Travel Agent Survey

LINKS TRAVEL & TOURS TRAVEL AGENT SURVEY – MAY 2019

We surveyed Travel Agents, asking what we could do to help you better sell our holidays. The survey was available via our weekly trade emails, the agent’s page on our website, and on the Facebook Travel Gossip page.

We had 48 responses in total.

In questions 1 to 6, we wanted to find out a bit about the company’s that responded.

Q1. Do you have a company website?

Response: All 48 answered this question. The majority of respondents do have websites (83%), but it is interesting to see that a surprisingly high number don’t (17%).

Q2. Does your company have a shop or office to display promotional material?

Response: All 48 answered this question. The majority of respondents do have somewhere to display promotional material (81%), but a high number don’t (19%). This reflects the number of home workers that responded.

Q3. Does your company use social media to promote your business, if so, which platforms?

Response: This question was answered by 47, with 1 person skipping it. We can see that Facebook is the most popular form of social media (94%), with Instagram coming in second (34%). Only 3 respondents said they didn’t use any social media at all.

Q4. Do you promote your business at exhibitions, shows and events?

Response: This question was answered by 47, with 1 person skipping it. A majority of respondents do promote their business (62%), but quite a high number don’t (38%).

Q5. Does your company put on shows and events where tour operators can promote their products?

Response: This question was answered by 47, with 1 person skipping it. ¾ of respondents do put on events where we can promote the company.

Q6. Does your company produce your own brochures, email newsletters etc. that tour operators can contribute to. If yes, please tick all that apply.

Response: This question was answered by 47, with 1 person skipping it. Email newsletters (49%) and local newspaper advertising (36%) are the most popular ways for us to contribute. 36% of respondents answered no.

Questions 7 & 8 asked respondents what they would like from Links Travel.

Q7. If Links Travel & Tours were to provide promotional materials, which of the following would you find useful? Please tick all that apply.

There were nine comments left for this question:

1. Pens, notepads, bags, chocolates/sweets with logo
2. Pens, sticky notes and bags, shelf wobbles always welcome
3. We have A2 size poster displays and we would love to promote Japan if you can provide this size material
4. None of the above
5. Bags, pens
6. Sticky notes!
7. Bags are always useful for clients
8. Any small items such as mentioned pens etc are always useful to send to clients as small gifts
9. Sticky notes always useful

Response: This question was answered by 46, and skipped by 2. Images and offers for websites and social media (63%) and A4 downloadable PDF’s (61%), were the more popular answers from the selection given. From the comments, pens, sticky notes, and bags were popular.

Q8. Please let us know if there is anything else we can do to help you sell our tours.

This was a free form answer, with no options given. 23 respondents left comments.

1. No
2. A webinar would be good, so we could learn more about your destinations. or an agent event, where we could come and see you face to face either solely or with other operators. I often travel to London for such events, and also go to events in Brighton
3. We do, from time to time, invite tour operators to stage an ‘in house’ day at our office. If this is something you would be interested in – please let us know
4. Educational trips are always beneficial
5. Just offer posters
6. Social media offers is a big one
7. Online training
8. I think you have covered everything in your survey
9. Training is always good we tend to have a company webinar on a Tuesday morning which covers all our shops
10. Email updates of recommended and/or popular Japan itineraries
11. Window display material
12. Brochures and posters and window display material please
13. Anything for use on social media
14. Can’t think of anything! We always love visits from Reps and have a great relationship with you guys!
15. Give incentives
16. Incentives for consultants – Love to Shop vouchers educationals!
17. N/A
18. May be if someone wanted to pop by the office and explain your product.
19. No
20. Just updates information on offers or promotions and posters that are in the correct format to use on Facebook maybe with our contacts on them so ie white label
21. N/A
22. Training in-store
23. Big posters for ‘A’ boards are always useful!

Response: From this we can see that agents like to have face-to-face contact, with 7 mentioning visits, in-store training and or educationals. Other popular answers were training – in-store or online (6), incentives (3), posters (3) and social media (3).

Conclusions and Results

• There will be more instore training, as well as more face-to-face visits. Brian Langford our Travel Trade Manager, is out on the road visiting agents and attending shows. If you would like him to come to your store or show, please email brian@linkstravelandtours.co.uk
• Educationals and agent incentives are a good way to encourage partners to book with us. We held month-long incentives in June and September 2019, and are looking to do more in the future. We are also considering organising a FAM trip next year (2020).
• We have Links Travel & Tours branded pens and are working on producing A2 and A3 posters as promotional material and perhaps branded sticky notes and bags.
• We need to make agents more aware of the A4 posters, social media and other services we already provide. To do this, we have added the A4 poster links to our weekly newsletters, and have become more active on social media launching an Instagram page and a Links Travel & Tours for Agents page on Facebook.