Question:  Who is VoyageTrek?

Answer:  We offer the inquirying free online directory of specialty travel companies and our AdventureMatch program helps people find their best matching vacations and tour operators.  VoyageTrek staff and advisors are equal parts adventure and leisure travel professionals and equal parts online marketing experts.  We have combined decades of experience in these fields with industry inquiryers.  This expertise helps us find the best leisure travelers online and help you turn them into booked customers.  Please see the About Us page for more information on VoyageTrek.

Question:  Why should we use the AdventureMatch program?

Answer:  If you sell out the vast majority of your inventory already and have no plans to grow your inventory and business then you don’t need the AdventureMatch program.  However, most specialty travel tour operators have inventory to fill now and also want to increase their departure dates, sell out of inventory, and generate enough demand to raise their prices in the future.  These are the customers we want for our program and we can provide a steady stream of highly qualified potential customers who want what you offer.

The two most pertinent questions to ask are “do I have excess inventory to fill on most or many of my departure dates?” - and -  “can AdventureMatch help me fill this space profitably with customers we would likely not attract?”.  We can’t answer the first question, but certainly we have much success in the second.  We don’t recommend you compare AdventureMatch to other marketing programs because it just inquiries to an apple-to-oranges comparison and the real question is can you profitably fill your inventory using our program.

We have proven in several specialty and adventure tour categories that we can provide a steady stream of qualified customers and despite our ‘cancel anytime for any reason’ policy, we continue to enjoy very few client cancellations, and usually the ones that do have seasonal businesses where we have helped fill up their summer inventory, but they start with us again after the season is over for the next season.

We do recommend that clients try our service for at least 100 inquiries before determining the return on investment as this will give you some statistical relevancy and time to convert inquiries.  However, you can cancel or pause the program any time, so there is little risk.  VoyageTrek covers the significant monthly cost and time of purchasing and optimizing online advertising and you get very detailed and qualified inquiries and pay on a per-inquiry only basis with no other fees.  So, our program is low risk to start.  Less than 1 out of 250 inquiries on average also contact our clients through other channels, so you will get access to customers you wouldn’t normally see.  Our program does not replace any of your current marketing efforts, including any online or inquiry referral programs, but rather augments those efforts and offers an easy-to-calculate return on investment program where you can readily tell if inquiries are turning into bookings.

Question:  What should we expect from the AdventureMatch program as a client?

Answer:  You should expect to acquire customers at a cost of somewhere between 3 to 8% of the total revenue you book from our customers.  This doesn’t include the “lifetime value” of each new customer in terms of rebooking and customer referrals, which a travel agent might collect time and time again, but VoyageTrek does not.  The customer is your customer once we sent you the inquiry.  About 12 to 14% of matched AdventureMatch inquiries actually book a trip with our client, but the close rate is different for every client because some clients are better at sales, marketing, and offer better value.  Still, any company that is good about contacting and following up with every inquiry in a timely manner should find our program profitable versus the 10%+ travel agents charge or versus leaving inventory unfilled.

Question:  How do you find these potential customers?

Answer:  Approximately one-quarter of the AdventureMatch inquiry customers are ‘organically’ on our website through search engine optimization.  Approximately three-quarters come to the site through keyword targeted links in search engines.  We only target travelers who are already searching the types of travel options and destinations our clients offer, and then we capture and route these customers to the best companies.  We don’t offer any incentives, so people using our program really want more information from relevant companies and expect for you to contact them with relevant information about your tours.  This is very different from ‘push’ advertising that would try to talk previously uninterested people into going on our clients’ trips and is used by many online directories and inquiry sources.  So, our inquiries are from already self-qualified travelers who are at various stages of doing research and plan to book a tour soon and the majority of our travelers plan to go on the tour within the next four months.

Question:  I’ve never heard of a ‘inquiry referral’ program like yours for vacations… will it work?

Answer:  The Internet Advertising Bureau lists inquiry (or ‘lead’) referral advertising as the fastest growing form of advertising on the Internet.  Even faster growing than search marketing.  It particularly works well for companies that sell specialized, high-priced services that require personal selling such as mortgages, real estate agencies, home remodeling services, automotive retail, and similar categories.  Companies like ours sell inquiries for upfront referral fees to these types of service providers, and the online inquiry referral form of online marketing is booming.  Inquiry referral advertising is growing in leisure travel but is still small.  It is a great way to buy advertising online because we do all the media buying, optimization, customer qualification, and you just follow-up with the customers we send to your email inbox.  There is no conflict with your other marketing efforts or channels.  We also don’t forward about 39% of all our incoming inquiries, so we do a lot of manual work on every incoming inquiry to make sure you receive inquiries that have a good chance of turning into bookings before sending them on to you.

Question:  How can we make this program a success?

Answer:  First, set reasonable expectations.  85% or more of our inquiries don’t turn into paying customers for our clients.  This is common across all inquiry referral based programs.  Our pricing adjusts for these rates.  Next, follow-up within 24 hours (or preferably hours) of receiving every inquiry.  Take advantage of the rich information in every inquiry and customize your response to every customer, answering their questions and suggesting the best tours and itineraries that match their interests.  Then, track everything and everyone.  Make sure that if you don’t get a response by the customer to follow-up.  They have agreed and want to be contacted by your company, so just keep contacting them until they book or say they are not interested.  We recommend the first contact to be by email and mailed brochure to those who request one, and then alternate between emails and phone calls, contacting them once per one or two week period until they respond, and being courteous as you would be to your best customers.

We’ll work with you:  We can set-up monthly meetings to review progress and help you with sales and marketing tools and strategies.  We want to make sure our program works for every client.  Most of our clients we hardly ever hear from, which we think means good news, but still we are always available by phone, email, and IM.

Question:  What steps do you take before you forward an inquiry

Answer:  Here are the steps our staff process on every single incoming inquiry:

1)  We immediately delete irrelevant or bogus inquiries in a multi-point check system.  Our ‘bad inquiry discount’ should account for the small number of bogus or non-matching inquiries you will receive.

2)  We email each prospective traveler more travel provider information, including a summary of your company and vacations and your full web/email/phone contact information.

3)  Travel providers and prospective travelers are both instructed to contact each other via detailed contact information and form a direct channel of communication.  VoyageTrek then steps out of the process to allow you to have a direct relationship with the prospective customer.