The Travel Advisor Who Found Her Niche on TikTok

Justice Parker did not set out to become a travel advisor or a TikTok influencer. Today, this young mother of three is both.

Justice Parker is an advisor with A Pair of Ears Travel, an agency specializing in Disney and Universal vacation planning. Her TikTok, @justicetheexplorer, has almost 220,000 followers and over 2.8 million likes. Her business is almost exclusively found through the platform: most clients are people who discovered her via TikTok, while a small percentage are referrals from other TikTok followers.

Parker felt the entrepreneurial drive to succeed early on. She graduated high school at just 16 years old and immediately embarked on a journey to become a business owner. She found success fairly quickly designing, making, and selling handmade tumblers and t-shirts. Then, she opened a boutique, selling women’s clothing and accessories.

Like many of us, the pandemic changed everything.

COVID was a life-changing experience for Parker. Her son fell ill, requiring hospitalization. The experience was understandably difficult, and the young mom turned to social media for a comforting distraction. On TikTok, she quickly found a community that offered support and encouragement during this difficult period.

While she still had ambition, her priorities changed – family became more important than ever. So she closed her store, and in 2022, joined A Pair of Ears Travel as an advisor.

“I was looking for something to do with him at home,” she told TMR. “One of my Facebook friends was posting that she was a travel agent, and I was like ‘hey, that seems kind of cool!’”

Parker, who already had a passion for Disney World vacations, felt right at home at A Pair of Ears Travel.

Finding her niche on TikTok

Parker had some experience using TikTok before joining A Pair of Ears Travel, but she never expected to go viral.

In February 2022, Parker posted a short TikTok titled “Email me for a quote.” The video was a brief clip from a Walt Disney World parade with text inviting viewers to “book [their] vacation today.” It was her first real piece of content related to selling travel. “I wasn’t even fully trained,” she told TMR. That post was seen by over 18,000 users.

A few days later, another post – a woman opening pearl oysters at Disney Springs – was seen by over 1 million. Soon, the emails started flooding in.

“It just kind of blew up,” she told TMR. “It was a new thing after COVID … It was something I was going to do as a side hobby. Now it’s a full-time career that I’m very successful in.”

The fledgling advisor found herself inundated with queries from prospective clients, literally her first week on the job. It was the ultimate trial-by-fire approach to learning the business. It was unexpected, but ultimately, Parker is grateful for the experience.

“I learned a lot about myself and the travelling industry,” she said.

Virality comes with a cost

Almost immediately, Parker’s viral TikTok posts resulted in an overwhelming number of inquiries.

“My very first week, I was having 700 to 900 emails per day,” she recalled. Over the next few months, she stayed busy. “I missed out on a lot of sleep for sure.”

While getting hundreds of inquiry emails was exciting, Parker quickly learned she’d need to sort through many time-wasters to find the few she could convert to sales. “The issue is, you never know who’s serious and who is not, so you have to treat everyone the same.”

Even now, this hasn’t changed for Parker. She still gets the vast majority of her business from TikTok, and that involves answering a lot of emails. This alone can be a very frustrating exercise.

“I probably send out 1,000 emails a week minimum. Do I even get 500 bookings? Absolutely not – not even a quarter some weeks. Some days, I get a lot of bookings. Some days …. I feel like I’m wasting my time.”

Ultimately though, Parker’s happy with her current workload: “I do waste my time more than I get bookings, but I’m happy with the amount of sales I have. I’m happy with how much I’ve grown and how much I do in sales.”

Tips on TikTok success

Parker suggested there’s no secret formula for creating a viral TikTok post, and what works for one creator might not work for another. For her, it’s been a lot of trial and error to figure out what works with the algorithm.

If there is one universal rule, it’s that you need to be posting regularly.

“I think the most important thing is not what you’re posting – it’s the consistency. I post three to five videos a day.”

Parker has also found that putting her face at the beginning of her videos works well for her audience. “I’ve noticed that if I post the same video, but I put my face in it beforehand, they do better – not to say I think it’s because of my face, but I think it’s because it’s more personable. I think when people can put a face to somebody, it’s not just like you’re trying to sell them something. It’s more like, ‘hey, this person is a real person. I can see them.’”

For Parker, TikTok is a great tool for lead generation – but she argues she’s “lucky” to have been so successful on the platform. This strategy works for her, but it requires a high level of consistency and dedication.

“The problem with social media, not even just TikTok, is that people aren’t actively searching,” she explained. Users may send out an email to an advisor because they’re curious to learn more about an opportunity, but this doesn’t mean they’re ready to spend.

“Do I waste a lot of time? Yes. But it’s worth it for me to waste that time because it pays off in the end.”