How to Grow Your Travel Business During the Summer Slow Season

Hello WorldVia Travel Network Family,

If you’re anything like me, the calendar starts to play tricks on you somewhere around the end of July.

On one hand, it feels like the summer’s been flying by as you’ve been heads down working with active travelers (or traveling yourself). On the other, it is when summer feels most like, well, summer.

Late July is the point where many advisors are busy serving current travelers but unintentionally stop building the business that will carry them through fall and winter.

You’re busy enough that you don’t feel like you have time to work on your business, but not quite busy enough to justify ignoring it.

Guess what? That makes this one of the most important times of the year.

The advisors who finish the year strongest and setting themselves up for next year aren’t necessarily the ones working the hardest today, but the ones planting seeds while everyone else is harvesting.

Forget travel, I want you to think like any business owner for a minute.

Farmers don’t wait until harvest season to start planting. Retailers don’t start preparing for Christmas in December. Football teams don’t begin training the week before opening kickoff.

Great businesses are always working one season ahead, and as travel advisors, we should be too.

So rather than simply surviving the rest of summer, here are five actions I’d encourage you to take over the next few weeks.

1. Call the people who almost booked.

Open your CRM and look at proposals from the last six months that never closed.

Not to pressure anyone, but just to reconnect.

A simple, “I was thinking about your trip and wanted to see if your plans have changed,” is often all it takes to restart a conversation.

The timing was wrong then, but it might be perfect now.

2. Fill your fall calendar before it fills itself.

If your calendar has blank spaces in September or October, don’t celebrate the free time. It’s time to fill it up!

• Schedule your marketing.
• Schedule your prospecting.
• Schedule supplier training.
• Schedule time to improve one part of your business.
• Create a simple post-trip follow-up process.
• Ask what they loved.
• Ask what surprised them.
• Ask where they’re dreaming about next.
• Read a business book.
• Complete a supplier course.
• Learn one new AI workflow.
• Refine one sales process.
• Take an afternoon off
• Go to the lake or the beach
• Take your spouse to lunch.
• Watch your kids’ game without checking email every inning.

Empty calendar space has a way of disappearing without producing revenue unless you tell it exactly what you want it to do.

3. Think beyond this year’s bookings.

Every client traveling this summer is also a potential client for next year.

4. Invest in yourself before business gets busy again.

The next few weeks may be the last quiet stretch before holiday promotions, Wave Season planning, and conference momentum begins.

Small improvements made now compound when business accelerates.

5. Protect a little summer for yourself.

This may seem like the strangest advice in today’s message.

One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is believing rest is something we earn after success.

In reality, it is often what allows us to achieve it.

Summer doesn’t last forever and neither do the moments that make it special.

As many of you know, our girls are growing up quickly, and every summer now feels just a little shorter than the last. I’m reminded every year that businesses can always be improved tomorrow, but certain memories only happen once.

Late July isn’t the end of summer, but the beginning of the business season that determines how you’ll finish the year.

Best Success,

Jason

PS – What’s one business action you’re committing to before August arrives? I’d love to hear it. Send me a note at jblock@worldvia.com. I read every email.