Narrowing your focus to a specific destination or type of travel could make you a better advisor. Here’s how to do it.
As a travel agent, the world’s destinations are your business. As gratifying as that may sound, it can also be a disadvantage! Agents who send clients all over the globe may end up with a business that lacks focus, is harder to operate and makes less money. The alternative—establishing a travel niche—will produce stronger results and give you a leg up over your competitors.
The Advantages of Having a Travel Niche
A travel niche is a specialty field that differentiates you from your competitors. It allows you to concentrate on the types of travel that excite you (or your target audience) and emphasize your unique experiences, skills, passions and knowledge. Most importantly, a travel niche will structure your business, making it easier to launch, grow and sustain.
What are the advantages of specializing in one or several travel niches? Here are the main ones:
- You develop expertise that sets you apart from your competitors.
- Because you know more about your offerings, you consistently deliver high-quality travel experiences.
- You react faster and more decisively to problems or potential problems that occur during trips.
- You select stronger suppliers and always match clients with appropriate travel/tour packages.
- You can build a keyword-rich website and social media presence, which will rank highly on Google and various search engines. Prospects researching trips will have an easier time finding you online.
- You receive more client referrals to consumers who appreciate the same kind of travel in which you specialize.
Focusing on a travel niche will enhance your marketing effort and make it easier to design and deliver travel experiences that hit the mark every time.
How to Establish a Travel Niche
Establishing a niche takes time and effort. Here’s a process to identify and build a specialty that should serve you well financially.
- Identify your passions. What activities do you love, what gives your life meaning and joy? They can range from hobbies like fishing to a subject you specialize in, such as world history or contemporary art or food. Write down as many as you can think of, even if they aren’t your top interests.
- Identify your favorite world destinations. These can be places to which you’ve frequently traveled or places you’ve always wanted to visit.
- Identity travel types. These are the travel experiences you favor and know the most about. They can be resorts, cruises, outdoor adventure, eco-tours and many others.
- Identify your travel connections. These are professional associations (travel or non-travel) and groups based on your personal interests. Since you share a common interest with their members, mentioning your shared group membership will open doors to a conversation or a personal relationship.
For each of the above, you might have five to six items (or more) listed. Now go back through your lists and circle the top two or three that resonate most with you. Your best travel niche will emerge from this grouping process. For example, let’s say you’re a passionate urban photographer. You love to shoot photos of cityscapes and also of life on the streets of great world metropolises. As for destinations, you love visiting the great cities of Asia and have done so for many years. When you’ve visited them, you’ve typically gone on group tours. Finally, you belong to a number of photography-oriented groups, including local and regional camera clubs and street-photography and Asia-travel Facebook groups.
Based on the above, you might decide to create a travel-agent niche focused on planning and leading photo safaris to Asian cities. Each trip would consist of dawn and dusk photo opportunities to capture the best light, as well as extensive explorations of city neighborhoods that might provide picturesque photo opportunities. Since you already belong to several photo-oriented groups, you believe it will be relatively easy to identify prospects for your photo tours. And since you’re an urban photographer yourself, you already know what other photographers would like to do, see and photograph during such tours.
This is just one example of how a niche can flow out of the analysis described. Your own possibilities will depend on the items you placed in each category and how they interact with each other.
Reality Test Your Travel Niche(s)
Once you’ve come up with one or more potential travel niches, don’t just implement them. Evaluate them to see if they’re market-ready. Here are some questions to ask yourself:
- How much do you know about the niche? If your answer is “not a lot,” how long will it take and how much will it cost to amass sufficient knowledge?
- Are other travel agents pursuing the same niche? Do they appear to be doing well? Are there too many competitors? Not enough?
- What is the size of your potential niche? Does it include enough prospects to convert into customers for many years to come?
- How much will it cost to build your niche offering? Are there any barriers to entry?
- How much will you need to charge to make a profit?
- What do potential customers think about your idea? What would they be willing to pay for it?
- What would your total start-up costs be? Can you self-fund these costs or do you need to borrow money?
- How many trips would you have to sell to reach your break-even point?
Based on your answers to the above questions, you may decide to drop your potential niche, revise it, combine it with another one, or launch it as is. However, your idea evolves; only pursue it when all lights are flashing green.
Examples of Travel Agent Niches
There are many potential travel niches. Here are a few possibilities to spark your brainstorming:
- Eastern Mediterranean cruises
- Mexican food tours
- Global Disney trips
- World heritage eco-tours
- European family genealogy trips
- Evangelical Middle East tours
- Greek island vacations
- Alaska outdoor adventures
- Bucket list vacations
- Destination weddings
- Spanish language-learning vacations
These are just a few of the hundreds of niche opportunities available today. Many travel advisors have become successful in identifying their own niche and building their business around it. You can, too. But remember, your niche must reflect your passions, experience and travel industry knowledge and skills.
The Importance of Having Travel Agent & Agency E&O Insurance
Niche travel offerings often depart from the usual cruise, resort or tour options. You may send clients to locations off the travel grid and expose them to more physically demanding activities or environmental/cultural risks. If this applies to your intended travel niche, consider the legal exposures you’ll face when sending your customers out into the world.
Whenever one of your clients has a negative experience during a trip you designed, it’s possible they’ll file litigation or complaints against you. Whether the problem arises from them getting injured or from getting stranded in a remote location, you may be financially responsible for repaying their loss. Maintaining an errors and omissions insurance policy can help prevent you from paying attorney’s fees, settlements, or damages out of your own pocket. If you have E&O coverage, your insurer will:
- Provide a defense attorney(s) every step of the way
- Claims adjusters to handle your case
- Expert witnesses to support your decisions and adherence to duty of care
- Payment for court administrative expenses, records and other documents.
- Expenses for legal settlements, judgments and damages against you should you lose your case in court.
The total cost to resolve your case can easily reach six figures or more. Without insurance, a travel agent or agency is creating a situation where they are gravely exposing their livelihood, leaving business and personal assets vulnerable to out-of-pocket expenses.
What to Look for in E&O Insurer
Given the importance of protecting your travel business against client lawsuits and the perception of negligence, it’s crucial to pick an insurer that will stand behind you. Here are some things to consider:
- Easy, online application processes with instant certificate of insurance issuance
- Competitively priced coverage from an insurance provider with a presence at professional travel conferences and industry events
- Access to a 24/7 risk management hotline and attorney to course-correct potential incidents before they escalate into litigation against you
- Best-in-class customer support
- Established carrier strength with at least “A” (Excellent) ratings from insurance analysts like A.M. Best
- Comprehensive coverage for your business name and all employees or independent contractors working for you
- Risk management content to promote safer business practices
Given the challenges of designing and growing a niche-travel business, you’ll want to devote your energy to overcome them, not worrying about getting sued. Securing E&O protection from a provider such as 360 Coverage Pros will give you the peace of mind you need to achieve your niche-travel dream.
360 Coverage Pros offers Errors and Omissions (E&O) insurance programs for travel agents, travel agencies, tour operators and meeting & event planners. Coverage is available for as low as $29.33 per month. To learn more, visit our website. Travel agents can also schedule a one-on-one consultation with the Program Manager.
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