The Shift Toward Personalization and Niche Expertise

Travelers are looking for personalization and niche experiences. Success for travel advisors hinges on a deep understanding of the audience and the ability to offer tailored experiences.

Meredith Calloway, Co-Founder of Gifted Travel Network, emphasizes finding one’s “brilliance.” She suggests defining a personal brand that aligns with natural strengths and the unique value provided to clients. Whether focusing on family travel, adventure trips, or luxury experiences, serving a specific niche helps connect with a targeted audience and deliver more impactful services.

Mary Charlson, president of Five Minute Marketing, highlights the need to concentrate on a few core marketing channels that work together to guide clients through the decision-making process. Advisors who target specific audiences with tailored content create deeper connections, leading to stronger client loyalty and higher-quality leads.

The Power of Community: Relationship Building for a Loyal Client Base

In an era where travelers can book trips with just a few clicks, personal relationships offer a competitive edge. Building trust and providing personalized advice set travel advisors apart from the faceless, transactional nature of online travel agencies (OTAs).

James Ferrara, founder of InteleTravel, explains that the cornerstone of their success is the relationship-driven sales model. InteleTravel teaches advisors to leverage trust-based relationships rather than rely solely on traditional advertising. In uncertain economic times, consumers are more likely to turn to trusted advisors, rather than make travel decisions through impersonal websites.

The rise of travel advisors as independent freelancers, many of whom operate from home, has transformed the industry. Today’s advisors aren’t just booking trips; they offer curated travel experiences supported by deep knowledge and personal connections. This focus on relationships enables advisors to differentiate themselves from OTAs and cultivate long-lasting client loyalty.

Navigating Challenges with Creativity and Community

Travel advisors who adapted during the pandemic are now reaping the rewards of their resilience. Many found ways to engage clients during downtime—through content creation, webinars, or virtual travel experiences—building stronger relationships that continue to pay off. Advisors who can think outside the box and find innovative ways to connect with clients will always be in a position to thrive.

Meredith Calloway’s Gifted Travel Network leaned heavily into community building during the pandemic. Her team provided support and education to their advisors, helping them stay engaged with clients through virtual events, travel-themed Zoom calls, and even wine tastings. These efforts not only kept advisors connected with clients but also fostered a sense of solidarity, leading to exponential growth as travel bounced back.

Technological Integration for the Travel Advisor

While personal relationships and expertise remain at the core of advisory services, technology enhances efficiency, responsiveness, and innovation.

The Rise of the Younger, Tech-Savvy Travel Advisor

While Baby Boomers have long been the dominant force in the travel industry, a shift is occurring. Younger generations are stepping up, and these tech-savvy, entrepreneurial individuals embrace the flexibility and independence of being a travel advisor, reshaping the industry in the process.

James Ferrara notes that the average age of InteleTravel’s advisors is now around 40, with a growing hotspot of advisors in their mid-20s to early 30s. These younger advisors are digital natives who understand how to leverage social media, technology, and artificial intelligence (AI) to attract clients and streamline services. They’re highly entrepreneurial, driven by a desire for flexibility and the freedom to run their own businesses.

This new generation is reshaping how travel is sold and experienced. They’re not just travel advisors—they’re influencers, content creators, and trusted guides who curate personalized travel experiences with an understanding of what younger travelers want: authenticity, adventure, and connection.

Dipping your toes in AI? Join our workshop live on October 10 or watch the recording.

Leveraging Technology to Enhance Client Experiences

From using social media to staying connected with clients to using AI to streamline operations, technology empowers advisors to work smarter. Travel advisors who adopt these tools are better equipped to offer more personalized service and stay competitive in a digital-first world. James Ferrara shares that InteleTravel’s advisors benefit from sophisticated technology, allowing them to offer seamless services that rival even the largest agencies.

For travel advisors, technology is no longer just a back-end tool. It’s a front-facing advantage that allows for real-time solutions, anticipation of client needs, and the delivery of unforgettable experiences. Whether they’re using AI to help craft personalized itineraries or leveraging online communities for lead generation, tech-savvy advisors are leading the industry forward.

