How to upgrade your Business while you are stuck at home during COVID-19?

Travel Agencies & Operators

The travel and tourism industry is amongst the most impacted during the COVID-19 pandemic. With most countries suspending domestic and international travel, all travel-related businesses have come to a grinding halt.

While larger companies, airlines may have some room and cushion, smaller businesses are working hard to cope. One way of looking at the state-mandated downtime is using it as an investment phase to upgrade your business so you are geared to do so much more once things go back to normal

Here are a couple of ideas for all small business owners in the travel & tourism industry:

  • Build a website, if you don’t already have one. Relying on social media is no longer sufficient as it doesn’t give you full control over the customer experience and reach. With the ever evolving algorithms don’t leave your precious business in the hands of social networks. Gain complete control of your online presence

  • Accept Payments online. If you already have a website but relied on offline billing, add some easy to use payment options to make it a completely online and seamless experience for your customers

  • Create original & quality content. With everyone locked at home for weeks, the yearning to step out and travel is only going to grow. Create short and quick guides, ebooks about destinations or experiences your business specializes in. It’ll serve as a great distraction for customers and a great strategy to keep them engaged during this downtime. You can build these easily in PowerPoint or easy to use tools like Canva.

  • Organize your customer data. If you already have your customer email ids, take the extra effort of adding them to an email provider. There are several free to use email providers offering free plans like MailChimp and SendinBlue that you can set up and use to share content created and notify customers when you are open again!
  • Encourage your customers to make future plans at zero risk. Allow full refunds and cancellations to reduce customer risk and inertia. Maybe allow them to purchase gift cards with longer validity.

You may have probably thought of doing these for your business at one point or another. This unprecedented time gives you the opportunity to action these, all from the comfort of your home.

All the best!