It feels like just yesterday you were greeting your guests. Perhaps it was a ragtag group of travelers sitting around getting the 101 orientation before heading off on a tour. Maybe they visited your property for a wellness retreat or artistic experience.
Regardless of what brought you together, the past several days have been a journey of shared meals, miles walked, good conversations, and deep belly laughs. And now, it’s nearly over.
Travel experiences where you’ve had a chance to build rapport with guests offer a unique opportunity. As guests furiously post photos, exchange numbers with new friends, and promise never to forget these moments, your travel company has an opportunity. In the days, weeks, and even months following this experience, you have a chance to turn one-time travelers into long-term fans, advocates, and even future guests.
How? Simply by staying in touch. This can be done using strategic post-trip communication that generates curiosity, taps into exclusivity, offers education and information, and encourages travelers to count on your travel company to provide an incredible experience once again.
Why Travel Companies Should Focus on Previous Guests
Companies spend a lot of time and attention on marketing to attract clients, but there’s incredible value in maintaining good relationships with previous guests. Of course, some of the communication pieces you develop will naturally suit both new prospective guests and those who have traveled with you before. But there are good reasons to specifically consider previous travelers as a distinct audience segment with which you should stay in contact.
Cost Savings
Regardless of the industry, it is demonstrably more difficult and expensive to attract cold clients. Cold clients need to move through the entire sales funnel – beginning with becoming aware of your brand, learning about your offerings, and finally booking an experience.
On the other hand, you don’t need to educate returning guests on who you are or what your company offers. You simply need to stay top of mind by reminding previous guests that your company exists and still has something to offer.
Ride the Wave of Enthusiasm
The traveler's journey is such a strange beast because people are so deeply immersed in the experience. The 360-degree experience is so complete: They feel the ground, smell the air, taste the food, and hear the voices. It clings to their clothing and gets beneath their fingernails.
As travelers prepare to depart – whether they’re leaving a property, saying good-bye to a tour group, or finishing an interactive experience – they are closing this chapter of their lives. For many people, this is an experience they say they’ll “never forget” or that has been “life changing.” While they might not be ready to book their next trip today, their memories are still fresh. Staying in touch helps them hold onto that feeling even as they venture back into the “real world.”
Built-In Brand Advocates
Something led them to choose your company over others. If you did a good job with your pre-trip communication, then what you promised is what you delivered and presumably your guests are satisfied. Now, because previous travelers have experienced your offering, they’re primed to be word-of-mouth brand advocates.
One of the first things people ask when someone returns from a holiday is, “How was your trip?” If all went well, hopefully they’ll gush about the experience and mention your travel company. Additionally, if you continue to communicate with your previous guests in various ways and with various messages, you provide fodder for different messages they can share with others. Plus, ongoing communication allows you to reinforce why travelers chose your brand in the first place.
Impact Extends Beyond a Trip
By now, most travel companies have aligned their purpose with more than just generating a profit. Your team should be communicating with (prospective) travelers before and during a trip about what that purpose is. Regardless of what initiatives your travel company supports and how it shows this support, travelers likely play a role in that initiative’s success. Perhaps that’s through part of a trip fee being donated to a specific cause or via some activity that allows travelers to “give back.”
Use post-trip communication to remind guests of their importance in supporting these initiatives, whether your team funds rewilding efforts, offers surf lessons to local kids, or supports micro-finance co-ops in the destinations you operate. You’ve already shared the stories about who is impacted by tourism dollars and how, and what’s important to your company and why, so use ongoing messaging to encourage guests to continue supporting these initiatives that made their trip memorable.
What Travel Companies Should Communicate with Previous Guests
So, you’re convinced there is value in staying in touch with guests who have traveled with your company or visited your retreat or safari camp. But what, exactly, should you say and when? Obviously the messaging you choose for previous guests will differ depending on your offering and the kinds of experiences your guests had when traveling with you, but here are a few ideas on how to stay in touch while remaining relevant and interesting.
Before They Depart the Experience
Post-trip communication can begin before guests ever leave their holiday for home. Consider setting aside time at the end of a trip for guests to reflect on their experience and what they’ll take away from it. Again, depending on the context, this might take the form of setting goals, making note of transformational shifts, or writing a letter to the self.
