Understanding the Travel Trade

The travel trade is comprised of a network of professionals dedicated to creating and selling travel experiences. This group includes:

• Group Tour Operators: Crafting and selling trips for groups.
• Receptive Operators: Specializing in international markets and packaging travel in their local area to sell to group tour operators.
• Travel Advisors: Planning and selling travel directly to individual consumers.

There is one more important component to this eco-system. Who sells the travel experience to the travel trade? That’s where tourism offices, Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs), attractions and accommodations come in.

Travel Trade Shows

So – how and where do all these travel professionals connect to do business? One of the most common and effective ways for the tourism industry to connect is by attending travel trade shows.

At a travel trade show, the travel trade are the “buyers” and the destinations, attractions and accommodations are the “suppliers.” These shows on average span 2-5 days and typically include a series of short appointments where the suppliers sit down with the buyers on an individual basis. That’s right – speed dating for travel!

Registration fees for travel trade shows are often waived or discounted for the buyers, because the more buyers that attend, the more suppliers will want to meet with them. Suppliers typically pay the full registration fee. Also attending these industry shows are sponsors. These are typically vendors who work within the travel and tourism industry – for example, media companies, manufacturers and others who want to collaborate with the buyers and suppliers. This provides a wonderful forum for people to do business. In addition to the short meetings, there are always networking events (primarily in the evenings) where all attendees can casually connect and build relationships.

There are several trade shows available for travel trade professionals, ranging from regional, to national, to international in scope. It can be a daunting task to determine which is the best show for you, regardless of whether you are a buyer or a supplier. Shows vary in location, size, and format.

Here are a few of the top shows that should be considered for travel trade sales:

American Bus Association (ABA)

ABA Marketplace. This week-long event is the largest trade show for group tour business in the country. Over 3,500 attendees come together in January or February every year to kick off a new year of business opportunities. In addition to seven-minute pre-scheduled appointments on the meeting floor, there is a trade show space with exhibit booths of various proportions. Educational sessions are also offered throughout the event. Free 30-minute seminars featuring personal, professional and industry training are available to all attendees every day of the event.

• Duration: 5 days
• Meetings: Pre-scheduled appointments, 7 minutes long
• Show: Trade show with exhibit booths
• Educational opportunities: breakout sessions, education “bites,” roundtable
• Differentiator: Largest group tour show in U.S.A.

National Tour Association (NTA)

NTA Travel Exchange. NTA’s annual convention is a week-long show that happens in November or December every year and features buyers of all sizes who package travel to, from and within North America. The attendees represent the United States, Canada and 30+ countries worldwide. Different from ABA Marketplace, a component of this event is targeted toward the international market. Also offered are seven-minute pre-scheduled appointments, a trade show with exhibit booths, and educational opportunities throughout the event.

• Duration: 5 days
• Meetings: Pre-schedule appointments, 7 minutes long
• Show: Trade show with exhibit booths
• Educational opportunities: seminars in 4 tracks
• Differentiator: International component

Ontario Motor Coach Association (OMCA)

OMCA Marketplace. This event is basically the Canadian version of ABA’s Marketplace. The buyers who attend are primarily Canadian. This travel show is held in various Canadian destinations and takes place on an annual basis, usually in November. This event is 3 days in length and the scheduled appointments are 8 minutes. The format and style, as far as trade show and educational sessions, are similar to ABA’s Marketplace and NTA’s Travel Exchange. Smaller in scale with only a few hundred attendees, this conference is great for those suppliers who are looking to secure Canadian business!

• Duration: 3 days
• Meetings: Pre-schedule appointments, 8 minutes long
• Show: Trade show with exhibit booths
• Educational opportunities: daily sessions for tour operators, coach operators and sellers
• Differentiator: Buyers are primarily Canadian

Travel Alliance Partnership (TAP)

TAP Dance. This 3-day travel show is a national conference, however at a much more intimate size, occurring annually in May or June. The typical attendance at TAP Dance is less than 200 people, unlike the thousands of attendees at ABA & NTA. Buyers at this gathering are comprised of approximately 20 individual tour companies throughout North America who collaborate by buying and selling tour product from each other. The tour operator partners (or buyers in this case) and suppliers (sellers) make up the organization that is Travel Alliance Partnership. The suppliers are organized in regional groups of 3-5 sellers, called pods, and each individual pod meets with every buyer in 25-minute meetings. This event offers a much more collaborative experience, allowing for more detailed conversations and time for relationship building. The smaller size also allows for more networking time with the tour operators at meals and evening events.

• Duration: 3 days
• Meetings: Pod appointments, 25 minutes long
• Show: Individual appointments only
• Educational opportunities: Programming at meals
• Differentiator: A more intimate and collaborative experience

Unlocking Opportunities at Travel Trade Shows

These are some of the national travel trade events that should be considered. There are also many regional travel trade shows that are shorter in length (1-2 days), some including appointments and others entirely trade show exhibits. A quick online search of “travel shows in x region, state, etc.” will provide options of local and regional opportunities.

Travel trade shows are invaluable for professionals seeking to expand their networks, discover new business opportunities, and stay ahead in the competitive travel industry. Whether you’re a buyer or a supplier, these events can unlock connections that will significantly impact your business.