Thriving in an Evolving Industry

The industry is poised for growth as it adapts to new trends and continues delivering exceptional value to travelers worldwide. Embracing these changes ensures that travel advisors remain a vital and dynamic part of the travel ecosystem, ready to meet the demands of an ever-changing world. By focusing on personalized services, leveraging technology, and fostering community, today’s travel advisors are not only surviving but thriving.

The post How Travel Advisors Thrive in a Changing Industry appeared first on Travel Alliance Partnership.

To truly stand out from the crowd, you need to know what sets your destination apart from others. This process of defining yourself is known as destination positioning — and it’s essential for building an effective tourism marketing strategy.

Start by gaining a clear vision of who your target audience is. Take a hard look at both your strengths and weaknesses when compared to other destinations in your area or among your key drive markets in order to identify what makes you unique and appealing. Is there something you do better than anyone else? Something that you have more of per capita? A moment in history that only you can claim? A business that drives the entire community forward?

Pick one or two aspects of your destination (such as attractions, activities or experiences) and focus on those rather than trying too hard to appeal broadly across all demographics. By doing this, you can create personalized messaging that will resonate with potential visitors while also clearly communicating why they should choose your destination over all other options available.  

Let’s look at some examples of strong destination positioning:

New Zealand: Home of Middle Earth

The first movie in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Ring Trilogy was released in 2001, and the stunning location known as “Hobbiton” found its home in New Zealand. Now over 20 years later the destination still considers this a cornerstone of its tourism marketing. Visit the site and you will find information on Middle Earth right on its homepage, along with itineraries, activities and tours for fans of the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies to engage with. You can even take a “Middle Earth” quiz to learn where your Unexpected Journey in New Zealand begins.

Hamilton, Missouri: Quilt Town, U.S.A.

Hamilton, MO got its first taste of notoriety as the home of American Businessman James Cash (J.C.) Penney, but its true claim to fame came in 2008, when Jenny Doan founded the Missouri Star Quilt Co. A little quilt shop that soon gained a big YouTube following turned this town into a destination known today as “Quilt Town, U.S.A.” Now avid quilters flock to the town to visit the quilt shops, participate in sewing classes and makers retreats, see sights like the “World’s Largest Spool of Thread,” and more.

Sierra Vista, Arizona: Hummingbird Capital of the U.S.

Sierra Vista, located in Cochise County, Arizona is home to 15 species of hummingbirds. Named one of the top bird watching places on earth (with over 300 bird species in all) — and called the Hummingbird Capital of the United States, it is a bird lover’s paradise. Visitors can find information on when, where and how to see these birds, which types can be found in specific areas of Sierra Vista and learn about studies being conducted at the Southeastern Arizona Bird Observatory. For fans of our feathered friends, it is the destination to put on your bucket list.

Once you have identified your claim, niche or destination positioning, start creating experiences, videos, messaging and framing your marketing efforts around that topic. Consider what your target audience wants and needs to know about that specific topic — will they be looking for itineraries or daytime tours? Do you need to create a product around this claim, like a trail or an experiential package?

Then consider how the other pieces of your destination fit into this larger message and the role that restaurants, accommodations or other partners play. You don’t have to ignore the “everything else,” instead understand that those partners exist to make your core message stronger.

Don’t be afraid to go all in on your one thing. There is an audience for everyone, and finding your niche will lead you to your raving fans and create repeat visitors for life.

The post Destination Positioning: How to Stake Your Claim and Find Your Niche appeared first on Travel Alliance Partnership.

Making Trails

Trails are probably one of the most ubiquitous forms of gamification in the travel, tourism and hospitality industry. They are also a great way to tap into niche market tourism, by the way. Many trails are an ongoing “game” – one where the target audience is compelled to visit all the stops or as many as they can. Trails highlight a certain activity for their target audience, bringing many stops and varied choices into a narrower focus that’s easier for the consumer to choose from. The Haunted History Trail‘s annual brochure resembling a magazine is highly sought-after by its audience and provides a guide to the stops that can help people choose since there are so many.

