Corporate Travel

If you have been in the travel game for more than a minute then you know exactly how exhausting it is to chase after leisure travelers all year round. You spend months trying to market to families who are planning that one big summer vacation to Disney or Europe and you put in so much work just to get them to book that single trip. It feels like you are constantly on a treadmill where you have to keep running faster just to stay in the same place becuase once that family comes back from their trip you probably wont hear from them again for another year or maybe even two years. It is a tough way to build a buisness because you are always starting from scratch every single month trying to find new people to fill the pipeline.

This is why we always tell travel management companies and independent agents that they need to shift their focus if they actually want to sleep better at night and have a bank account that grows consistently. The secret isnt finding more families or honeymooners it is landing corporate travel accounts. These are the holy grail of the industry for a reason but for some reason so many agencies are scared to go after them or they just dont know how to find them.

When you land a corporate client you arent just getting a single booking you are getting a relationship that pays you over and over again. Imagine having a client who has five or ten sales reps who are on the road two weeks out of every month. That isnt just one transaction that is dozens of transactions every year from a single relationship. The math is just completely different and it changes the valuation of your agency almost overnight.

The Math Behind the Magic

Let’s just look at the numbers for a second becuase it really makes it obvious why you should be caring about this. When you book a leisure trip lets say a nice honeymoon that costs five thousand dollars you might make a decent commission on that. But you had to spend marketing dollars to find that couple and you spent hours planning the itinerary and dealing with their questions and changes. Once they get back your income from that customer drops to zero until they decide to go somewhere else which might not happen for a long time.

Now compare that to a small business account. Maybe they are a consulting firm or a construction company that sends project managers to different sites. One single employee might spend two thousand dollars a month on flights and hotels. That is twenty four thousand dollars a year from just one traveler. If that company has ten travelers you are looking at nearly a quarter million in travel spend from one client acquisition.

It is crazy to me that agencies still spend 90% of their budget trying to fight over the leisure travelers on Facebook when the real money is sitting in the B2B sector. You do the work once to land the account and then you get paid every time they book a flight or a hotel room. It creates a baseline of revenue that covers your overhead so you arent stressing out if the leisure market takes a dip or if the economy gets a little weird.

Why Corporate Leads are Hard to Find

So if corporate travel is so great why isnt everyone doing it. The problem is that finding these leads is a lot harder than just putting up an ad on Instagram showing a beach in Mexico. Business owners and office managers are busy people and they arent usually clicking on ads for travel agencies while they are scrolling through their feeds at night. They are usually stuck in their email or dealing with fires in their own buisness.

Most agencies try to get these leads by doing cold calling or networking at local chamber of commerce events which is fine but it is incredibly slow and painful. You have to make hundreds of calls just to get one person to agree to a meeting and most of the time they already have a solution or they think they can just book it themselves on Expedia.

This is where the frustration sets in for a lot of agents. They know they want corporate clients but they have no idea how to get in front of the decision makers who actually hold the credit card. They end up giving up and going back to selling cruises becuase it is easier even though it pays less in the long run.

The Lead Bop Difference

This is exactly why we started focusing heavily on corporate travel leads at Lead Bop. We realized that agencies needed a way to get their foot in the door without spending all day cold calling people who dont want to talk to them. We use a completely different approach to find these companies that are actively looking for help with their travel management.

We target businesses that are already spending money on travel but are frustrated with the headaches of managing it themselves. Maybe their admin assistant is wasting ten hours a week booking flights or they are tired of their employees overspending on expensive hotels. These are the pain points we look for.

When we send you a corporate travel lead it isn’t just a name and a phone number from a list. It is a company that has raised their hand and said they need help. They are looking for an expert to come in and take this problem off their plate.

• High Intent: These people are searching for solutions right now.
• Decision Makers: We try to get you in touch with the person who signs the checks.
• Recurring Volume: We qualify them to make sure they actually travel enough to be worth your time.

Changing Your Mindset from B2C to B2B

Moving into the corporate space requires a bit of a shift in how you talk to people. With leisure travelers you are selling the dream and the experience and the relaxation. You talk about the blue water and the nice food. But with corporate clients they dont care about any of that stuff. They care about efficiency and cost control and duty of care.

They want to know that if their guy gets stuck at an airport in Chicago during a snowstorm you are going to be the one to get him on the next flight home so he doesnt miss his daughters birthday. They want to know that you can give them reporting on their spend so they can see where their money is going.

It is a more professional sale but it is also a much more logical sale. You dont have to rely on emotion you just have to show them the numbers. If you can save them time and money and reduce their stress they will hire you. And once they hire you they are very sticky. Corporate clients dont like switching vendors if things are working smoothly so you can keep these accounts for years if you do a good job.

The Value of Predictability

I cant stress enough how important predictability is for a buisness owner. When you are relying on leisure travel your income is a roller coaster. You have huge months during booking season and then you have months where you are scraping by. It makes it really hard to hire staff or invest in new technology becuase you dont know if the money will be there next month.

With corporate accounts you can almost set your watch by the revenue. You know that the sales team has a conference in October and you know they do quarterly site visits. This allows you to forecast your cash flow and actually plan for growth. You can hire that extra agent to help with bookings becuase you know the volume is guaranteed.

Stop Gambling with Your Marketing Budget

The other big piece of this puzzle is how you pay for these leads. Just like we talked about in our other articles the old way of paying a retainer to a marketing agency is just broken. You shouldn’t be paying someone a monthly fee to try to find you corporate clients. You should only pay when you actually get a lead.

At Lead Bop we use the pay per lead model for corporate travel too. This means you aren’t risking your marketing budget on a campaign that might flop. You tell us you want corporate accounts and we go out and find them and you only pay for the specific leads we deliver.

This takes all the risk out of trying to break into the B2B market. A lot of agencies are scared to pivot to corporate becuase they think it will cost too much to get started. But with a pay per lead model you can dip your toe in the water without betting the farm. You can buy a handful of leads and see how it goes and then scale up once you close a few deals.

It is really about working smarter not harder. You can spend the next five years chasing families for their summer vacation money or you can spend the next six months building a book of corporate business that will pay you for the next decade. The choice seems pretty obvious to us.

If you are ready to get off the revenue roller coaster and start building a real asset then you need to look at corporate travel. It is the steady heartbeat that every travel agency needs to survive and thrive in the long run. We can help you get there by putting you in front of the right people at the right time. Dont let another year go by chasing the small fish when the whales are out there waiting for you.