5 agent characteristics that show they’re good at their job

Updated March 2023 – As an operator in the tourism industry, one of your main goals is to discover ways to leverage your business for success. Whether that be by creating various travel arrangements or vacation packages, providing world-class customer service skills, or catering to a unique niche of a particular type of tour or activity. All these factors tie into ways in which you can maximize your bookings and make your business stand out from all the rest.

One way to significantly improve your business is by creating a distribution strategy. This will ensure that you’re able to expand your reach and distribute your travel experiences to a greater audience.

Distribution strategies for each tour and activity business may differ from one another. For example, if you provide adventure type of tours and activities, you might find it more beneficial to resell your services on platforms that market to thrill-seekers. Therefore it’s important that you partner with an agent that fits the needs of your business.

In this article, we’ll uncover the characteristics of a good agent and how you can find one that will suit the needs of your business.

5 characteristics of an agent that operators should consider

Finding a good travel agent that is able to effectively resell and distribute your services requires some work. we’ve broken down 5 qualities of an agent to consider to ensure a fruitful partnership.

1. Ability to sell in high volumes

As tour and activity operators, the reason you partner with resellers such as a travel agency is to maximize your sales. By selling your services through multiple platforms, the chances of receiving more bookings are greater.

When looking for the ideal agent, it’s important to find one that will vouch for your business and regularly sell your tourism products to their customers. If you have several agents that sell your tours frequently, you can consider creating a preferred partnership with them. This will continue to motivate them to book your tours.

2. Offers a fully incremental distribution channel

Setting up a distribution strategy is not only for the bookings, it’s also a great way to expand your reach. When you resell your services on another platform, the chances of being discovered by more people increase exponentially.

Therefore, consider working with agents with access to customers you wouldn’t otherwise have access to. For example, you can work with travel consultants that have access to the international travel market with a focus on travelers looking to visit your local travel destination. You wouldn’t otherwise be able to reach out to these forms of international travelers unless you had a connection through this agent, making this a fully incremental distribution channel.

3. A favorable commission rate

There’s no denying that commission rates are an important factor to consider when building a partnership with resellers. However, that doesn’t mean that the agent with the lowest commission rate will be the best fit for you. If an agent with a higher commission is the one bringing in the most bookings, then maybe it’s more beneficial to partner with them, even though you’re earning a lower amount.

When setting commission rates, you need to weigh out several factors to ensure that you get what you’re paying for. Considerations such as:

• Do their target market and client base align with yours?
• Are they reputable within the industry or your niche?
• How much effort do they put towards marketing?
• Do they work with any of your competitors?

By asking yourself these questions and reviewing the outcomes, you’d be able to decide whether the commission rate that they set for your services is worth it for your business.

4. Able to provide another source of last-minute bookings

Within the travel industry, schedule changes are inevitable, and sometimes customers may have to update their travel plans or cancel a booking completely. These situations can leave gaps within slots. By being able to accept last-minute reservations, it can help you sell out those remaining slots.

An agent that is able to provide you with last-minute bookings may help you in the long run. By partnering with agents that can sell out your resources within a short period will subsequently drive up demand and allow you to create more opportunities to sell tours and activities.

5. Promotes your business with its own marketing plan

Marketing is an essential element of the tourism industry. From selling scenic tour packages to leisure travel services, the purpose of marketing is to promote your products that cater to your ideal customer’s travel needs.

Many agents will promote your business on a case-by-case basis, however, the best agent will incorporate your services within their marketing efforts. For example, if they cater to travelers looking for travel packages in your local destination, they can include your services to market these packages. By partnering with agents that promote your business within their own marketing plan, it will help you save the cost of marketing on your own.

Connect with quality agents via Rezdy

Utilizing an advanced distribution platform such as Rezdy Channel Manager allows you to easily track and manage all your partnerships in one place. Rezdy’s tour operator marketplace allows you to connect with over 25,000 active resellers and promote your tourism products to an array of agents globally.

Through Rezdy Channel Manager you can connect with the largest OTAs in the industry such as GetYourGuide, Tripadvisor, and Booking.com all the way through to your local travel agents, and even other tour operators. Now, it may seem like an unusual practice to resell other operators’ tours and activities, but reselling complimenting services such as transportation or other non-competing activities in your area may be one way you can generate more revenue.

Reselling your tours and activities on this platform simplifies the overall reselling process into 3 simple steps:

1. List your products
2. Set your commission rates
3. Let thousands of agents and resellers resell and promote your products

Furthermore, if you’re inundated with bookings or simply want to pause incoming bookings from resellers, you can switch the connection on and off whenever you want to.

Conclusion

Once you’ve found the agent characteristics you were looking for, it’s important that your business is equipped to manage additional third-party bookings. An online booking system that is designed for tour and activity operators will help you sort out additional bookings seamlessly via automation. For example, Rezdy is an advanced reservation system that equips tour and activity businesses with features such as:

• Real-time availability viewer to avoid overbooking or double booking
• The ability to accept secure online payments, including mobile wallets
• Automatic guest communication such as booking confirmation, invoices, reminders, and more
• Manifest updates to ensure your team is on top of any booking changes and updates
• In-depth reporting to analyze your business’ performance to make informed business decisions
• And more

The good news is that if you’re already a Rezdy booking software customer, you instantly have access to Rezdy Channel Manager. Allowing you to benefit from the best of both worlds – an advanced booking system that will simplify your processes and the ability to instantly connect and manage thousands of resellers from one central system.

Ready to join the thousands of Rezdy operators that increased their bookings by 27% in 2022? Start a FREE 21-day trial or book a demo today.

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