of the World
2. Universities Attended by Celebrities
3. The English Language Tour
4. Rainforests of The World
5. Painting in Tuscany
6. The BMW Factory Tour

Focus on “seats of learning” - famous universities and which people of note and record attended. Look for a common thread such as politicians, film stars, musicians – or follow one of many subjects such as the English Language. Almost any interest is or can be an academic / educational tour. To that end you can target any interest with a following, choose an itinerary that appeals to this interest, add a knowledgeable guide to lecture during the tour and you’ll have something to market.

Aerobics

1. Keep Fit – Hawaii, UK, Mexico
2. Keep Fit – World Wide
3. World Aerobics Tour
4. Fit To Travel Tours
5. Quiet Places To Work Out
6. Oceans and Aerobics
   

The idea here is to appeal to the “keep fit” client, those that participate in aerobics in particular. Offer them their fitness in a travel package. Local or worldwide. On a cruise ship or in selected spots. Places of quiet and serenity. By the ocean. In Forests. On mountains. Near historic places. Keep the tour moving or stay in one spot. Key point is health and well being whilst enjoying the sights. Food choice is important for this tour.

African Heritage

1. The Famous Africans Tour
2. Where It Happened Tours
3. Sights and Sounds of Africa
4. The History of Africa Tour
5. Come Home to Africa Tour
6. The Mask Collectors Tour of Africa
7. African Beat – A Tour of the Senses
8. Shall We Dance – African Rhythms
9. The Black & White Friendship Tour
   

Heritage travel is now big business no matter which country the destination of choice. Africa is in the news – it is newsworthy and the world wants to go there. This makes Africa topical. The word “heritage” can take you in many directions: from tours of the past, the present, to famous people, to taking children of African families back home to see & experience their heritage. Then there is art and music and fashion and dance. Look around you - what was once the Oriental flair for home and fashions is now African. Look for suppliers with tours to Africa - block seats, rename the tour. Make it yours. Music, drumming, fashion tours might be a great place to start.

Agriculture

1. Farmers & Ranchers Tours of…
2. How’d They Grow That?
3. Farm Aid Tours
4. Working Holiday Tours of…
5. Farmers of the Ancient World
6. Agriculture in 16th Century France
   

The farming community still travels the world to visit other farms and farmers and also to export their knowledge or gain new knowledge. The world of agriculture as a reason to travel is a huge market to tap into. You will have your modest farmer all the way up to your “suit” – a farming agri-executive. You can focus on education, business or just sightseeing. You can sell working holiday tours to young farming people or arrange tours of seniors who have farmed all their lives. Just plant the seed and reap some benefits!

Air Charter

1. Flights to (anywhere…)
2. Flights to Nowhere!
3. YourAir Tours
4. No Gravity Flights
5. The Charter of Flights
6. Air Today Gone Tomorrow
7. Champagne Flights to the Northern Lights
   

The air charter can be used and applied to any type of tour concept you might have – or what your client might have. You can sell an air charter to an association, a group of fishermen, or one-hundred people who want to follow their special interest in and around a country of their choice. You could also offer “flights to nowhere” – this is based on a group membership – and people join for the fun of not knowing where they are going. It could be a 2-hour flight, a weekend away or a one-week trip. You survey the membership to get a list of preferred places and then it’s money down, arrange the trip, advise basic needs re clothing, duration away and off you go. All of this rides on the success of The Amazing Race - the theme and idea of taking off has been well marketed. Get in there! There are even Parabolic flights where passengers experience weightlessness!

www.nogravity.com.

Australia

1. "Where the bloody hell are you?"

Only one slogan / tour idea here because that IS the slogan that the Australian Tourist Commission is using to wake us Canadians UP and call us to the land downunder. Are you onto this theme yet? Have you held the agency BBQ yet and handed out your T-Shirts that read, "I know where the bloody hell I'm going - how about you!" Jump on this one. There's lots of push behind this promo. Make it work for you.

Time to go.

Blog Along for the Ride!

After the initial RTTN blog posting this week two recipients emailed back to say "Hey! I am onto this too!" So well done Laurie and Tom. As you know in the world of marketing travel it's all about creativity, being first or being second and hopefully better than the guys that went first. I guess that's a re-invention of someone else's wheel - and that's fine as long as your version is newer and improved and brings you business.

So you understand that a blog is web log, a journal, a place where you write about all sorts of things from a pet to your latest trip. Some agency web sites have opened a blog for their customers to scribe and journal about their trips with the agency. If you are going to be true to the cause then you would allow both good and bad reports.

Some surveys have shown that people about to travel seek out traveller's blogs to get the 'real review' of what's going on, in and where they are planning to travel to. The surveys show that the consumer is more trusting of a fellow travellers tales than the sale tales of a travel agent. What does this mean to you? Well... if you opened a blog site for your customers to journal, then you can attract soon to travel travellers to your site to check what your customers are saying and then offer the links to your booking engine or a live agent.

MyTripJournal is an excellent style of blog to take a look at. Click to www.mytripjournal.com and check this site out. You can offer this program to your clients and even make a commission if your client buys the higher grade of journal. The basic program is free. I hear that some tour companies selling into Europe include a mytripjournal website so that your customer can create a journal for their family and friends to read about their trip as it is being experienced.

