Today we are talking about why your trips might not be getting fully booked. We are hoping this post will help you identify what is working and what you can improve to increase your “occupancy rate”.

In order to truly understand why your trips aren’t fully booked, you will need to reflect on previous years of operation and take note as too the shortfalls that might have affected those trips’ ability to fill. These reflections and forward planning give you more direction on how to take action now in order to fill trips for the year ahead.

So far 2022 has proven to be a great year for rebounding travel. With restrictions being reduced and people becoming more comfortable with the idea of travelling in a post-pandemic world you want to make sure that you are well-positioned to capitalize on these changing travel conditions.

1. You didn’t give Yourself Enough Lead Time to Sell Your Trips. 

Lead time means the duration between when the trip is starting and when you publicly made the trip available for sale. 

The rule of thumb we operate on is shorter trips that are about 3-5 days in length should be launched no less than six months in advance, but we understand that sometimes that isn’t always possible and leaving a three-month window is possible with the proper measures in place. If you are launching in less than six months you need to have a good hotlist to promote to or some form of game plan that has worked for you in the past. Another thing to consider if you do launch in a short period of time is your cancellation policy. You will have to be more lenient if people cancel if you haven’t given people a good length of time to get things in place. We recommend six months beforehand because you want to give people time to plan for time off work, budgeting, sitters etc. You also want to give yourself time to market the trip, have people find this new trip on the web, and give yourself enough time to fully book ( or at least booked to the minimum number to launch the trip) all before the dreaded supplier payment date ( when you have to pay the ground operators that are executing the trip).

Longer trips (trips longer than a week in duration), should be open for bookings 9 months in advance but preferably 12 months in advance to give people a chance to prepare as early as possible. Giving yourself this much time can reduce a lot of the stress associated with getting the trip filled. It not only gives your clients enough time to book time off work, find someone to take care of their kids, plan and get excited for the trip ahead, but it also gives you time to promote the trip ( without being spammy). Social Media, Paid Ads, and SEO all take time. They are not marketing tactics that generate sales right away. You need to find ways of promoting your trip that works and this isn’t always a fast process. Giving yourself 12 months will not only give you time to figure out what marketing works but it also gives you time to fill those seats before having to pay suppliers.

It’s different of course if you are building custom trips for people, but you should still manage their expectations. Sometimes it is just not possible to plan a trip any faster than 3-6 months in advance. Normally there are popular activities that require a prebooking month in advance and because of that custom trips are not always faster to plan. Custom trips DO give you more flexibility but you still need time to plan it with your suppliers. Due to this, you want to be upfront with people. If they want to get the most out of their trip it will take 6 months of planning in advance.

2. You Didn’t Generate a List of Hot Leads Before Launching Your Trip.

This is a tactic we know that the bigger travel companies implement. Although that doesn’t mean to say that with some foreplanning your small business can’t pull this off. All you need is a landing page that is connected to your email system. Why? It’s important to make sure anyone who signs up on this specific landing page gets tagged in a way that allows you to feed them relevant information on the destination they are interested in. Once they are tagged and placed in your CRM you can start email automation sequences that are designed to nurture these leads, keeping them engaged and excited to go on this new trip you are planning. That person will now be on your hotlist specific to that trip or destination. That’s how simple it is. 

We recommend creating the landing page, setting up the email sign-up and putting the tags in place and placing this live on your website before you even have the itinerary ready. This gets people interested before your trip is even available and helps inform your trip designer as to whether your client base is actually interested in the vacation you are designing. For example: “We are planning a trip to Costa Rica next year, sign up if you would like to know more”

By creating and monitoring your hotlist you can see if people are interested before ever making one phone call. If people are signing up you know there is interest and your efforts designing this trip will not be in vain. If you are not getting a lot of leads or buzz for this trip you may need to evaluate what you are doing and position this trip differently or do an entirely different trip instead. This is a great way for your customer’s to better lead your trip development efforts.

Once your tentative itinerary is complete send it out to your hotlist and ask for their feedback, maybe they will have ideas around what you should add to the trip to make it that much better. Once things are finalized email them again and asked them to book!

3. You are Struggling to Convert Leads to Sales or Lack a Sales Process Entirely.

This means you are marketing to them with social media, email content, website copy and paid ads etc but people just aren’t clicking the book button. Basically, you are generating leads but not closing. It’s important to remember your leads are only as good as your sales process. You need to have a sales process that gets them from being interested in the trip to saying yes they are handing over their credit card. 

The first step to take is identifying the gap. If this is a gap in your business that you have all these leads but things aren’t closing you need to build a sales process. This is easier said than done so if you need help or want to pick Katie’s brain then sign up for a discovery call. 

 Here are a few ideas you should think about and review;

• Are your website pages set up to convert?  Try Hotjar for free to see where site visitors navigate, click or leave from on your trip pages.
• Are you answering the big WHYS? Why this adventure? Why this trip now? Why with us?
• Are you direct emailing leads and encouraging them to get on a call with you? Sending a general newsletter once a month is not enough! You have to be putting energy into having a more direct conversation with people. 
• Are you or your team calling leads? If you don’t have time to be making these calls then this is the perfect task to delegate and get them to book clients onto your calendar. A personal touch goes a long way! We talk all the time about automation but there is a time and place for both. Having automation in place is what allows you to have time to pick up the phone and call your clients.

4. You have TOO many Options.

We like to think of this like when you go to a Chinese restaurant and the menu seems like a novel. There are just too many options to choose from and it’s overwhelming. It can be confusing when they all seem too similar and it’s hard to compare. 

It’s a good idea to be very intentional with the trips you are providing and take a step back and ask yourself ‘ when am I getting to a point where I’m offering too many options that are similar?’

One of our clients has a great website that has USA destinations with only three trip options currently listed.

1. One that she is taking interest for and isnt yet available to book.
2. The second is a trip she provides alongside another company.
3. Third and final is an outdoor retreat she is hosting. 

These trips are all in the same field with an outdoor-based retreat theme to them. The reason she has done this so well is she’s kept it very clear and concise and simple for her audience to choose from. We believe the key is to do less better.

Three is the magic number.

After doing A LOT of research the Peak Flow team has come to the conclusion that three is the sweet spot. Three upsells, three trips or three options. Don’t offer 15 hiking trips in Nepal unless you specialize in that. Keep it smaller, Keep it simple and as we said before do it better. 

1 – The least desirable option.
2 – The mid-range option (typically what you want people to choose)
3 – The most expensive option. 

Scientifically proven people tend to pick the middle option.

5. There are Fear Factors in Place. 

These generally are things we don’t have control over, and that’s ok.  Some people are still cautious about COVID-19 and are reluctant to travel. New fears are rising due to attacks around the world, floods and quarantine regulations! Focus on what you can control and promote destinations that are further from the action or closer to home.

Get Planning your Trips for 2023.

It’s never too early to start planning for next year and this is why we love YouLi so much. In less than two hours you can create the trip, publish it on your website and list it in brochure mode for people to sign up to your hotlist. And for one of our clients, we did just that! We started creating trips ready for 2023 in YouLi and published them to her website and she already has people expressing interest and signing up! What a great feeling to know your trips will already be booked for next year.  

Don’t miss out on the opportunity to be launching your trips now by not using the right software and setting up automation!

Useful Resource.

Join the Conversation.

That is our two cents on why we believe your trips aren’t fully booked. If anything we mentioned struck a chord with you and got your wheels spinning then feel free to book a discovery call to talk through these options to get these things in place. As always we are here to help and have space to support you so please feel free to reach out to us.

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