You just got back from an incredible trip.
Maybe it was a Vietnam culinary fam. Maybe a multi-generation Banff booking you spent nine months building. Maybe your own long-weekend to Charleston with your family. You took great photos. You had real conversations with your clients and your suppliers. You saw things a regular traveler never gets to see.
And then you posted one thing on Instagram, sent a thank-you email, and moved on.
Meanwhile, the advisor two zip codes over is somehow producing content constantly—showing up everywhere, staying top of mind with people who haven’t booked yet, and they have the same twenty-four hours you do.
Here is what they know that you might not yet.
One great trip is not one piece of content. One great trip is ten distinct signals, touch points, and opportunities if you know how to see them.
This is the exact framework we walked through on the latest episode of Travel Marketeering Live, and it works forward and backward in time. You can use it on the trip you took last month or the one on your calendar in ninety days. Nothing new has to happen. The signals are already there. You just need a checklist to find them.
Before we go through the ten, know that they are grouped into three phases—and this is where most advisors miss the boat.
Most advisors live almost entirely in the visibility signals—the posts and the photos—and leave 6 through 10 sitting on the table. The advisors who stay consistently booked work all three phases.
Signal 1: The Pre-Trip Teaser Post A single social post that says, in essence, “I’m heading somewhere incredible this week. Watch this space.” It does not have to be a big reveal. It creates a pattern of anticipation, and the people who ask “where are you going” are literally raising their hand as future leads. That curiosity is a signal—it tells you who in your audience is interested in that kind of travel before you have even packed a bag.
Signal 2: The Pre-Trip Story Carousel A three-to-five card carousel or an Instagram Stories set that goes out the day before or the morning of departure. Include where you are going and why, one thing most people do not know about that destination, and a question you are going to find the answer to on this trip. An advisor prepping a Galápagos expedition cruise asked her audience which they would most want to see on the islands—the wildlife, the geology, or the silence. The answers became the exact segments of her next email sequence. That is a signal.
Signal 3: The On-Trip Live Story One scene, thirty seconds, raw and real, captured while you are actually there. You at the food market watching bánh mì get folded at five in the morning. You on the bow of a Seabourn ship watching the Croatian coastline drift by. You hiking into the Valley of the Five Lakes in Banff with three generations of a family behind you. That single unpolished clip does something your polished content cannot—it proves you were there, and it creates a bookmark in your audience’s mind that says, “This advisor goes to these places personally.”
Pro tip: you are not a roving reporter. You do not have to post it in the moment. Capture a few short clips, drop them in your Notes app with one line of context, and post them when you get home rested. Done beats “I’ll work on it” every single time.
Signal 4: The Post-Trip Photo Carousel This is the main content event, and it is the one most advisors either skip or do once and forget. Five to eight photos with a storytelling caption—the beginning (where I went and who I went for), the middle (the moment I did not expect), and the end (what this trip is perfect for and who I would send there). Keep the design template the same every time so your brand becomes visually recognizable even when your posting cadence is not.
Signal 5: The Trip Video Reel Thirty to sixty seconds, vertical, one clip per moment, edited like a montage. You do not need to speak on camera if that is not your comfort zone—text overlays, good music, and three to five short cuts tell the same story. And this is important: the goal is not to go viral. The goal is to land in front of one person who thinks, “I want to do that, and I want to do it with someone who knows what they are doing.” That one person is worth more than a thousand strangers.
Signal 6: The Post-Trip Testimonial Ask This is the fastest win and the most missed. Within forty-eight hours of your client landing back home, send a warm outreach—not a formal request. Something like:
I just wanted to check in and make sure everything landed well and that you’re starting to settle back into real life. Was there a moment from this trip that really stood out for you?
Whatever they answer, that is your testimonial. When the multi-gen Banff family tells you that watching Grandma see a grizzly bear for the first time in eighty-one years was the best thing that has ever happened to their family—that is a story you can share with permission for years.
Signal 7: The Post-Trip Review Ask This is the more formal version—a Google review, a Facebook recommendation, a Travel Leaders Agent Profiler review. Make it easy. Send the exact link so it opens right up to the review field. Then say:
It would mean so much to me if you had two minutes to leave a review at this link. It helps other travelers find someone they can trust.
Or in Joshua’s version, “Please help me find more phenomenal clients like you.” Which one lands is the one that sounds like you.
Signal 8: The Post-Trip Referral Ask Here is the reframe that unlocks this one. Asking for a referral is not the same as asking for a favor. If your clients had an incredible experience, telling their friends and family that someone trustworthy made that happen is genuinely valuable to their people. You are not asking for a handout—you are giving them permission to help the people they love.
If you know anyone who’s been dreaming about a trip like this—or honestly, any kind of trip where they just want it done right—I’d be honored to be introduced. A quick text or email from you goes a long way.
Signal 9: The Long-Form Blog Post Your deepest signal—not the fastest, but the most durable. Six hundred to eight hundred words on your website or in your email newsletter about this specific trip, why you chose it, what surprised you, who it is perfect for, and what you would do differently next time. An Iceland Ring Road advisor wrote a single post called “What Nobody Tells You About Planning an Iceland Ring Road in August,” and it is still bringing her organic traffic two years later. One trip. Two years of leads.
Pro tip: drop your trip notes and photo captions into your AI tool of choice and ask it to help draft the opening two paragraphs. Give it the destination, the type of traveler you would send there, and your three biggest takeaways. You are not asking it to write your blog for you—you are asking it to hand you a starting draft you can edit. Most of us are better editors than writers.
Signal 10: The Supplier Call-Out This one is fast and it builds relationships that pay you back. When you post your carousel or reel, tag the hotel, tag the tour operator, tag the cruise line, and call out your BDM by name. On LinkedIn:
The team at [Supplier Name] absolutely delivered for my clients on this trip. Here’s why I keep recommending them.
Why it matters: the supplier often reshares to their audience—free reach for you—and it signals to future clients that you have real relationships with the people you recommend. You are not just booking from a catalog. One gentle warning: if something went sideways on the trip, do not blow up their spot on social media. Handle it privately. Positive energy comes back to you. So does the other kind.
A culinary-focused advisor came back from a fam trip to Vietnam with 140 photos, four videos, a notebook of trip notes, and no idea what to do with any of it. We walked her through the ten signals together. In thirty days she published a pre-trip teaser she had drafted before leaving and simply forgot to send, a photo carousel with a full storytelling caption, a thirty-eight-second reel, two testimonial asks to clients who had traveled on unrelated trips in the same window, one review link finally sent to a client who had literally asked for it six months earlier, a blog post titled “What Every Foodie Needs to Know Before Planning a Vietnam Trip”—which she doubled as an email to her list—a public call-out to the Vietnamese DMC partner who ran the fam, and a referral ask to her three most loyal past clients.
Eight of the ten signals from one trip she had already taken. Nothing new had to happen. The signals were waiting for her to see them.
Pick one trip—recent or upcoming. Pull out the One Trip → Ten Signals Checklist. Do not try to execute all ten. Pick the three that feel most doable, put them in your calendar for the next seven days, and go.
If you have to choose only one, choose the testimonial ask. It is the fastest and it is the one you are most likely to skip.
You already took the trip. You already did the work. The content is already yours.
You just needed the checklist.
Grab the free One Trip → Ten Signals Checklist
Prefer to watch the full episode? Watch the replay on YouTube.
Prefer to listen? The audio version is available as Travel Marketeering with Joshua Harrell on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and every major podcast platform.
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