Providing Meaningful Travel Experiences Starts with This
As travel professionals, we hear the term “travel experience” all the time. Often when I ask travel professionals, “What are you doing? What is it that you do with your clients? What are you looking to provide them with?”, they say, “a memorable travel experience, creating a great experience, having an experience of a lifetime.” So “experience” is always in there, but what does that actually mean? What is an experience?
Ultimately, you want those repeat clients who will talk about your company with their friends, their family, their coworkers and on social media. In order to attract travelers and keep them coming back for more, it’s going to take a lot more effort and meaning than simply just promoting travel the same way as everyone else. Because yes, everyone wants to travel to some extent and there are all the clients in the world because who doesn't want to go on a trip?
But still, many travel professionals struggle to attract and retain clients, make sales, and provide experiences. It’s because you're not honing in on what an experience actually means and what that means for your ideal clients. It is the same thing when it comes to a wellness travel experience. It isn't just about yoga or wellness centers or wellness-centered hotels. As we know as avid travelers ourselves, travel is wellness and wellness is travel.
Everyone travels for some sort of healing benefit, whether it is intentional or unintentional. We often hear people say things like:
“I want to escape.”
“I want to get away from reality.”
“I need something new.”
“I want to feel something different.”
“I want to meet new people.”
“I want to try new foods.”
“I want to be challenged.”
All of these are underlying reasons why people actually travel, but is that verbiage being incorporated into how you market the travel experiences that you provide? When it starts with an experience, you have to identify what that means for your ideal clients. You have to think about what is it that you're actually selling and surprisingly, it's not actually an experience that you're selling. You're not selling a service or a product either.
Understanding Your Ideal Clients
Let me explain. When we think about it, people make decisions based on emotions. They share stories and memories also based on emotions like how they feel, and how something made them feel. When you think about the brands that you buy from or you admire or you follow or you tell people about, it's because they made you feel something. You need to identify what it is that your brand, aims to provide people with because it's not an experience.
Is it a feeling? Is it a transformation? Is it an outcome? A journey? A philosophy? A mindset? That's where terms like “transformative travel” come into play. Because as we know, travel is transformative, but what does that mean for your ideal clients?
Think About the Outcome
Don't just use these words like “experience” and “transformation” if aren’t able to define them within your business.
When people are done working with you, what is it that you want to leave them with?
Do you want them to feel something different?
Do you want them to have more confidence?
Do you want them to have more compassion in the world or for themselves?
Do you want them to feel more connected with their partner or their loved one?
Is it that they feel more social and outside of their comfort zone and aren't as introverted anymore and scared? Have they faced some of their fears?
Have they found their purpose in life?
Have they found their interests or their passions?
Do they feel like they learned new skills and a better understanding of other cultures?
Do they feel like they need an impact on the world?
What is the feeling, outcome or result that you want them to have?
So when we think about when we see diet commercials, it's not the actual product that people are purchasing that matters, it's the outcome that we’re looking for. As a business owner yourself, when you think about any time you purchased a course or you bought something online, it was probably because you heard about the result that it got others or the creator. It's all about that outcome and that's the transformation.
You want to go from struggling to thriving.
You want to go from landing two clients a month to having twelve clients a month.
You want to be at “this” weight, you want to get to “this” weight.
You want to go from feeling confused and stuck in your business to having full clarity and a full game plan on what you need to tackle and how to do that.
Dig Deep to Reveal Underlying Factors
What's the transformation that you're trying to provide people with? It's the same thing that goes into traveling. We all travel for personal, underlying reasons that keep us up late googling flights to take to destinations, where to visit, getting inspired by photos, scrolling on Instagram, watching beautiful destinations on TikTok, whatever it might be.
What is that from within? Where is that coming from? What is causing people to do that?
The answers to these questions will reveal your clients’ underlying motivations to travel which are crucial for you to understand as a travel professional.
Take a look at what it is that you want to do when it comes to travel and what is that? What's the meaning? What's the purpose of travel for your ideal clients?
Don't just say, “well, I want to help people travel more.” Why?