Advise guests that you’ll be in touch at a certain time (six months, one year, etc.) with a reminder of those reflections and/or the self-addressed note. This is a nice touchpoint that’s not actually curated by your company but a message from the traveler to the traveler framed in the context of immersion in your brand. It’s the closest you can get to bottling that magical travel experience up and gifting it to someone.
Post-Trip Survey
Most travel companies send post-visit surveys, and that’s great. But most of these post-trip surveys use number-based scales to gauge the quality of the tour or accommodation without learning anything more about the guest. Use this survey to its greatest extent by encompassing not only the previous trip but traveler interests and future desires as well.
In the post-trip survey, consider asking questions about where and how guests plan to travel in the future. Ask about their interests and what they’d like to learn. Tailor your future communications so that they receive highly relevant messaging from your company. Importantly, also find out if there’s anything that does not interest them so as to avoid spamming them with content they find irrelevant.
Personalized Thank You
The days and weeks shortly following a visit are an opportunity to tap into that lingering travelers’ high. Thank your guests for traveling with your company, and, if possible, include a personalized memory from the experience into the message.
One way to customize this message is with a photo. Before your guests depart, consider snapping a photo that can be inserted into the message; this might be of only your traveler(s) or of the tour group. In a sea of mass messaging, these small touches stand out as a way to show you care about your guests as people and not just as a means to make money.
Specifically Curated Content
If you keep track of survey responses and traveler habits using an intuitive (but not overly complicated) tagging system in your database, creating customized content does not need to be challenging. Based on this tagging system, you can then send messages about specific destinations, activities, or updates to those travelers that have indicated a particular interest.
For example, previous guests who indicated they’re interested in traveling to Asia but have no interest in South America can be tagged so they receive updates when new tours in Cambodia and Malaysia are created, but not when offerings in Brazil come online. Or, if guests at your retreat center showed interest in arts and crafts but not wellness activities, they probably don’t care if you’re running a special on yoga-themed getaways. Keep your messaging relevant to keep your previous guests interested in what you have to say.
Impact Updates and Solicitation
Your guests are an important asset to any social good initiatives your travel company supports. Assuming you introduced them to these initiatives in some way during their travels, keep them updated on progress and milestones. Keep these messages framed in an accessible, meaningful way: While success might be measured in numbers (money raised, tons of waste removed, number of schools built, etc.), share these stories from a human-centric perspective when possible, and don’t forget to explain why the impact matters.
These updates are a good way to keep the relationship warm if and when you’re ready to ask for donations to continue supporting these projects, such as on Giving Tuesday.
Nudges for Future Bookings
Of course, ultimately you want past guests to spend money with your travel company again. You want them to sign up for another tour and book another stay. And it’s okay to encourage them to do that – just not all the time or in every piece of communication.
The goal is for your travel company to stay top of mind with information and inspiration that is targeted and meaningful so when the right opportunity comes to book another trip, your company is an option. But don’t become the company that just sells, sells, sells. People want to feel like they matter as humans, not just vehicles for cash.
Even in these sales messages, you can continue to acknowledge and even occasionally reward previous guests. For example, celebrate birthdays or wedding anniversaries with a discount code.
Best Practices for Mindful Post-Trip Communication
Strategically utilizing post-trip communications is a powerful way to stay in touch with people who have already made the choice to trust your brand. This is a relationship to nurture and cherish. As you continue fostering that relationship, keep these best practices in mind.
Don’t Be Overbearing
Not every guest will be interested in maintaining this relationship, and that’s okay. Always give people the option to opt out of any communications, whether that takes the form of unsubscribing from emails or unfollowing social media accounts. Also, avoid showing up in places that can feel a bit more intimate, like in people’s direct message (DM) box on social media accounts.
Personalize Where Possible
As noted, personalized messages or curated content can hit better than mass messages sprayed across an email list. It is absolutely impossible to personalize everything, but showing that your company has paid attention to the things that matter most to your guests can go a long way in showing you care, value the relationship, and are paying attention.
Mix It Up
Use your communications for a variety of reasons: Inspire, educate, and inform in addition to selling.
You can also vary the kinds of ways you communicate: Perhaps you can link to a photo album showcasing the progress of an impact project or share a video of the staff wishing people a happy holiday along with written text.
Remember to Give and Take
Ultimately, your goal is to get a previous guest to become a future guest once again. You want something from them, but remember to give along the way as you journey – meandering this way and that – through the sales funnel once again.