See how we market the Haunted History Trail to inspire year-round travel

Many trails create a game within a game by using elements like passports either year-round or for special events. Wine trails in the Finger Lakes region of New York often have holiday passports or special event passports where you get something at each stop, like an ornament or a unique food tasting.

Gamification with Contests

Is this what you thought gamification was all about? As long as you can conjure up a prize your audience will be excited to win, your contest can be almost anything. Many are short-term, but they can also be longer-term. Some rely on advertising and big budgets, others succeed with other marketing promotions. Our two main contest types fall into simple entry versus story sharing:

Simple entry contests

These contests ‘simply’ ask participants for details like name and email to enter. The prize can be big or small – and again the timeline can be long or short. If you’re looking beyond long-term lead generation to year-round lead generation, I’d recommend looking at some other tactics. However, these simple entry contests are a great way to kick-start a campaign that needs more emails on a list or needs activity/engagement in a burst.

For Red Shed Brewing, we created a simpler entry contest at the end of 2020 that asked participants “Where do you beer?” with 4 prize choices. To enter, they gave us their name and email (to receive newsletters), verified their age and picked their favorite place to beer (and their favorite prize). The contest grew their email list with their target market and generated a lot of buzz, as they were also able to earn more entries by sharing the contest and taking different engagement actions.

How we grew a craft beer audience during the pandemic

Sharing contests

People love to share, and sharing a story is another go-to gamification strategy for our team. It works best with highly engaged communities who have a strong emotional connection to the brand. That was the case when we first started working with Letchworth State Park for their capital campaign to fund the construction of a Nature Center.

For this campaign, we developed a “My Letchworth Story” contest to collect and share audience stories and childhood memories of Letchworth State Park. It was a wonderful way to engage a passionate audience to spread the news of the capital campaign and to encourage a sense of community. A winner was selected to win a stay at the Park’s Glenn Iris Inn.

Read how we helped fund the campaign by connecting a community

Virtual Experiences

Here’s a new buzzword that wasn’t as trendy pre-2020. But they did exist! Now, of course, people are much more used to the idea of virtual experiences. I’ve been hearing about destinations using virtual reality for several years. While virtual reality and augmented reality have certainly picked up as our world went virtual, many turned to video and photo resources to create a similar effect. Video tours and 360-degree photo technology are now quite prevalent.

See how top destinations used virtual reality in 2020

Creating Apps & Games

Who does gamification better than apps? One of my favorite first projects that included gamification was an activity for a tradeshow around the time that the Candy Crush game first became popular. We designed a postcard-size game card that resembled the app with candy pieces, but some were missing. In order to fill in their cards for a chance to win a prize, attendees had to visit certain booths at the show to get the candy stickers. Filled stickers were entered to win a prize.

Another example of gamification is related to a trail. We’ve worked with the annual fall Apple Tasting Tour in Wayne County, NY for many years. The trail used a paper brochure to gain entries in a contest, adding people to their mailing list for the brochure each year. In 2020, we worked with them to develop an app that took the whole contest to a new level with badges and non-apple stops in the region to encourage additional visitation points.

Learn more about the Apple Tasting Tour’s app

Earned Gamification

A final entry in the list of gamification strategies to keep in mind when creating a plan to drive engagement is earned media. Have you ever voted for a business, destination or organization to win a spot as “the best of X” or “the year’s best X” or the like? That’s gamification too! It mobilizes the audience to take action by voting. It can be a local newspaper’s annual contest that accepts nominations and then votes, or a larger opportunity that requires pitching and more targeted outreach.

Letchworth State Park worked on another capital campaign project in order to build the Autism Nature Trail (ANT). We earned ANT the opportunity to be part of a voting contest held by a local plumbing business. The prize was a donation to their cause, and a designed, wrapped truck that would continue to share the message of the winning non-profit. The gamification works regardless of whether you win or lose the voting competition. In this case, though, ANT won!

