How to keep travel clients: the year between two trips

A client books with you again if, between the two trips, you stayed useful and never became noise. Three things do most of that work: notes on what each client actually likes, a small number of messages sent at moments that mean something, and a newsletter with one real idea in it instead of a list of offers.

Nothing here needs software you do not have. A spreadsheet and a calendar reminder will carry an agency a long way.

Write down what you learn, because you will not remember it

The advantage an agency has over a booking site is knowing things about the person. That advantage only exists if it is written down somewhere other than your memory.

For each client, one row is enough: who travels with them, the last trip and what they said about it afterwards, the seat and room they prefer, dietary or mobility needs, the months they can travel, roughly what they spent, and anything personal worth remembering, such as a fiftieth birthday next spring or a daughter finishing university.

The test for whether your notes are good is simple. A year later, can you write them a message that could not have been sent to anybody else? If not, the notes are too thin.

The three messages that bring people back

Most agencies send either nothing or everything. Three, timed properly, outperform a monthly broadcast:

• The welcome home message, three or four days after they land, with no selling in it at all. Ask how it went and whether anything went wrong that you should know about for next time. This is where you learn the thing that makes the next trip better, and it is also the moment where a review request costs you nothing.
• The message a year later, timed to the same window they travelled in last time. People travel in patterns: the same fortnight in August, the half term week, the anniversary. Reaching them before they start looking is the whole point, so send it about three months before that window opens.
• The message tied to something you remembered. The anniversary, the retirement, the child finishing school. One line about the occasion and one concrete idea. This is the message that makes people say their agent knows them.

None of these should be automated to the point where they read as automated. The reason they work is that they are obviously written by a person who has the notes in front of them.

What a travel agency newsletter should actually contain

The newsletter that gets deleted is a list of discounted packages. The one that gets read has one useful thing per issue, from someone who has been there:

• one destination, in season, with the reason it is worth going now and the thing everyone gets wrong about it
• one practical answer: baggage rules that changed, what a transit visa actually requires, which card to use abroad
• one short story from a real trip you arranged, with the client's permission
• one thing to book now because of a deadline, which is the only sales content in the issue

On frequency, monthly is plenty and quarterly is fine if you keep it. What matters more than the interval is that it does not stop. A list that hears from you once and then not for a year has to be reintroduced to who you are.

On numbers: you will see industry average open rates quoted everywhere. They are close to useless for you, because they average consumer retail with business software, and because the way opens are counted changed when mail providers started prefetching images. Watch your own trend instead. Are more people opening this month than last, and are replies going up? Replies are the honest measure. A newsletter that gets five replies is doing more for your bookings than one that gets three hundred silent opens.

The rules the newsletter has to follow

Short version for an agency in the EU or the UK: marketing email needs consent, with a narrow exception for people who have already bought something similar from you, every message needs a working unsubscribe link and your real business identity, and you have to be able to show where an address came from. The frameworks are the GDPR and the ePrivacy rules, implemented slightly differently country by country, so check your own regulator's guidance rather than a blog.

Two practical consequences. Do not import the address of everyone who ever emailed you, and keep a note, next to each address, of how it got onto the list.

Loyalty that does not come out of your commission

A discount is the most expensive kind of loyalty, because it is paid for out of the same place your salary is. Things that cost less and are remembered longer:

• Priority on the things that are scarce. Your repeat clients hear about the group departure a week before it is announced. That costs nothing.
• Recognition rather than rebates. The room request that gets made every time without being asked. The airport pickup sorted for the return leg because you know they land at midnight.
• Practical extras included in the trip. A well made pre departure pack, the hotel address in the local script, a data plan already installed on the phone before they leave. Small things, and clients repeat them to friends in a way they never repeat a five per cent discount.
• A named referral thank you rather than a points scheme. Points schemes need administration that an agency of three people will not keep up.

If you do run a formal scheme, make it explainable in one sentence and make it reward the behaviour you want, which is usually booking early rather than booking often.

When a trip goes wrong

Retention is decided here more than anywhere else. A client whose trip went wrong and who was looked after properly is more loyal than one whose trip was uneventful, and a client who was passed around while standing in an airport is gone whatever the outcome.

What that means in practice: one named person at the agency owns the problem, the client is told what is happening even when the news is nothing yet, and afterwards you go back to them once the dust has settled and say what you changed. Also decide in advance which problems you will absorb rather than argue about, because arguing about a small amount costs more than the amount.

Two of the most common mid trip emergencies, a lost connection and a phone with no data, are largely preventable by what you send before departure. That list is in our pre departure checklist.

The quiet months are the work

Nothing in this list happens during the booking. It happens in the weeks when nobody is travelling, which is exactly when it is easiest to skip. If you want the connectivity part to be one of the practical extras you include without it becoming your problem when a phone will not connect in Bangkok, that is what our partner programme does: you sell the plan with the trip, we look after the traveller.

Quick answers

How often should I contact past clients?

A monthly or quarterly newsletter, plus the three personal messages above. The personal ones matter more. If you can only do one thing, do the message three months before the window they travelled in last year.

Is a loyalty programme worth it for a small agency?

Usually not as a points scheme, because of the administration. Recognition, priority access and included extras achieve the same thing and do not require a system to track.

How do I know whether any of this is working?

Count two numbers each year: how many bookings came from someone who had booked before, and how many came from someone they sent. If both are flat while your enquiries grow, you are buying new clients to replace the ones you are losing.