Short- and long-term business development for travel agents

Abstract

This paper describes a creative, organic approach to business development using a range of techniques to intensify and speed up the idea generation and screening process. It views business development as a cyclical activity which coincides with the annual budget round. All travel agencies are concerned with three business development aims - client retention, persuading clients to buy more at each transaction and to buy more frequently, and to attract new clients. There is no shortage of ideas in the travel trade on how these aims might be met. The large numbers of ideas puts a premium on how to make choices. The paper suggests ways of generating and quickly processing a large number of ideas and roughly matching these to a firm's requirements.