Can Travel Agents Win the War Against the OTA Giants?

Travel agents can win the war against the online travel sites by zigging while they are zagging.

The online travel agencies rely heavily on search engines to drive users to their sites. A single change by Google, responsible for almost 70 percent of all searches, can dramatically impact a site and an entire business.

Why should travel agents care? For the most part, travel agents have not been in the search game and have instead relied on personal relationships to drive business. That has worked against agents at times when customers veered off to Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz to fulfill a travel booking, driven by those search results. 

But it has also worked to their favor as their business has depended on personal contacts and not some anonymous web visitor who is only searching for the cheapest price. When your business depends on price, and is driven by an outside force you can’t control (Google), you are at the mercy of forces you can’t control. 

What you can control is how you interact with your personal contacts, prospects and past clients. It’s why you see travel agents selling the vast majority of higher value, more complex travel products while leaving the commodity sales to the OTAs.

Just this week the Wall Street Journal reported on a drop in share price for Expedia tied to the loss of more than 25 percent of their traffic.  This loss was attributed to how Expedia was using links to raise their search profile. 

Google didn’t like it and has penalized Expedia as a result.  Another potential reason, some specified in the Journal’s article, could have to do with Google’s move into the travel space. 

Instead of relying on Google or any other business to make yours work, travel agents are in the unique position of being able to rely on themselves. A travel agent can take a list of clients and prospects, and through the power of social media, dramatically expand that list. The key is having shareable content.

Social media is not some great mystery. It’s the act of sharing something relevant with the people you are connected to.

Relevant is the key word. Instead of wondering why you don’t show up on page one for Google in search results for cruise vacations (FYI, you never will because of competition), focus on what your prospects, clients and network of friends might be interested in … and share it with them.

What do travel agents currently share and where does it take the prospect or customer?  Does it take them to some third-party news site?  This might be beneficial to them, but it’s not going to help your business very much.

What if you could share the travel news of the day, and drive interested parties to your website to read it?  What would that mean to the travel agents' business when the customer is engaging on their personal website and diving into travel content that motivates and inspires them to travel? 

It means business, and more importantly, business that the agent can control. 

To learn how to get content on your website and drive more business, take a look at Agent Studio.  

Follow me on Twitter @murphytravels.