The Psychology of Travel Consulting – Creativity | Travel Research Online

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The Psychology of Travel Consulting – Creativity

Where are new ideas born? Does it seem sometimes like all the good ideas are gone and that the energy has drained out of your travel practice?  There are a few ways to pump new energies into your thinking and to generate some new ideas for marketing and growing your business.  Remember that your travel practice  is a reflection of you – it walks, talks and acts like you do. Thus, taking good care of yourself and your own energies is absolutely vital to the well-being of your travel planning.

Good ideas and creative thinking are difficult to schedule.  Often, they slip upon you at the least likely times.  However, giving yourself plenty of opportunity for reflection is important to the process.  The unfortunate truth is that we often spend far more time IN our business than ON our business.  The result is a lack of creative thought and fresh perspective.

  • Relax – take some time off. Take the weekend and relax. Get together with friends, hang out with the family. Read a good book. Forget about the office and marketing and your business plan. You will come back to your work with a fresher perspective.
  • Read consumer travel magazines – What to know what consumers are thinking about in travel? Consumer travel magazines are filled with excellent examples of marketing that large companies have spent tens of thousands of dollars researching and producing. There is no lack of good ideas there.
  • Read non-travel magazines. Oprah, Mens’ Journal, The Economist. Magazines will keep you current in the spirit of the times. They are terrific resources for assisting you in getting into a new frame of reference, for seeing what the rest of the world is thinking. Magazines for other professions will likewise provide interesting insights into how other industries have handled important marketing, economic and cultural issues.
  • Look Globally, Think Locally. Look at some of the big online travel sites. What are they doing to engage their audience? How could you replicate those same tactics at a local level? Sometimes the best ideas are not new ones – they are borrowed.
  • Make traveling a part of your business plan – are you traveling less than you would like? Change that.  Fam trips are important to your practice.  You got into travel for a reason.
  • Surround yourself with reminders about why you have a travel practice.  Make your office a fun place.  Dream.
  • Ask a kid – I kid you not. The more people you know ages 9 to 21, the more likely you are to learn something new about the spirit of your culture that can be used in shaping some aspect of your travel marketing. In the mind of a beginner there are many possibilties, in the mind of the expert, only a few.

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    Don’t discount any possibility out of hand. When you have a new idea, sit with it for a while. See if it still looks viable a week from now. If it does, you may just have a new insight to raise.

“Here is a test to find out whether your mission in life is complete. If you’re alive, it isn’t.” – Richard Bach

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