#1 - NEW Private Sale, Flash Sale, Member-only, Daily Deal, Group Buying
These types travel sites are one of the hottest new business models to enter the online travel industry in the last 18-months. If I was going to start an online travel company today, I would look for an opportunity to develop a private sale or member only travel website. I wrote two extensive articles in October 2010 and in July 2011about the new private sale travel sites that went viral throughout the Internet and I am re-posting them here (see the resources).
#2 - Tour/Trip Operators
This style of business is in-bound, out-bound and receptive. Online Tour Operators sell dynamically packaged trips and or pre-packaged trips to vacationers. I believe that building an online tour operator business is your best option for building a successful online travel business.
Now, let me first state that the name itself is a little misconceived because of the word "Tour." There is a big difference between a tour and a trip. On a tour, there is usually a tour guide or person leading the tour with the travel participants. On a trip, the traveler is traveling either by his or herself, or with other people, but there is never a tour guide involved. In the travel business, they call this an FIT trip, Drive vacation or Fly-Drive package.
I favor selling trips where the traveler buys a tour or trip product, and then attends the trip by his or herself in their own time. The reason for this is two-fold:
1. You neither have to be the tour guide yourself nor hire one.
2. You have 100% more freedom by not actually participating in the tour itself.
Just think of the time involved in actually going on a tour with a group or individuals. We operated tours when my wife and I owned the Yellow Breeches House Fly Fishing Lodge and B&B. We ran fly fishing excursions with lodging and guiding. Guess who was one of the guides? Yes, you got it - yours truly. I would not change the past for anything, but I learned so much from being a fly fishing guide and owning a lodging property. I just wouldn't want to run that type of business again. There are much better travel business models out there. That's part of the beauty of this report; that I am able to share some true-life realities with you.
The key to working from home and being a tour operator is to sell trips not tours; this is the most important thing I can tell you regarding wanting to live the Internet lifestyle, working from home, and enjoying the freedom that comes with owning your own online travel company. You won't be living any Internet lifestyle if you are giving tours every week.
Receptive Tour Operators receive inbound travelers from foreign countries. This is a B2B business (business-to-business). You build an Online Tour Operator business, but instead of selling your travel products directly to consumers or vacationers online, you sell your owned travel products to wholesalers or other tour operators in foreign countries. They then re-sell them directly to travel agencies and consumers in their own country. If you live in a world-renowned destination area, or a region where foreigners come to visit, you can build a successful receptive tour operator business. The receptive tour operator business takes longer to develop because the buyers of your travel products will be other travel companies and tour operators; seasoned travel business won't necessarily want to do business with a company that is new or just in startup mode. However, adversity can be overcome through focus, determination and having an owned travel product that a wholesaler or foreign tour operator believes he can sell and make money with.
#3 Guides, Destination Activity Providers
This type provides tours to individuals and/or groups. If I didn't scare you off with the above, that's ok; the tour and or activity provider guide business is a great business, and it's easy to get started in it with a limited amount of investment. This is a great business with which to enter the travel business and start learning about how to build a business.
If you love dealing with people and spending much of your time outside, then this is probably the best travel business for you. It is seriously hard work, day in and day out, as you are always outside in the elements. This particular travel business could be a stepping-stone for you to then go ahead and build an online tour operator business. I have a really good friend that owns a kayaking guide service. He runs eco-adventures that include island hopping for three to five nights. He just loves it. Let me share a little strategy with you that will totally change the way you build or grow your existing tour guide business. Hopefully, you'll have already seen it and are way ahead of me. But if not, here it is.
Create packages for your tour guide or activity provider business that include lodging, meals and your service. You probably sell trips, guiding and/or tours as an hourly or daily product. Take the next step by packaging in lodging and meals, and maybe even a third activity. Sell packages to your clients and you will supercharge your revenue in a very big way.
Example:
Take an existing kayak guide who sells day trips for $250 for two people. Now create overnight packages. Create a new product line for your business.
1. Contract with a lodging supplier to buy lodging for your kayak packages.
2. Contract with two local restaurants to buy dinners for your kayak packages.
3. Sell a two-night, one-day kayak excursion, with two dinners. By making money off the lodging, dinners and a third activity, you can seriously start adding more profits to your business.
#4 Online Travel Agencies (wholesalers OTAs)
Traditionally OTAs sell everything under the sun; including lodging, air travel, car rental, vacation packages, and much more. On a hierarchy level of all online travel businesses, this would be the most expensive and most challenging type of online business to start. It's do-able, don't get me wrong, it's just that it would take much longer and be more expensive to start up.
If you second tier niche and focus on contracting your own lodging and activity supplier deals, you could easily build a smaller, more focused OTA. Another option would be for you to utilize the Global Distribution System (GDS) for the air travel, car hire and lodging which you could not contract yourself. I don't recommend this last option, however, as you'll just be re-selling products that you don't own. But as long as you can combine the non-owned GDS products with your own contracted travel products, you could create a nice "win-win" situation for the bottom line.
#5 Online Travel Brokers
This is a new travel business category, I stumbled upon. I believe this is the type of business you could start with literally no money. It's just a matter of understanding the travel business. Here is how an online travel broker operates.
Every travel supplier needs sales representatives. Your travel broker business contracts with travel suppliers to represent their businesses and help them sell more of their travel products. Many smaller travel businesses don't have sales representatives. This may be your entry into the online travel business industry.
Let's say you live in a resort town or area and there are four golf courses nearby or three ski resorts. You represent the travel supplier's products, finding larger partners and/or re-sellers that would re-sell or distribute your client's products. This business is just a matter of finding other travel suppliers that need sales representatives, and finding larger companies who are looking for new travel products to sell and distribute. You make money by earning a percentage of all future sales booked, or earn a flat fee per contract you sign. This would be a great way to enter the travel business on a part-time basis. You could start with a small investment and build up slowly.