7 Easy Ways to Double Your Profits & Grow Travel Business

Charles Darwin, once rightly pointed out, “It is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives, but the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself.” The travel business is going through its shares of highs and lows for quite some time now. But as an entrepreneur who has put in all the efforts to build the stature that your company is today, are you ready to go with the flow of this volatility? Or are you determined to adapt to the changing travel ecosystem for making your business successfully sustainable?

Easy Ways to Grow A Business

As Steve Jobs once said, “The smallest company in the world can look as large as the largest company on the web.” With this article, we aim to suggest to you 7 easy ways to grow a business in the travel industry along with quotes of business stalwarts so read on.

Build Your Brand Presence with Social Media Pages & be Active:

The first thing and no-extra-cost-included step to building your travel businesses’ presence online are to set up social media pages on key websites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. To start with one can go with simple yet regular posts. The brand posts can be about your brand, beautiful pictures posts inspiring viewers to travel to a particular destination and of course, woo the viewers with discount deals and ongoing offers.

Consider Selling via Website:

The next thing is setting up a website or a mobile application of the brand from where you can sell flight tickets, do tour bookings, holiday package bookings, hotel bookings and more. This step is usually done by medium to large-sized travel agencies. On the same website, one can also add a blog section for informing about different destinations and cross-selling products & services to the customers. Smaller or start-up travel businesses can also do the same for scaling up. However, we recommend you check the norms for selling through an e-commerce website under the GST HSN code. Check if a new registration needs to be done other than the simplified GST compliance that your brand must have got already with respect to offline sales.

->>For a clearer understanding of income tax regulations for small businesses & start-ups, you might also want to read this.

Foray on e-Commerce Platform with Your Travel Products:

If you are a travel business that is already doing steps 1 and 2 to take leverage of the internet further then this step can certainly help you. This is one of the easy ways to grow a business. There has been an increase in the number of people travelling to a variety of destinations and not just a few clichéd touristy ones. Lately, in India and across the globe there is also a rise of people inclined towards travelling for indulging in adventure sports, camping, hiking and more. So why not grow your travel business by diversifying into selling products useful while travelling under your brand’s name! Talking about e-commerce, today there are many websites like Amazon, Flipkart and more that encourage start-up businesses and entrepreneurs to sell their products through their platforms. Selling through e-commerce portal under GST HSN code can help you reach a huge number of customers and surely make way to double your profits.

However, everything is not as simple as registering yourself as a seller on a big e-commerce portal like Amazon or Flipkart. For online selling through e-commerce portal under GST HSN code, an offline seller under INR 40 lakh annual turnover and engaged in intra-state sales has to obtain a GST Registration to sell online. While offline sellers under INR 1.5 crores annual turnover and intra-state sales will not be able to continue with simplified GST compliance if they want to sell online. Further, according to the current GST norms, online sellers are required to register in each state where inventory is held. For each of these registrations, furnishing 12 documents makes it a complicated process.

->> Check the Revised GST registration rules like for selling through e-commerce portal under GST HSN code<< here

We sincerely recommend and wish that the government makes GST compliance simpler for start-up online sellers. This will not only increase GST and income tax collections but will also increase its control, transparency and efficiency of collecting taxes while promoting budding entrepreneurs & start-ups.

Learn from them Sharks in the Business:

If you are one of those travel business owners who have your doubts about the big players already in the business then it’s best to follow the advice of Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos. He once said, “We watch our competitors, learn from them, see the things that they were doing for customers and copy those things as much as we can.” We think that in addition to market research that you might already be doing, observing and analysing your competitors is one of the easy ways to grow a business. It will also inspire you to find the gaps and address those with novel products. This way you can limit your failures and still make a distinctive mark in the industry.

Hire Wisely and Invest in Your People:

As a start-up or a growing travel business, it is important to do hiring slowly. Quite understandably, if more number of employees is there then more will be liability of paying for salaries too. Being optimistic about the progress of your business is good but one should never be over-optimistic and take decisions like bulk-hiring in haste. Jack Ma, Alibaba founder says, “We are never short of money. We lack people with dreams, who can die for those dreams.” As a travel business aiming to grow big, a careful selection of people with similarly aligned goals and the same sincerity in working hard is crucial. Once hired, being open to their viewpoints will certainly give way to constructive brainstorming about the way forward in scaling up the business.

Build a Relationship of Trust with Customers

Travel and tourism is one industry in which word of mouth publicity can make or break the business. While online selling through e-commerce portal under GST HSN code or even via your website it is important to provide a great product and seamless service. Travelling is largely an experiential activity and all it takes to retain a customer and ensure he trusts your company is to give the customer a happy experience. Every happy customer will add up as a repeat purchase. This is another easy way to grow a business and one can grow a community of loyal customers who will buy your products or services again and again. We completely agree with Milton Hershey founder of the famous chocolate brand Hershey’s who believed that giving the customers’ quality is the best kind of advertising. Review of your products or services from your repeat customer can also be used for building a trustworthy brand image and goodwill.

Think about giving Value Added Services

We are in such a high-speed digital era where at a click of the mouse one can have innumerable companies providing similar products or services. This is also true for a travel business that is into online selling through an e-commerce portal or through its website. So giving a value-added service or two to customers will work as a differentiator for your brand. Information regarding this can be given to the existing customers in the regular email newsletters. In contrast to this, for prospective customers, the travel business owner can make use of its social media pages.

I have covered 7 easy ways to grow a business here. Hope this article helps meet your goals of growing your travel business, increasing profits along providing stability to business.