You technically don’t need a website as a travel agent. But let’s go over the pros and cons of creating a website for your travel business:
The Pros:
Boost in Credibility
The travel business is all about relationships, and relationships are all about trust. In order to build lasting relationships with your clients and ensure that they continue to use your services, you must earn their trust. One of the first things that prospective clients will do to determine whether or not you are a legitimate travel agent is by searching you up online. Having a website will contribute to your online presence, and the greater your online presence, the greater your credibility as a business.
Boost in SEO
As stated above, having a website will contribute to your online presence. This means that it will serve as a great tool for search engine optimization (SEO). Good SEO is essential for discoverability – it is what increases the likelihood of you showing up in the results of a prospective client’s Google search.
The Cons:
Costs Time/Money to Create
There is one of two ways for you to create a website: make it yourself or hire someone to make it for you. Several platforms, like Wix and Squarespace, are available for you to use to make your own website. They are relatively easy to use, but still require some level of tech-savviness and SEO knowledge to optimize, thus making it a time-consuming endeavor. The alternative is to hire someone else to do it, but that can be costly. Plus, there can sometimes be miscommunication between you and your website builder about what exactly you’re looking for. So, that process might end up being time-consuming too.
Challenging to Drive Traffic
Unless you already have an established brand, it’s going to be challenging to drive traffic into your website. It’s very possible that the time and/or money spent on creating a website won’t be worth it in the beginning.
Our Verdict
Long story short, no, you don’t need a website as a travel agent – especially if you are just starting out. Instead of spending time and energy on creating a website, we recommend creating an Agent Profiler instead. Agent Profiler is an online lead generation tool for travel agents that’s powered by the Travel Leaders Network, our travel consortium! It uses various SEO tools to help you attract leads and it is incredibly easy to make. Visit our Knowledge Base to register for your Agent Profiler and to learn how to create it! Also make sure to check out our Marketing and Lead Generation videos in our Travel Academy.