So, let's see some creative travel blogs happening and keep in mind that a blog is not so much a sales platform than it is advice and information. It's a place for telling vs. selling. However, as a smart business biz-blog it should have links to where the reader can make a purchase of what they now know more about and perhaps what you're telling/ talking about, is something they need and want.

Take a click to: www.marketingtips.com and read about their publication Blogging For Dollars.

Blog ON!

Marketing Aussie Style!

What a chuckle it has been to read about the response to Tourism Australia’s ad compaign, “Where The Bloody Hell Are You?” I mean here we are with prime time TV and our award winning reporters in the dailies dishing up daily doses of “as it happens” bomb blasts in Iraq, daily death tolls around the world and mass destruction, mass murders and everything bad they can send our way – and somebody somewhere is concerned about young children hearing this tourism slogan! Hello! Beep beep. Yup someone out there is one slice short of a sandwich.

Of course the slogan means “why aren’t you here?” – enjoying Australia. Now, if you have read all the nonsense in the press about this campaign you might have conjured up an inverted cross wearing neanderthal bloke fresh from the back alley and ten crates of ale cursing out the slogan in his best scary guttural tones. But that’s not true.

The entire campaign is upbeat, with a catchy tune, great images and a beautiful Aussie lass saying, “Where The Bloody Hell Are You?” in that famous Aussie accent. It is a dream campaign, it’s funny, it’s sharp, it pulls you in and it’s a campaign you can look up to. Perhaps you can emulate it and Canadianize the concept for your own local marketing. OR, you could, if you really wanted to, jump on the barbie, sorry, bandwagon and ride the wave of opportunity around this campaign and err heaven forbid, use the slogan in your agency window, on your website and in your emails and holy leaping roos matey – perhaps even sell some long haul business to the land downunder.

Words That Sell

We discussed this topic before and we’ve had some interesting articles about slogans and how the right slogan can capture attention, win you some press coverage and point people in your direction. Point proven with the Aussie campaign.

Check out the two books by Richard Bayan: Words That SELL and wait for it, MORE Words That SELL. For a more targeted publication on using travel trade slogans you can review Handy Headlines That Sell Travel at www.smptraining.com/store.htm

Your Mission

Start now to look around you, not while you're driving of course, and catch the headlines that attract your eyes and mind. Look for signs that "work" for you. Check all retail stores and make a note of what the window banners say or state or offer. What are the colours being used? Is the meaning easy to get, understand, interpret?

Once you have done your due diligence you can start to identify the best slogans, words etc., that will pull eyes to your window, clicks to your web site and fingers to the keypad to make that all important call directly to you.

Follow the Leaping Roo!

So there you have it. As always - be first! Be like the Aussies and get out there, make a statement and enjoy the publicity and all the bookings that come with it.

In a word, see you in the next posting.

Steve Crowhurst, CTC

The Keyword is Weather!

Dear readers of RTTN...

Yes as you can see, I've gone to the Blogs - and perhaps you should too! More about that later.

As of now RTTN will come to you in this format - as a blog. All you have to do is click on the RTTN blog when you need and want new business generating ideas to help you sell more, market faster and to get your piece of the travel pie.

So let's get busy and fire up the creative ideas. This posting is all about using the word 'weather' to attract new business.


THE KEYWORD IS WEATHER!

Rain or shine the travelling consumer is going to travel somewhere. All you have to do is attract them to your agency before they click, call or go visit someone else. One of latest ideas to attract business it seems is to focus on the weather.

Sunquest/Holidayhouse came out with the recent original Hurricane Guarantee, then Transat and who knows who will be next - could it be you? Now as you may or may not know, weather insurance has been around before and like the weather it came and went. The latest version however is free with various options for the customer to wade through, plus the hurricane must reach a Category 1 Hurricane or higher on the Saffir-Simpson Scale used by the NHC/TPC for the policy to click in.

A survey of the Expedia website in the UK showed the results of travellers searching by weather such as 'Egypt weather' to be significant enough that Expedia has launched a program to capture and convert more visitors to their website through the keyword: weather.

What does all this mean to you?

Well, whether or not you like it, it seems the world is in a bit of a spin when it comes to weather patterns and on the consumer side they are thinking more about what the weather is doing at their destination of choice. All this suggest you jump on the keyword weather and do one or all of the following:

• website: add a "check the weather here" link / icon / page - - and make sure your website captures the email of the person checking the weather and the destination/s being checked - send them a follow up email to say you noticed they were checking the weather in Cancun, France, the UK and hey... guess what, we can get you there rain or shine.
• website keywords: add 'weather in....' write in / list your main destinations.
• agency window: large lettering on white cards / coloured cards about 8'x4' - wording is weather related - MEXICO = HOT 'N' SUNNY! Add the temperature if you want to. When the autumn comes around... push Fall Weather. Let the snow fall around your window that offers a list of winter destinations by weather forecast.

You've got the message I know and right now I gotta go!

SELL! SELL! SELL! and I'll see you soon when the RTTN is blogged again.

Best regards

Steve Crowhurst, CTC

T:250-752-0106

Don't forget SMP E-Books are available from http://www.smptraining.com/store.htm

Make sure you also read my Selling With Steve column and How to Sell articles in Canadian Traveller magazine which as you know is FREE to you and delivered to your travel agency or home. If you are not yet receiving your copy of this terrific source of destination information click to: http://www.canadiantraveller.net