The travel quote that gets a yes: what to put in it and when to follow up

A quote gets accepted when the client can tell, without asking you anything, what they get, what it costs in total, and what happens next. Most quotes that go quiet fail on one of those three, and the most common failure is the third: the client reads a number, feels the number, and has nothing else to do with the document.

So the shape of a proposal that works is not clever. It is a short summary the client can forward to whoever they travel with, a list of what is included, one clear total, and one instruction.

What goes in a proposal, in the order the client reads it

Write it so that the first screen answers "is this my trip?" and only then deals with money.

1. A one line summary. Dates, destinations, number of travellers, number of nights. The client checks this first and stops reading if it is wrong.
2. The day by day outline, one line per day. Not prose. Arrival, where they sleep, what is arranged that day, what is free time.
3. What is included, itemised. This is the part that does the persuading, and the section most quotes underwrite.
4. What is not included, itemised as plainly as the inclusions. Meals not covered, tips, optional excursions, visa fees, city taxes paid at the hotel.
5. One total price, with the per person figure next to it and any deposit stated.
6. What the client has to do to hold it, with a date. "Confirm by Friday 10 October and I hold the rooms" is an instruction. "Let me know your thoughts" is not.
7. The formal bits: who the organiser is, cancellation terms, insurance, and the passport or visa requirements for the nationalities travelling.

If the proposal is more than about three pages, the outline has become a brochure. Put the detail in an attachment and keep the proposal to what a person reads on a phone in a kitchen.

Why a quote that lists everything included beats one that shows only a price

Two proposals for the same trip, one showing a total and one showing a total plus twenty lines of what that total covers. The second wins, and the reason is a mechanism rather than a statistic.

A price on its own can only be compared with another price. The client has no way to judge it except against the cheapest thing they can find online, and against that comparison you lose, because the online version silently excludes the transfer, the tourist tax, the seat selection, the checked bag, the flexibility and you.

The moment the inclusions are written down, the comparison changes shape. Now the client is comparing two different objects, and the work of comparing them properly falls on them. Most people, faced with that, stop comparing and start deciding whether they trust you.

This is also why small inclusions are worth listing even when they cost you nothing:

• the airport transfer, with the driver's name sent the day before
• seats together on the long leg, requested and confirmed
• a quiet room away from the lift, requested at the hotel
• the hotel address written in the local script for showing a taxi driver
• a data plan already installed on the phone before departure, so they land online instead of queueing at a SIM counter
• a named person, you, reachable during the trip

None of those move the price much. All of them are things the booking site does not have, and they are what the client repeats when explaining to a relative why they did not book it themselves.

How many options to give, and how to structure them

One option is a decision about yes or no, and it invites the client to go looking for a comparison you did not choose. Five options is homework, and homework gets postponed.

Two or three, built so they differ along one axis, is the workable shape. The axis has to be obvious from a glance:

• Same trip, three levels of hotel. The itinerary is identical, only where they sleep changes.
• Same budget, different length. Seven nights done calmly, ten nights with a second region added.
• Same dates, different pace. Two bases and no internal flights, against four stops and more moving.

What does not work is three options that each differ in several ways at once, because there is nothing to compare and the client asks you to make a fourth.

Say which one you recommend, and why, in one sentence. Clients ask for options and then want to be told. Recommending costs you nothing, and refusing to recommend reads as not having an opinion about your own trip.

What to write about price

Some of this is your judgement and some of it is decided for you by law, so it is worth knowing which is which.

One total, including everything you can already predict. Under EU package travel rules, the pre-contractual information given to the traveller must include the total price inclusive of taxes and, where applicable, all additional fees, charges and other costs, or a statement of the kind of extra cost the traveller may still have to bear when it cannot be calculated in advance. For flights sold in the EU, air fare rules require the final price to be shown with taxes and charges included, and optional supplements to be offered on an opt-in basis rather than pre-ticked. In other words, the law already points where the commercial instinct points: one honest number beats a small number with a tail of surprises.

