3 Strategies for Utilizing SMS Marketing in the Travel Industry

SMS marketing is an effective way to remind customers about yourself and your offers. The tourism industry is no exception.

Using high-quality messages, you can directly appeal to your clients and remind them of different promotions, deadlines, and much more.

A well-thought-out notification strategy will not be considered intrusive advertising but will become a convenient tool for your business and will lead to satisfied customers.

Travel business and its peculiarities

The main peculiarity of business in tourism is the infrequent appeal of customers who want to travel. After all, according to Statista, most people only go on vacation 2-3 times a year in the USA. A similar situation is in other countries.

It is understandable why customers do not visit travel agencies or websites daily to learn about the company's new offers. Similarly, calls: a person who does not need the services of a business will not constantly call on the phone.

Therefore, a travel agency owner must have a wide customer base to provide regular profits to his business.

Bookatrekking has a great case study in this regard. Now, they actively use SMS marketing to sell hiking trips. But first, they used SMS marketing for the Alta Via 2 hiking tour. Using personalized travel offers SMS strategy, they covered a several times wider audience and gained 2 times more deals.

Increasing the customer base for the travel business with SMS marketing

The most popular and effective way to promote a travel agency is to increase the user base. SMS marketing, which consistently shows high results, has become an essential type of advertising for this business area. Its main feature is that you can quickly and affordably cover a huge number of potential customers.

Another important point for a travel agency is to inform regular customers about your company's news, new services, and special offers regularly. It is especially important when people desire to travel during hot seasons, and when it coincides with their financial capabilities. After all, if a person has already been a client of your agency and liked the level of your service, he or she will likely want to contact you again.

Using the Mobile Text Alerts platform, you can:

• Create advertising SMS
• Attract potential clients to your travel agency
• Inform clients about promotions and possible discounts
• Set up automatic sending of notifications (for example, send notifications to clients about important events of your company or about a flight)

The platform offers many exciting functionalities, empowering you to make SMS marketing your primary source for attracting clients to your travel agency.

Now, let’s discuss 3 strategies utilizing SMS marketing in the travel industry.

Informing about new travel offers

Use SMS marketing to tell people about promotions and current discounts in your company and about current and hot offers. This is quite inexpensive but a powerful tool for advertising. For a corporate travel agency like TravelPerk, SMS marketing can provide real-time updates on flight changes, meeting schedules, or exclusive business travel discounts, ensuring that corporate clients are always well-informed and up-to-date.

However, make the messages short and informative. For example, "Hot tour to Egypt, Sharm el Sheikh. Hotel [Insert Hotel Name]. Only [Dollar Amount] for 5 nights for two people! Book on the site [Website Link] or by phone [Phone Number]." This is the SMS structure that Bookatrekking used for its Alta Via 1 SMS marketing campaign. And it yielded great results for them.

By the way, a structure in which you fully disclose all the favorable aspects of the offer in a few short sentences is likely to be the most successful.

Real-time newsletters

Use SMS for newsletters and holiday greetings. Newsletters are well suited for messages about early booking or important company updates. A new office has opened, an interesting meeting has taken place, and new directions have appeared - all this will be perfect for this SMS marketing strategy.

Greetings on birthdays, Christmas, New Year, and so on - everyone is pleased to receive these kinds of messages, realizing that their favorite travel company remembers them. These types of SMS may well generate an effect in which many people will remember the company and decide to buy trips on vacation.

Personalized travel offers

Exclusive personalized offers will be best when you address the recipient by name in your SMS and tell about an interesting favorable offer for your regular client. For example, "Alex, thank you for choosing our travel company. Since you’re a regular customer, you’ll get an exclusive discount if you book a tour in the next 30 days.” You can also send SMS reminders about flight schedules, the program of the upcoming tour, and the date and time of departure and return. Believe us, sometimes it is very convenient to go to your SMSs and see this information from your travel company.

Conclusion

Using SMS marketing in the travel business is a great way to interact with your target audience because by some reports, more than 90% of recipients read the message as soon as it arrives. This way, you will always be in touch with your customers. And our 3 strategies will greatly help you in this regard.