Don't just say, “I want people to use their vacation days.” Why?
What is it about travel? It's not just the “what” they're doing which is traveling, it's the “why”.
Why is it important?
What is it that you want them to get out of a travel experience and how can that impact their well-being, mental health, physical health, spirituality, and emotional intelligence?
How can it affect their work life, their business, and their relationships?
Because, yes, we can help everyone when it comes to travel, but trying to serve everybody is not a great business strategy. You have to be more specific about who it is you're trying to help.
If you can understand your client’s pain points and meet them where they are when they first learn about you, telling them why your business values travel so much and what travel can do for them, will make much more of a difference.
In return, they're naturally going to want to learn more and follow you or look at your website or join your Facebook group or follow you on Instagram or watch your TikTok. They might even share about you with someone else because they can resonate with the messaging that you have and that overall experience is the transformation and the outcome. It's a process. It's a journey. The whole thing is an experience.
A Start to Finish Process
Your client’s journey has to have a beginning, a middle and an end or be an ongoing process and that's where travel coaching comes into play as well. Work with people in the pre-trip phase to meet them where they are in that emotional state, where they are in their life at the moment, why are they struggling, why are they unhappy, and why are they feeling unfulfilled.
Why are they wanting to escape?
What are they trying to achieve?
What do they desire?
What do they want, what are they dreaming of?
If you’re a travel coach, helping them set intentions and understanding and acknowledging where these feelings are coming from, is extremely important.
You can't set an intention for something if you don't dive deep into understanding, like where this need or this desire and these feelings are coming from in the first place. Once you’ve met your client where they are at, setting intentions for the trip is the middle phase.
What is it that they need to do?
What do they have to experience during the trip in order to ultimately have the outcomes, transformation results or whatever it might be?
Do they need to get outside their comfort zone and talk to more people?
Do they need to not stay alone on a solo trip all the time, or should they maybe try staying at a hostel?
Do they need to try new foods and break out of the routine of what they're usually eating?
Do they need to spend time alone and do some soul searching, journaling ad sit by bodies of water, and be in nature?
What is it that they need to do in order to fully help them have the transformation they're looking for?
And then for the post-trip, how do they apply what it is that they experienced, learned, acknowledged, and realized during the trip?
How can they apply it to their personal life, their work life, and their relationships?
When they return home, what does that look like?
Is it that they realize that they can incorporate more trips into their lifestyle and that it doesn't have to be a “once a year” type of thing?
Is it that they got the clarity and inspiration they're looking for to get their creative juices flowing at work?
Is it that they feel more fulfilled and they realize what they're passionate about in life?
Is it that they volunteered and realized they want to help make a difference continuously like that?
Is it that they realize what they're actually appreciative of in life and they couldn't really see it before?
What is it that you want them to achieve at the end?
Providing Ongoing Support
Consider the ongoing aspect too if you want to keep people coming back for more. What does that look like in a coaching context? Do you plan to offer continuous support to them? Is there a group they can join? A free group? A paid opportunity? Are you going to help them in another way? Maybe another branch of whatever program or offer you might have? Maybe you offer services on the wellness side of things or the financial aspect, whatever it might be, you can structure it any way that you're interested, but it depends on you and what it is you want to help with.
So the next time you are promoting yourself or building your experiences or putting on retreats or planning trips or whatever it might be, especially when it comes to your marketing and your messaging and you are sprinkling the word “experiences” in there, I want you to really identify what does that actually mean?
And when it comes to a transformative experience, what does that mean? How are you helping people transform? Because when you can sprinkle in those pain points and that actual verbiage, your ideal clients will resonate with you a lot easier and therefore be more interested so that you're not feeling like you’re continuously chasing clients. If you build messaging and marketing and a brand that's strong enough and authentic enough and stands out, enough, people will come to you, I promise.
Be sure to follow us on Instagram at @thetravelcoachnetwork or learn more about us at www.thetravelcoachnetwork.com and send us a hello. We look forward to having you in our free TCN Global Community on Facebook. Don't forget to grab your Free Beginner's Guide to Travel Coaching as well!
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