Per person and total, both. Families read the total. Couples read the per person figure. Show both and neither has to do arithmetic to feel the size of the decision.

Do not itemise your own margin, and do not apologise for the price. A line explaining your fee is fine if you charge one, and the tone matters more than the amount: it is a fee for planning, not a surcharge. Sentences like "I know it is a lot" invite the client to agree.

Put the deadline on the price, not on the client. Prices for flights and rooms genuinely move, and saying so is honest. "This total holds while these fares are available, which in my experience is a few days" is true and creates a real reason to decide. A fake countdown does the opposite: it is the tactic of the sites the client came to you to avoid.

If they say it is too much, do not discount first. Change the trip: later in the season, one fewer night, a different neighbourhood, an internal train instead of a flight. A discount teaches the client that your first number was decoration.

My client is not replying to the quote

Silence almost never means no. It usually means the person who received the quote has to discuss it with somebody else, or is waiting on leave dates, or opened it on a phone at a bad moment and never returned.

What works is a small number of short messages, each of which contains something new:

• The next day, a one line check. Did it arrive, and does the outline match what they had in mind. This is about the document, not the decision, so it is easy to answer.
• Three or four days later, one new piece of information. The room type is down to two, the fare has moved, the festival dates overlap with their second week. New information is a reason to write. "Just following up" is not.
• About a week after that, the closing question. Ask whether to hold the option or release it, and say you will release it if you do not hear back. It gives a silent client an easy answer and it ends the file cleanly.
• Then stop, and write it down. Put them in your notes with the trip they asked about and the month they asked in, and contact them next year in the same window. Plenty of quotes are accepted a season late. The habit behind that is in how to keep travel clients.

Two details that change the reply rate for mechanical reasons. Send the quote when the client can act on it, not at eleven at night. And always ask one question that can be answered in a word, because a message with no question in it needs the reader to invent a reason to reply.

The parts of a proposal you should never improvise

Whatever your style, some content is not optional. Under the EU package travel framework, and the equivalent UK regulations, a traveller has to receive specified pre-contractual information before booking a package, including the main characteristics of the travel services, the total price, the payment arrangements, general passport and visa requirements, whether the trip needs a minimum number of participants, and information about cancellation rights and insurance. The details differ by country, so check your own regulator or trade association template rather than copying a proposal you found online.

The practical version: build one proposal template that already contains those sections, and never send a quote that has an empty one.

The quote is the only part of your work the client sees before paying

Everything that makes you good at this, the destination knowledge, the supplier relationships, the judgement about which hotel suits which family, reaches the client through one document. It is worth having a template that shows all of it.

If you want the connectivity line in your inclusions list to be something you sell rather than something you support, that is what our partner programme is for: the plan goes out with the trip, and the traveller's questions come to us.

Quick answers

How long should a travel quote be?

Short enough to read on a phone, with the detail attached separately. One line of summary, one line per day, the inclusions and exclusions, one total, one instruction. If it is longer than about three pages, the client is being asked to study rather than decide.

Should I put the price in the first email?

Yes, if you have enough information to give a real one. Withholding the price to force a conversation reads as a tactic, and the client simply asks somebody else. What you can withhold is precision: a clear range with what it depends on is better than a precise number built on guesses.

How many times should I follow up before giving up?

Three, spaced over about two weeks, each carrying something new, ending with a question that makes it easy to say no. After that, move them into next year's list rather than chasing. A quote that did not convert this month is not a lost client, it is a client with the wrong dates.

Sources: Directive (EU) 2015/2302 on package travel and linked travel arrangements (25 November 2015, applied from 1 July 2018), Articles 5 and 6 on pre-contractual information; Package Travel and Linked Travel Arrangements Regulations 2018 (United Kingdom, in force 1 July 2018); Regulation (EC) No 1008/2008 (24 September 2008), Article 23 on air fare price transparency and opt-in supplements. Requirements differ by country. Checked 27 September 2026.