Learn more about how to maximize your trade show experiences, through preparation, communication skills, and follow-up:

Maximizing Your Tradeshow Experience Through Effective Listening and Communication Skills

Maximizing and Proving Tradeshow ROI

Making a Splash: How to Maximize Reach for Your Brand at a Tourism Conference

The post Top Travel Trade Shows for Industry Professionals appeared first on Travel Alliance Partnership.

One of our clients, Travel Alliance Partners (TAP), hosts regular weekly webinars on Tuesdays. These webinars are a cornerstone touchpoint to one of their main audiences, travel agents. Each week we focus on a different tour to a different part of the world. Our audience has the chance to chat with each partner directly, ask questions about the tours and request marketing materials.

1. Make sure your topic is appropriate for a webinar format

Some topics may be better suited to a print piece, like an eBook or a whitepaper, while others are better with a visual demonstration.

• Does your topic lend itself to a question and answer session? One of the best things about live webinars is the audience’s ability to interact and get their question answered quickly and easily.
• Do you have an expert willing to give their time? This may directly relate to the first point, but having an expert on the line, live is a great way to get your audience engaged and interested.
• Does your topic need a visual demonstration rather than printed instructions? Whether you’re demonstrating a product or creating an onboarding system for new employees, webinars are a great way to create an evergreen visual guide.

2. Setting up your webinar

Once you know a webinar is the right way to go, decide which platform works best. For TAP, we use GoToWebinar, but you could also use Zoom Meetings, Webex or several other platforms. Then decide if you want to host it live or pre-record it. There are benefits to both methods – it just depends on what works best for your organization. Live webinars are great for interaction with your audience, whereas pre-recorded webinars are convenient and easy to create. Both live and pre-recorded webinars can be viewed later (as long as you record the live webinar).

Depending on the platform you’ve chosen, you’ll have different steps to set up your webinar. Follow the resources your platform provides, and keep these general best practices in mind:

• Consider your registration form – what information do you want to know about your registrants? Maybe you want to make it quick to sign up, so you only ask for their name, email, and company. But you can also go deeper than that, and ask for their location, industry, and even buying power within the organization.
• Track where your registrants are coming from by source coding your links. Adding a source code to the end of a link is simple. Take your webinar link and add “?source=[sourcename]”. This doesn’t affect the link and helps your track where your attendees came from. Keep the source name simple like “email” or “fb”. GoToWebinar recommends source codes for tracking and displays sources in webinar reports.

3. Building your presentation

The easiest way to create a webinar presentation is within PowerPoint or Google Slides. There are other visual demonstration services out there like Prezi, but for ease of use and reduction of technical issues, this is our favorite way for webinars.

• Keep the slides visual. People attend webinars to listen, not read. Photos and videos are far more valuable to your audience than a list of instructions. Let your slides demonstrate what you can’t say and leave the step-by-step for the script.
• Don’t get fancy with transitions. PowerPoint has many fun transition options, but a webinar is not the best place for them. Depending on your connection (and your audiences’ connection) this can cause delays or screen freezes. We recommend staying away from them entirely, but simplistic ones are best if you still want to use them.
• A few well-done slides are best. Don’t create slides just to have more to click through! There’s nothing wrong with sitting on the same slide for a few minutes while you talk through the relevant information but creating more slides to make it longer just makes more work for yourself. It also gives your audience time to take in that beautiful photo or even take notes.
• Know what’s realistic for the timeframe. Our weekly TAP webinars are around 30 minutes, so we recommend 30 – 45 slides as a maximum. Any more than that is challenging to get through in our timeframe, and we want to respect our audience’s time.

4. Hosting best practices

• Always use a microphone. The built-in mic on your computer is not made for presentations and using speakerphone can have a host of problems, including background noise and echoes. Be sure you’re using a wired-in phone or using a headset with a built-in microphone.
• Be in a quiet room with the door closed. A webinar isn’t the time to be in an open-concept office space or to have people popping in and out of your office. Let everyone know in advance when you’ll be on the webinar.
• Decide who runs the slides. If you have multiple presenters on the line, will everyone will get keyboard/mouse control to change their own slides, or will one person will be in charge of slides for everyone? Important note: if your presenters are remotely changing their own slides, there will likely be a short delay as the computer catches up.
• Have a hard copy of your slides. If you’re not running the slide changes, this will help you know what’s coming next and cut down on any awkward pauses.
• Smile! Since webinars are audio-only for the presenters, people pay more attention to your tone. Delivering the information with a smile can translate to enthusiasm and passion to your listeners.  And remember- they have no idea what’s on your script, so they only know you’ve messed up if you tell them.

5. The ROI is in the follow up

The work doesn’t end once the webinar does. People have signed up, given you personal information, and time out of their day because they’re interested in what you have to say. Don’t let those lines of communication go cold!

After each of our webinars for Travel Alliance Partners, we send an email thanking the participants for joining and include a link to the webinar recording. We also send them contact information for the presenter for questions and a link to join us at our next webinar. This gives them an actionable next step to stay engaged with us.

We also encourage the partner who hosted the webinar to reach out to any of the participants, especially those who had questions. Find the balance between nurturing your leads and sending too many emails. Leads can quickly turn cold (or unsubscribe) if they feel bombarded with emails.

The post How to Create a Webinar appeared first on Travel Alliance Partnership.