The post Gamification to Drive Engagement: More than One Way to Create Fun appeared first on Travel Alliance Partnership.

Niche market tourism uses programs to attract visitors focusing on a very specific market segment built around a well-defined product.

We’ve said it before, tourists are looking for experiences. So it only makes sense that visitors are throwing out generic “everything but the kitchen sink” trips, and planning vacations that align directly with their interests. Tourists are now travelling to destinations (or a string of destinations) with opportunities that match their passions. Thus, niche market tourism is a great way to grow visitation to your destination.

But let’s make one thing clear – “niche” does not have to mean small. There are plenty of niche markets that have a large following and pull in plenty of tourists.

Examples of some popular niche tourism markets include:

• Agri-tourism: agriculturally-based activities that bring visitors to a farm.
• Eco-tourism: the unique ecology of an area – its flora and fauna – that bring in tourists.
• Wine tourism: wine-growing regions, vineyards, wineries, wine festivals attract visitors who are interested in consuming or purchasing wine. (I see you, Finger Lakes region.)

How to Create a Niche Tourism Product

Identify products with a common thread.

Look for the one-of-a-kind assets in your region. Attractions can take advantage of a niche market that’s just become popular.

When the Lincoln movie came out in 2012, Cayuga County’s Seward House added special tours around the relationship between Secretary of State Seward and Lincoln. Where else can you see pressed flowers from Lincoln’s funeral casket?

Develop a trail. 

If you have the capacity to create and manage a trail, string together multiple stops with a specific theme in an easy-to-travel way. Trails are very popular because they do all the work for tourists. Visitors pick a place to start and just enjoy the journey.

The Haunted History Trail of New York State is a statewide paranormal product that appeals to both serious ghost hunters and the paranormal curious. It has over 65 creepy, spooky and downright scary stops, including haunted inns, museums, amusement parks, and restaurants.

Find out how we created year-round demand with storytelling & strategy for the Haunted History Trail of NYS.

Create a website, landing page or brochure. 

Bundle information so consumers can easily find it. Group assets and experiences that appeal to niche markets and display them on your destination’s website or in a printed guide.

Corning and the Southern Finger Lakes do a great job with this. In the things to do section on their website, various activities are categorized based on special interests and audiences. Examples include Art Aficionados, History Buffs, Outdoor Enthusiasts and Agri-Tourism. Their Chocolate Trail also thinks outside the box, taking visitors beyond standard places where you can eat chocolate. The trail includes funky stops like a spa with chocolate creme waxing and a cigar shop with chocolate pipe tobacco!

If you have enough content, create a website dedicated to one niche market (as the Pot Guide does for marijuana users).

Marketing a Niche Tourism Product

Target niche tourists. 

This may be a no-brainer, but target the people who have a special interest in your product or asset. When you’re creating an audience for Facebook ads, choose target interests that align with the niche market.

Old Sturbridge Village is the largest outdoor history museum in the Northeast, with historical interpreters who recreate a rural New England town of the 1830s. Our Facebook ads target different groups interested in different aspects of the museum. History buffs are attracted to the American history aspect, while others love to be on guided cultural tours and hands-on explorers want to experience history through crafts and makers. The museum has all of these, and targets each group specifically with the pieces that are most interesting to them.

Produce content. 

Consumers are looking for relevant content that interests them. Talk about the niche product(s) across all the destination marketing channels in your toolbox. Tell consumers about your assets by creating blog posts, round-ups or listicles that appeal to specific niche audiences.

Cayuga County Tourism in NYS recently kicked off an initiative to reposition their destination around its connection to Harriet Tubman and inspire visitors to come to a place where equal rights history took root in the U.S. Their blog has already started highlighting attractions related to Harriet Tubman, and equal rights history and present are woven into their social media channels as well.

Talk the talk.

This is the one time I will let jargon slide. Now don’t overdo it on the technical speak, but if you’re talking to people who are really passionate about something, use vocab they’ll relate to.

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