It’s been a crazy year. We’re all ready to move on and wash our hands of covid, riots, unrest, and all the ugliness called 2020.

Travel bans and lockdowns kept you at home. You couldn’t plan travel for your clients and you couldn’t travel either. Talk about hair pulling!

Travel is like a sip of ice-cold water on a scorching hot August day. You get to escape from the cares of life. You get to experience new things while you scope out a new resort. You get to relax in their newly upgraded spa. Ahhhh…

But with the rise of covid, everything was put on hold. Your clients started canceling. You were on the phone constantly trying to get them refunds and iron everything out. Not to mention you lost a ton of money over that time. What a headache!

While travel is still uncertain, there are things you can do to keep your client base excited, engaged, and ready for future travel with you.

There are so many options for advertising your travel business – newsletters, social media, blogs, snail mail. But my favorite way to advertise travel is through blogging.

(Go ahead and scroll past my blog blabbering to the blog post ideas if you already know all about blog statistics.)

You’ll reach a broader range of viewers through your blog than you could through your email list.

Your blog drives more traffic to your website, boosting your search engine optimization and your ranking on Google.

This is accomplished when you mix keywords into your posts to help with your Google ranking. The higher you rank on Google, the more organic traffic you’ll receive, the more client leads you’ll get.

When you blog, it gives you weeks of content for newsletters and social media posts. Post a small excerpt from your blog post on Instagram and refer people to your website. The same goes for Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, emails, and more.

(Click here to read more about the benefits of blogging.)

Blogging also establishes you as an expert. Potential clients look at your posts and think, wow, they sure know what they’re talking about! 

Reading your blog posts keeps your business at the forefront of their minds and gets them excited about future travel. They’ll be ready and waiting, suitcases in tow. Give your viewers something to look forward to!

But what do you write about? Topic planning is a pain in the butt sometimes. This is why I want to share a few blog post ideas to help spur your imagination into gear.

Let’s get crackin’!

1. Focus on destination travel

Your clients are stuck at home dreaming of days gone by when they could travel wherever and whenever they pleased. Give those poor home-bound souls some specific destinations to dream about.

Talk about your favorite restaurants in Paris. Go into detail about the meal you chose, the wine you had with it, what you had for dessert. Tell them how lovely the atmosphere was in the restaurant with its old Parisian flare and strings of twinkly yellow lights.

When it’s the cold and dreary winter months, highlight tropical destinations. Go into detail about how the humid, hot wind caressed your face as you lay on a gleaming white beach in Maui last year. How the turquoise ocean waves played a lazy game of tag as they gently lapped against your toes. Your favorite drink kept you refreshed as you sipped away the afternoon.

People love list articles. Make a list of the Top 10 Things to do in Estes Park, CO. Tell them why they should consider trying each activity and how much fun you had when you tried them.

There are so many blog post ideas on the destination travel topic! 

Don’t forget, the more posts you put out, the bigger your audience.

2. Off the beaten path travel

There’s more to travel than visiting the popular tourist attractions. Traveling off the beaten path is becoming more popular as travelers seek to enhance their travel experiences. They want more authentic travel. It’s about discovering themselves and reinventing their views.

Encourage your readers to get out and explore a destination. Talk to them about the fascinating little nook of a tea shop you found in a sidestreet of Dungarvan, Ireland. The owner was the chattiest little thing, full of bits of history and information on lesser-known places to see.

Do you know a guide in Sidney, Australia who knows the outback like he knows the layout of his house? He knows where all the hidden gems are found. Write a blog post featuring him and all the amazing places he knows about.

3. It’s all about family-friendly travel!

Family – if there’s one thing covid has taught us, it’s how much we love and appreciate (and sometimes hate!) our family.

Put together a blog post with pictures of Disney World. Write the content like a story. Make it family-friendly on all levels so that even the kids enjoy hearing it.

Or, hone in on budget-friendly family vacation destinations. Most families are on strict budgets and need to scrimp where they can. Tell them about places they can go, or things they can do to save when they’re on vacation.

Help them save money and they’ll be your loyal friends for life.

4. “How-to” blog posts are the best!

Like list blog posts, how-to posts are always welcomed with open arms. Posts like Canceled Flight? Here’s how to Combat Boredom When You’re Stuck at the Airport are something your clients want to hear. 

You’ll never run out of topics with how-to posts. How to pack my suitcase. How to drive in Europe. How to get foreign currency. How to travel safely in a third-world country.

The possibilities are endless with this blog post idea!

5. Write to a specific audience.

Do you specialize in Greek tours? Use blog post ideas targeted to your audience.

Is it winter in North America? Create an enticing blog post highlighting Greece’s sunny beaches or the private yacht charters available. Tempt the food-driven Americans by telling them about a delightful little restaurant with the best food in all of Greece.

6. Write about yourself.

This one is fun! You get to tell your clients about your favorite vacations and your not-so-favorite vacations. 

You get to write about YOU. And who do you know better than yourself? 

Go for a humorous slant and tell your audience about the time you had major flight cancellations and had to overnight at a seedy motel.

Or, talk about something a little darker, like poverty in Haiti. The resorts are gorgeous, but once outside of them, you’ll find rampant poverty, murder, and drug usage. You never know, you might stir someone’s heart into making a difference in world poverty when you share.

7. Create a vacation series.

Put together a diary of sorts about your latest trip to Costa Rica. Start with Day 1 and move on from there. 

Your clients will love hearing about your experiences from day-to-day. Share dos and don’ts as you go. Give them actionable tips on what to do and where to go.

Make travel accessible and fun again!

People are bored. They want to get out and do things again. Everyone wants to go back to normal (whatever normal is!). It’s hard sitting at home working from your laptop. 

Zoom meetings, Skype meetings, virtual classrooms for kids. Making three healthy meals a day for their family. Trying to keep their house at least one step away from looking like an episode of Hoarders. This quarantine life is draining.

But you, my friend, are their savior. You swoop in with consistent travel-related blog posts. You keep their tiny travel spark ignited. You keep them excited about the possibility of future travel. 

They can’t travel, you can’t travel, so why not bring travel right to their living rooms or offices? Your blog posts might be the one thing keeping them sane!

There are many excellent reasons to blog. The most important reason – making your audience feel valued. When you’re consistently giving, they’re more likely to give back by booking a vacation with you.

Blogging isn’t always a calm walk in the park. Sometimes it’s like a walk in the park with three two-year-olds and a couple of rambunctious puppies. Crazy, but fulfilling. Hair-pulling, but worth it.

Are you hesitating about starting a blog? Hesitate no longer! Your clients need your knowledge right now. They need encouragement. 

Are you having trouble thinking of blog post ideas? That’s ok! Hop on Google and start searching. Scroll to the bottom to see what other people are looking at. Google is your best friend in topic research!

If you’re having trouble getting started or if you’re stalled somewhere between being an accomplished blogger and quitting, hit me up! I’m here to help with strategy, topics, and more!

Let’s get blogging!