The Importance Of Picking A Niche
A niche is a defined segment of a market. The travel market is made up of dozens of product types, with each product type sub-divided into individual categories, covering thousands of destinations all over the world. When a client calls on the service of a travel specialist, they will expect their agent to have expert knowledge and insight to help them create the best travel experience possible. It is impossible for any one agent to be an expert in every area of the market. The travel agents that understands this and can identify a niche market segment that they love and can provide value in are the ones who most often end up becoming top sellers.
How To Select A Niche
To help you create your niche market segment, let’s first take a look at the key factors that will be involved in helping you determine your niche.
Location
To narrow your search, the first thing you need to do is to pick the destinations or regions you would like to specialize in. The first thing we can all agree on is that you most likely do not have expert knowledge about every country in the world. Start by looking at your favorite travel destinations, preferably destinations that you have personally travelled to or bucket-list destinations you love and have done extensive research on, destinations that you have some knowledge in, and ones you can get excited about when talking to your clients.
Product Types
The second step in creating your niche market segment is to identify the different product types and pick the ones you would like to specialize in. Your list of potential product types includes: Resorts, Hotels, Vacation Rentals, Cruises, Flights, Tours, Packages, Events, Insurance, Excursions and a few others. The ones listed covers the majority of the product types sold by travel agents. Once you become a travel specialist, you will most likely get asked by a client to help with putting together a trip under each of those product types at least once, so it is good to understand all of them, but pick the ones that you wish to focus on and ensure your marketing represents that information.
Your Contact List
Consider who your immediate friends, family members, associates and network groups are. They will most likely be the people that will become your first clients. Find out as much information about them as you can. Average income, travelling habits, social status, knowing who the people are that make up your contact list will be critical in helping you select what category of the various product types you want to sell. If your contact list is made up of mostly wealthy business professionals, then you may want to consider focusing on only the high-end portion of whatever niche you choose. If you are a working class mom that mostly hangs out with a group of other moms like yourself, then family oriented products may be most appealing. If most of the people you know are young and single, they may be more interested in doing things more adventurous that are reasonably priced. If you look at your contact list, and you realize that is not the market segment you wish to be your specialty, then you will need to find out where your target customers congregate and make yourself an email list filled with those customers.
Reasons People Travel
People travel for many different reasons, and there are huge niche market opportunities that lay within anyone one of those many reasons for travelling. You have the business traveller that travels several times monthly for work, the annual, semi-annual and bi-annual vacationers, those who travel for special occasions such as weddings and birthday celebrations, people travel for events, religion, adventure. You can continue for an entire day adding to that list. Your niche market opportunity could be in anyone of those reasons.
Using the above processes of elimination and determination, I was able to create my niche market segment. I love the Caribbean, and I have been to most of the islands. My favorite islands are Jamaica and the Bahamas. I know a lot of very successful people who are mostly married, so I have determined I can have great success becoming a luxury Jamaica specialist. This gives you an example of how to determine your niche. You can always change or expand at any time; the most important thing is being able to provide value at the start.
Learning Your Niche
Once you have determined what your niche market segment is, the next step is to start doing you own research on the market. Know who the major players are currently in that market, and understand what will be required of you for you to be competitive. Try to find obvious gaps in your niche market and be the one to fill those gaps.
