Ten ideas: choose a specialty; publish first-hand trip content by your advisors; email past clients by season with real itineraries and total prices; post from the road; ask every traveler for a review; work referrals; work supplier partners with incentives disclosed; host small events; keep a Business Profile if you have a storefront; and count trips booked and repeat clients.
The rules: register where travel sellers are regulated and show the number; total price including mandatory fees; nothing offered for reviews; consent before marketing email and texts.
The business you are in, in public numbers
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median annual wage for travel agents at $50,160 in May 2025, projects employment to show little or no change from 2025 to 2035, and expects about 5,900 openings a year, mostly to replace people who leave. The agencies that grow in a flat market are the ones that sell expertise in a specialty to clients who come back and refer, which is what the ideas below are for.
The rules first: who may sell travel, and how prices are shown
Ontario's Travel Industry Act, 2002 says no person shall act, or hold oneself out as being available to act, as a travel seller unless registered under the Act, and Ontario Regulation 26/05 requires a registrant's representation, unless made orally, to include the name under which the registrant carries on business, its address and its registration number. Other provinces and some US states regulate sellers of travel too; register where you must and put the number on the website, the emails and the ads. On price, the Federal Trade Commission's Junk Fees Rule requires the total price including fees up front for short-term lodging and live-event tickets in the USA, and the Competition Bureau treats a price made unattainable by mandatory fees as drip pricing under Canada's Competition Act; when you quote a trip, quote the total. General information, not legal advice; your counsel has the last word.
Idea 1: Choose a specialty
A region, a kind of trip (safaris, river cruises, multi-generational, honeymoons, accessible travel), a kind of traveler, or a way of traveling. The specialty decides what you write about, who refers you, which suppliers you know deeply and which searches you can be found for. Say it in one line on every page and profile, and let it decide what you turn down.
Idea 2: First-hand trip content by your advisors
The content a booking site cannot produce is a named advisor's account of a place they have been: what the hotel is like at seven in the morning, which day trip is worth it, what to skip, what it cost. Google's helpful content guidance asks whether a page shows first-hand experience and gives readers reasons to trust it; Pew Research Center found in March 2025 that Google users who saw an AI summary clicked a traditional result 8% of the time, against 15% without one, as its report describes, and first-hand, specific content is what summaries cite and travelers call about. One trip, one page, one named advisor, with a way to reach them.
Idea 3: Email past clients by season, with real itineraries and total prices
Past clients are the business. A seasonal email with one real itinerary in the specialty, its total price including fees as quoted today, the advisor who built it and a line to reply, sells more than any ad. In the USA the FTC's CAN-SPAM guide requires accurate headers, a truthful subject line, identification as an advertisement where the message is one, a postal address and an opt-out honored within 10 business days, with penalties up to $53,088 per email, and the FCC's rules at 47 CFR 64.1200 require prior express consent before autodialed texts to cell numbers, with written consent for marketing texts; in Canada, CASL requires consent before a commercial electronic message. Collect consent at booking and keep trip documents separate from offers. Our email marketing page covers how we run it.
Idea 4: Post from the road
An advisor on a site inspection or a familiarization trip has the content clients want: the room, the view, the breakfast, the transfer, in short video with a plain caption. Post it as it happens and again when the season to book it arrives. If a supplier paid for the trip or gave anything of value, say so in the post; the FTC's Endorsement Guides apply to advisors as to anyone else. Our social media optimization page covers turning the trips into a steady feed.
Idea 5: Ask every traveler for a review
BrightLocal's 2026 survey, summarized by PinMeTo, found 41% of US consumers always read reviews when choosing a local business and 80% are more likely to use a business that replies to all its reviews. Ask every client after the trip, by email with a direct link, offer nothing and never filter who is asked, as the FTC's fake reviews rule and Google's Maps content policy require, and reply to every review in the advisor's words. Reviews that name the advisor and a moment they handled are the ones that sell.
Idea 6: Work referrals, with any reward disclosed
Ask for the referral at the moment of return, when the trip is fresh, with a simple way to make it. If you reward referrals, the FTC's Endorsement Guides require the reward to be disclosed to the person who hears the recommendation, so keep it simple and say so. Count referred clients as a source.
Idea 7: Work supplier partners, with incentives disclosed
Hotels, cruise lines, tour operators and destination organizations fund marketing with their preferred agencies: co-op campaigns, hosted trips, event support and exclusive offers. Use them within your specialty, keep the client's interest first, and disclose any incentive that affects what you recommend, as the Endorsement Guides require. We name no supplier here; your partners are yours.
Idea 8: Host small events
An evening on one destination or one kind of trip, for past clients and their guests, with an advisor who has been there and, where it fits, a supplier presenting, books trips the way no email does. Collect RSVPs with consent recorded, follow up within the week, and count the trips that came from it.
Idea 9: A Business Profile, if you have a storefront or meet clients
Google's guidance on local ranking says a complete and accurate profile is more likely to show and that there is no way to pay for a better local ranking. An agency with a storefront or an office where clients come keeps a complete profile with the specialty in the description, real photos and reviews answered; an advisor working from home follows Google's rules for service-area businesses and keeps the address off the profile.
Idea 10: Count trips booked and repeat clients
Each month: inquiries by source (content, email, social, referral, partner, event, profile), trips booked and their value, repeat clients as a share of bookings, and reviews received and answered. After a year the count shows which ideas built the client list and which only looked busy. Our guide to travel website development cost covers what to do when the agency wants to book online as well as by phone, and our guide to vacation rental marketing strategy shows the lodging side of the relationship.
If you want it run with you
PromotEdge International is an international strategy, technology, marketing and design company, and our delivery team is in India. We run email programs and social content remotely for travel agencies and advisors in the USA and Canada, and our hospitality and tourism industry page list the sectors we work with. We sell no travel, name no supplier as a partner, and name no agency client here. This guide is general information, not legal advice; the rules of your country, state and province apply, and your counsel has the last word.
Facts we rely on: see our company facts for what we state about ourselves and where each fact comes from.