Empower Your Team: Tips for Travel Agency Owners to Break the Cycle

Travel agency owners have a superpower. When demand is high and business is booming, they can swoop in and save the day.

When a lead comes in late in the day and the team is swamped, our superhuman agency owners will do anything to lessen the burden on their teams. Yet, the question the moment calls for is, “Should I be doing this?”

What would happen if that customer went unanswered and instead you stepped back to consider what the real problem is you are facing? 

If you can feel your pulse rise at the mere thought of letting a lead drop, keep reading. When running shorthanded, saving the day is not as simple as closing a big lead. The problem runs much deeper than that.

Unfortunately, it also means you are busy doing a hundred other things: Posting on social media, attending meetings, dealing with the line at your door, invoicing, reconciling commissions, finalizing groups, chasing suppliers for commissions, and getting clients out the door.

Running shorthanded costs far more than the lead that is going unanswered. It is the opportunity cost when we are so busy “doing”, we don’t have time to develop our teams.  

Stepping in to save the day is a short-term fix, that eventually becomes a habit. The more you run that way the more you are expected to run that way and it becomes a vicious cycle.

Here are some suggestions on how to build capacity in your team, and shift your approach to leadership in your agency.  

1. Get ruthless on your priorities.
Set a Monday morning meeting with yourself and decide what is your biggest priority. Get projects done quicker, know when good enough is good enough, and remove yourself from anything that is not both urgent and important.  

2. Put your team first.
Most leaders run their teams with an 80/20 principle. They have a few superstars, including themselves carrying the load. Putting your team first and believing in their success, can greatly improve those odds. 

3. Embrace a growth mindset.
Trust that you can coach someone through a difficult situation, rather than do it for them. Over time, they will get better and better. They will also have the pride of accomplishment, that only comes when we do things for ourselves. 

4. Engagement is essential.
If your advisors are not engaged, don’t ignore it. Dig in to find out what is really going on with their goals and their conviction to achieve them. Lack of engagement is rarely what we think it is on the surface. 

5. Recruit, recruit, recruit.
To break the cycle of stepping in when you are shorthanded, recruiting new talent is the best long-term solution. New advisors bring a fresh perspective, a brand-new circle of influence, and some much-needed bench strength to meet the rising demand in travel.

6. Leverage technology. 
Lean into simple tools that save time. AI can be both a thinking partner and a time saver when it comes to setting up your business for success. Everything from managing customer inquiries, time blocking, generating ideas for social media content, marketing, and training can be simplified and improved with the right tools. 

7. Focus on learning and development.
The best leaders create an ongoing learning and development strategy. It can feel overwhelming to get new advisors up to speed. Create a step-by-step learning plan for learning how to be a superstar advisor, one important principle at a time. 

8. Empower your team.
Look for areas where you are the bottleneck. Empower your team with the tools and resources they need to run their business without you stepping in. Your role is to be there for encouragement and direction rather than doing it for them. 

9. Create a collaborative culture.
The best travel teams find a way to capture success, share it, celebrate, and improve on it so the entire team thrives. Keep collaboration, teamwork, and recognition as a core value and it will sustain both achievement and fulfillment on your team. 

Leading a travel agency is challenging, in some ways, we will always feel shorthanded. There will always be more to do. Yet when we engage the right strategies, we slowly shift from fighting fires to empowering others to win the day!  

Geraldine Ree helps Travel Agency Owners grow their business and engage high-performing teams. Learn more here, discover more here, and Find out more here.