We have produced a report to help understand the travel trade in USA, France, Germany Netherlands and the Nordics (Sweden, Norway & Denmark).
Download the report (PDF, 828KB) to understand which products appeal to the travel trade and its customers as well as any barriers to including regional England product. Published July 2017.
Top tips for attracting tours through the travel trade
TEAM have created a checklist for tourism product developers which you can download here (PDF, 52KB) or see below:
- Understand what the markets for inclusive tours are wanting.
- Develop ‘off the shelf’ saleable products – complete packages, not just concepts or information, that can be built easily into tour programmes.
- Ensure the consistent and sustained level of marketing to give the trade the confidence that the demand will be there.
- Work closely with product developers in other areas to develop highly attractive joint tour products and to undertake joint marketing and visitor servicing – with integrated booking, where possible.
- Take advantage of links to TV and film themes, stories or destinations.
- Ensure that visitors have memorable, authentic experiences that will differentiate the product from others and ensure repeat visits and recommendations.
- Take account of lead in times for bringing group tour product to market – average 18 months. Provide early advance information about upcoming events.
- Understand the requirements of the travel trade in terms of availability, rates, cancellation policy, and group requirements.
- Educate partner hotels, attractions and destinations to explain benefits and opportunities of working with operators – and their commercial requirements.
- Recognise that overseas tour visitors will have a limited length of stay in any one area. Destination products need to be one or two days and provide links to products or destinations in other parts of England or UK.
- Ensure ease of transport from/to mainline rail station(s), with special transport package.
- Engage with DMCs, on whom many tour operators rely on heavily to source new product – obtain their advice on how to make the product as attractive as possible to tour operators and use them as a conduit to attract tour operator interest.
- Remember that OTAs will become an increasingly important route-to-market for out-of-London experiences.
If you would like to find out more about reaching the trade in specific markets view our inbound market research pages.
