Understanding the Two Types of Group Travel
Your potential group business can be broken down into two particular types of groups. Identifying which type of group you have will help you better plan your marketing initiatives and ultimately guarantee a better success rate. Here are the two group types and strategic sales and marketing tips for group success.
Affinity/Pre-formed—Group travel with clients that have traveled together previously with the same focus and/or general interest. Alumni, special interest, family, and religious are possible Affinity Group opportunities.
Tips:
- Be sure to work closely with the potential travelers to generate interest and excitement from the other group participants—as many folks as possible in your community or organization.
- Always get to the people early and make sure that you make plans with them to market to their personal networks/database.
- Search on the Internet to find out if there are any special interest groups that may be willing to participate (ie, food/wine groups or other churches, groups, etc.)
- Avoid the trend of last-minute travel by providing incentives for your passengers to put down deposits and secure their reservation early. Encourage early deposits to save yourself the stress—tell your group the deposit is due at least 2 weeks before the real deposit date.
- Schedule travel shows and preview events to generate the maximum excitement about the destination. The Globus family of brands can help you with this! More and more of your travelers are working into retirement. When scheduling trip previews, stagger your schedules by offering additional evening and weekend presentations to accommodate your group.
- Send out constant reminders such as postcards, articles, or small gifts related to the destination. This builds excitement, enables your booked clients to share this event with their friends, and separates you from the rest of the pack. Personalize these marketing tactics as much as possible.
- Once you have committed to marketing a group, you need more than just an itinerary to get travelers excited. Going to China? Send potential travelers a fortune cookie with a small note. Thinking Italy? Invite potential travelers to stop by for a wine tasting.
- Pre and post events, such as documents parties and photo sharing, encourage group cohesion and excitement about traveling again.
Where to look for groupsGroup opportunities are everywhere! It is up to you to proactively get out there and make sales calls on local businesses and organizations. Here are some places you may want to begin:
- Your database!
- Unions (credit unions)
- Professional organizations
- Families
- Fraternal organizations
- Incentive groups
- Alumni groups
- Local Chamber of Commerce
- Community clubs
- Occupational groups
- Churches
- Athletic clubs
- Adults/Singles complexes
- Special interests (quilters, collectors)
- Golf, Fitness, Tennis, Yachting, Hunting, Fishing, Surfing
- Mobile home communities
- Teachers associations
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