Thanksgiving is upon us once again!  🦃 🌽 🥕 🥧 🍗  It’s time to start planning and prepping for the celebration.  Even though it might look quite a bit different this year, I’m betting that most people will at least cook something special.  And that means it’s time to break out all our old favorite recipes.

Of course, one of my favorite recipes is… the Recipe for a Profitable Travel Business!  

It may not be your Grandma’s Famous 🍪 Chocolate Chip Cookies, but the recipe will help you cook up something that’s every bit as sweet:  a life-changing travel business.  Now that’s tasty!  

And why do you need a recipe for a profitable travel business? 

Think about it like this.  If you’re trying to make Grandma’s Famous Chocolate Chip Cookies for the first time, you’re not going to just go in the kitchen, dump a bunch of stuff out onto the counter, and start winging it, are you?  

No!  You’re going to get that recipe out and follow it to the letter because you want to give yourself your best chance at nailing it the first time.  And your best chance is to follow the exact steps and ingredients that have led to the success you’re trying to emulate.  

It’s the same with starting a travel business.  Take it from me, you do not need to reinvent the wheel here.  There’s a formula that works.  I’ve built my travel business with it, and I’ve helped so many others build their travel businesses with it.  And you can do it, too.  But you need to follow the recipe.  

Here’s how it goes.  

Ingredients: 

• • Travel agent training 
    • Learning how to be a travel agent.  Travel industry basics, how to book travel, how to work with clients, verification, travel documentation, insurance, building vacation packages, Travel Suppliers 101…  This is the fundamental knowledge you need to have to be a travel agent, no matter what recipe you are following. 
    • This is an ingredient that I recommend you buy, not DIY.  After all, you want to get to the goal of booking vacations and making your business profitable as quickly as possible.  That does not mean spending all of your valuable time on the internet trying to figure it out for yourself. 

• Travel agent systems

• • • These are the methods of working with travel suppliers to book the travel.  
    • Are you going to register to be an independent agent and do it all yourself?  Are you going to choose to work with a host who will supply access to booking sites?   

• Marketing 

• • • This is how you define and position your brand and your messaging, how you position yourself as an expert, learning how to make offers that convert, creating your marketing plan, your marketing strategy, lead generation, optimizing online ads and search engine optimization…  
    • There’s so much to this and it takes a good deal of work, but it is a fundamental piece in creating a profitable real travel business that’s not just a hobby. 

• Sales 

• • • Converting and closing sales is one of the most important ingredients in your travel business recipe.  You need to have a plan, a method, and a knack for nailing those sales opportunities.  
    • You also need to be able to run the “tire kickers” off from your business (the ones who will waste your time looking at everything you have to offer but won’t ever make a purchase) so you can spend your valuable time helping the real clients who want to purchase travel packages from you.  And that takes experience.  
    • Just like you need baking soda (or is it baking powder?) to get a cake to rise, if you don’t have consistent sales in your recipe, your business isn’t going to grow.  

• Wow factor (a.k.a. customer service) 

• • • These are the things that make clients come back to you over and over.  Be the one clients want to work with.  Do the things that set your agency apart from every other agency out there.  Do the things that get clients to tell their friends, family, and online review sites about you.  
    • Get this kind of excitement built up about what your agency is doing, and you’ll have clients standing in line to do business with you.  

• Systems 

• • • What type of systems do you have in place from Day One? 
    • These systems allow your business to grow, to be scalable, and be the most successful it can be in the least amount of time.

• Automation 

• • Automation goes right along with Systems.  
  • Automation leads to scalability, and is a key to work/life balance.  It will help you build your business around your life, not the other way around.  
  • If you already have a large travel agency in place and are running the show, you may be overwhelmed with the work of being an agent yourself, answering questions from other agents, and helping other agents to do their jobs…  Automation is key to solving your problems and getting your life back.  
  • Even if you are just starting out, implementing automation from the beginning can help your business run as smoothly as possible.  And when you’re ready to scale up you’ll already be in a place to do so without much upheaval.  

Mix all the ingredients together, bake it until it’s GBD (that’s “golden brown and delicious”), and once it cools, you won’t just have a beautiful batch of cookies.  You’ll have a beautiful batch of 🍪🍪🍪 cookies that delivers 💲💲 money to your bank account every single month!  Yum!!  😋

It may seem overwhelming, but trust me.  You can do it.  Just don’t flail away in the kitchen with a pile of ingredients in trial-and-error mode.  Keep it simple and follow the recipe and you’ll be in business in no time.    

Happy Thanksgiving!  

(Hey, why not check out my new video on the Recipe for a Profitable Travel Business on YouTube!) 

Want more help with putting your ingredients together to make your delicious travel business?    

Then you should apply for the Careers on Vacation Mastermind!  It’s the ultimate tool for travel professionals and travel agency owners.  

Whether you’re brand new to the industry or you’re experienced, we have different learning tracks based on what you need to get you to the next level.  The Careers on Vacation team will help you get your ingredients together and bake up your business so you can get to what we all want in the end:  an abundant little 🍪 cookie that puts money in the bank account every month.   

Apply using the link below, and let’s get on a discovery call to see what we can do together! 

careersonvacation.com/readynow

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