Digital Marketing Strategy Plan for Travel Agency

If the planet is a living, breathing organism, then travel is the blood that keeps on pumping. Some degree of travel is required, to make anything from deliveries arriving on time to commuting to work. Anything from the most mundane to the most exhilarating experiences have a degree of travel involved in it. Travel opens your eyes to new perspectives and introduces you to new experiences you otherwise would have never come across.

About Oriental Compass

Oriental Compass is a Travel and tourism company/agency. It seeks bring the beauty of India, the pulse of its streets and the bustle of its life to the rest of the world. Oriental Compass has been a pet project of ours for a while now and here we are going to lay down the basic guidelines that we are going to follow and also monitor as we work towards launching the company.

Why us? – Our unique selling proposition

When you are a prospective traveller/tourist/backpacker looking at India as your travel destination, your first cursory search on the Internet will bring up thousands of travel agencies and companies that can offer you any number of package deals or guided tours imaginable. What makes Oriental Compass stand out among the rest? Well, what we promise you is a unique experience which not only involves packages that will take you to all the usual tourist-sy spots but also provides you with a glimpse into the various aspects of the life and culture of the multitudinous diverse millions of the country. We offer you unique and comfortable home-stays that will introduce you to the flavours of the local cuisine and a glimpse into norms and ways of a two thousand year old culture. We also would include cultural events that you could attend  and religious and social festivities and rituals that you would never have otherwise heard about or seen. In short, it will be a journey full of the usual sights, colours of life and memories that will last you a lifetime.

Customer persona

1. Male or Female

2. Age: 25-45

3. Someone who is open minded and is keen on new experience

4. Someone who has travelled before.

5. Working professional on his/her/their vacation

Short term goals

1. We are both from the Indian state of Kerala. We would like to initially focus on tourism packages to destinations in Kerala. The reasoning behind this is because of the fact that Kerala has a big Tourism industry and pre existing infrastructure to assists. As we are natives of this state we already have connections and networks that can help us in the initial phase of the business. We would focus on designing three default packages for Kerala in the lines of a Premium package, a Standard package and a value/economic package.

1. Create a live website and social media pages.

2. Get 100 unique visitors to our website.

3. Sell ten individual tour packages.

4. Feature on page 1 for the Google search Keyword: “Travel Packages Kerala”

Long term goals

1. Creating various all inclusive tour packages to various destinations all over India.

2. Getting 1000 unique visitors to our website every week

3. Sell 100 individual tour packages

4. Featuring in the first two positions for the search keyword: “Travel packages Kerala” and in the first page for “Travel Packages India”.

5. Gathering customer testimonials in video format from customers who purchased a package and travelled through using Oriental Compass. This will be published on the website.

Steps to success: How we plan to get Oriental Compass of the ground

1. Creating the website

You can’t start selling without setting up shop. And websites will be an easy way to do just that. Customer can have a detailed look at the various packages, choose what they want and proceed to purchase the package and keep track of their payments and stay in touch with the team while the preparing for the journey, throughout their travels in India and even after the completion of their trip to re-use our services at a later date.

2. Creating social media pages

If a website is your digital storefront, Instagram and Facebook page is your advertising. This is a far easier step than creating a website and helps in creating a buzz around your company and gets people talking.

3. Creating an account on Google my business

Creating a listing on Google My Business helps customers find the brick and mortar location of the company, giving it more credibility. It also will be a jumping board for the customer to access your contact details and your online profiles.

4. Research work for creating all inclusive packages.

Much groundwork is need for the creation of the packages. It should be modular and must not be a jarring experience for the customer. For this, we would like to do a research into the various popular tourist trails and taking apart packages and services provided by competitors so that we would be able to create a package that will be a smooth journey. A couple of dry runs of packages to be planned to iron out any kinks and streamline the process to provide the customer a flawless professional experience.

Measuring your success

1. Keep track of unique user visits on your website and the rate of conversion through Google analytics.
2. Keep track of followers and customer interactions. Instagram account through Instagram insights. Making sure posts are scheduled and posted on the Instagram page.
3. Monitoring the Facebook page using facebook analytics. Make sure that your are interacting with customers and posting regularly.
4. Keep track

Conclusion 

Our aim currently is to get the ball rolling and get the first customer under our belt. Once that is done we are sure we can pick up steam and attract more prospective customers. Once the initial phase has passed we would look towards further streamlining packages by taking out what works and what doesn’t. We hope that what we plan to do here with Oriental compass will also help you in creating that initial strategic plan for your business.

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