A travel agency website that wins the enquiry, not just the click

Pages that help a traveller decide

Booking a holiday online is easy, so a travel agency has to show why a person is better. The site should feel like talking to someone who has actually been there. Start with pages for the kinds of trips you plan, such as honeymoons, family holidays, group travel and cruises, rather than a list of every destination on earth.

Add destination pages only for places you know well, each with the best months to go, who the place suits, typical trip length and a starting price per person. A Meet the consultants page matters here, because customers often pay a large deposit to someone they have never met. End with a Start planning page where the form asks for destination ideas and dates before anything else.

• Trip types
• Destinations you know well
• Consultants
• Protection and booking terms
• Start planning

What a nervous booker checks first

The biggest worry is money: what happens to a deposit if the airline or hotel fails, or if plans change. Answer that in plain words on its own page and link to it from the footer of every other page.

In the UK, holidays that include flights are often protected under the ATOL scheme run by the Civil Aviation Authority, and many agents also belong to ABTA. Display a licence or membership number only if you hold it, and be ready to explain how it works. In the USA a few states require sellers of travel to register, so check your state. Elsewhere, name the licence your tourism authority issued to you.

Also state what is included in a quoted price, which fees are extra, how to change a booking, and who answers the phone if something goes wrong abroad.

How people search for holidays, and how to answer

Searchers type things like “honeymoon planner for Maldives”, “family holiday Orlando travel agent near me”, “group trip to Dubai for 12 people” or “best time for safari in Kenya”. Questions put to assistants tend to be longer and more personal, such as “who can plan a two-week Japan trip for a family with a toddler?”

Write each trip page as if answering one such person. Put the trip type, region and rough budget in the first paragraph. Then give a sample itinerary day by day in short lines, what is booked for them, and what they sort out themselves.

Avoid copying hotel descriptions from supplier sites. Search engines see the duplicate, and customers learn nothing about why you chose that hotel. A sentence about which room to ask for is worth more than ten adjectives.

Seasonal demand and pricing honestly

Travel enquiries come in waves: new year planning, spring half terms, and the build-up to summer. Prepare pages and offers a few weeks before each wave, and retire them afterwards so no visitor sees an expired deal.

Show “from” prices with the conditions: per person, based on two sharing, which month, departing which airport. Currency matters, so quote in the one your customers pay in. If prices move with exchange rates or airline fares, say so once, clearly, rather than hiding it. Honest pricing pages are also the ones an assistant will quote without fear of misleading someone.

• Price per person and what it includes
• Departure airport
• Month or season of travel
• Date the price was last checked