What is Your Unique Selling Point? | Travel Research Online

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What is Your Unique Selling Point?

Your “Unique Selling Point“ or “USP” is something that makes your agency different from all other companies of its type. Is there something about your business so unique customers would rather do business with you based on that one quality alone? Is there a reason to do business with you rather than the agency down the street or online with Travelocity?  Can you easily articulate the reason? If so, you have located your USP and are on the way to better understanding how to build a smart marketing campaign based on that uniqueness. If you have not emphasized your USP in your marketing, then consumers are likely to pass you over for any number of similarly positioned travel agencies – you are just one of the crowd.

PictureFortunately, most travel agencies do indeed have a very valuable asset that distinguishes them from all other retail travel companies or online travel agencies: people. Your travel agency’s human resources are not duplicated anywhere else. Somewhere in your personnel – whether you are a 500 person agency or a one person home based business – is very likely your Unique Selling Point.

YOU  cannot be found more “cheaply” on the internet.

It’s important for you to be able to coax your USP into a statement to which your clients can relate. Don’t settle for a statement like “great service” – everyone promises “great service” and merely repeating it in your own marketing campaigns will hardly differentiate you.

Now, relate your USP to your clients: What about the way you use travel to change your client’s lives? What about your policy of working with clients for a lifetime to achieve all of their travel ambitions? What about that niche you know so well all of your clients are dazzled by the absolutely fantastic quality of their travel experiences? Notice at the heart of each of these USP’s is the client. Your USP is not a feature – it’s a benefit to your client.

Sit down and list the things that make you as a travel consultant unique. Is it your passion? Is it the number of years you have been in the business? Is it the destinations you have visited? What about your destination specialist training? Perhaps your unique insight into a particular niche market qualifies as a Unique Selling Point. This is one of the main advantages, in fact, of the rationale for obtaining a niche.

Once you have determined your USP, distill it down into a few coherent sentences that relate directly to a client benefit. Continue to work on your USP until you can reduce it to a tag line. Now integrate your USP into all of your marketing collateral. Make it a central focal point of your brand. Once you find your USP, hold it out for the world to see and you will have fashioned for yourself a unique positioning in your clients’ eyes.

  One thought on “What is Your Unique Selling Point?

  1. dktravel4you says:

    I have been working on narrowing the focus of my travel business, instead of jumping around to whatever supplier or destination requested by a customer. Most of these ghost me anyway so I don’t see an impact on customers. I have never traveled outside of North America – that will be my focus. Sell what you know I hear over & over again. My husband recently did a road trip from TX to Wyoming & Montana. I posted a number of pics to FB regarding this trip and had the highest number of engagements ever!! I have lots of pics of USA & Nova Scotia travel over the last 20 years that I will be using get people excited. My USP – I know USA travel. I asked Toby to help me come up with 5 hooks relevant to specializing in USA travel and as usual he is the best assistant!! So the process begins on my rebranding 🙂

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