What's in a travel brand? By Adrian Caruso GUEST COMMENT | TRAVEL WEEKLY 19 May 2008

Imagine a prospective customer sees your logo, your email newsletter, or your ad, and in a split second thinks, "Oh! there's that great travel company again. They have just what I need. I'm going to book with them today."
Sounds good, right? It's what every company wants: brand recognition that instantly positions them in the market and draws the right type of customers to them automatically and makes them book.

Do you have the correct brand outside your travel company for the clients you want to attract?  Is the brand you are trading under in the right segment of the market you are in ? Is it the right brand to take your company forward for the next 10 years and keep up with industry trends?

Recently we undertook several projects for some of our customers on an advisory basis on whether the brand they were trading under is strong enough to take them forward..  Some we recommended they switch from one franchisors’s brand to another due to their brand not being perceived by their target customers as attractive.  Other we recommended they don’t trade under any major national travel brand as a franchisee but rather as an independent for example Adrian Caruso Travel or Your Suburb’s Name Travel or you’re the niche market you specialise in such as Adventure Travel or Cruise Travel.  But before any changes of brand are even considered many factors need to be considered.

You must understand what branding is.  Branding is the practice of influencing how people experience your company over time. This experience tells potential customers or clients who you are and what they can expect from you, and it sets the stage for how they will interact with you going forward.

Strong travel brands make themselves visible and provide a sustainable competitive advantage by being anchored in the minds of consumers. They also serve as the basis for long-term customer loyalty.

The next factor to consider is the type of customer you are trying to attract.  Trading under the most attractive brand to your target customer will help them instantly recognise and choose you over all the competition.  It will help you ‘position’ yourself and instantly establish your expertise and specialty in the minds of the buying public.  When have the correct brand and it is positioned well in your customers minds anyone will be able to tell exactly what you offer.  You don’t have to be recognised internationally as the only travel company that sells what you sell.  But you do want to attract a specific clientele. 

So which travel brand should your trade under?  Should you be a franchisee of a major travel franchisor or trade under an independent name and be part of a buying consortia?  These are questions that you must ask yourself first and foremost before you think of switching between any franchisor, changing your current trading name or starting up a new travel company.  Make sure that your trading name appeals to the customer you are wanting to attract and makes them say, “Oh there’s that great travel company.  They will have exactly what I want!”.

However two brands cannot occupy the same position. In my previous articles I have mentioned the "travel agent" brand, or lack thereof. As a previous travel agency owner, we've done a pretty poor job of positioning travel agents to the general consumer marketplace. The other week I gave a talk on what is known as Web 2.0. We had a very active group of travel agents even though the talk began at 8:30 a.m. The discussion moved to travel agents and their areas of expertise or "designations," and whether a consumer would even know what a CTC or virtually any other industry designation would actually mean to them. The short answer was "not a lot."

Indeed, many other industries have done a far better job of building their respective umbrella brands, ultimately enhancing the stature of those who are involved in that particular field. The CPA or certified public accountant designation is just one example of a field where the market understands the value of those three letters. The same can't be said of CTC or any of the many other designations that agents work hard to acquire.

Where does the fault lie? There isn't one answer to that question, but there are certainly a number of things that associations such as AFTA, agency groups, agencies and individual agents could be doing to improve upon this situation. More on this next time.

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