For a travel agency, a quote request is a customer raising their hand. They have a wish, often a date, sometimes a budget. But they rarely contact just one agency: they compare. Between two answers of similar quality, the faster and clearer one often wins.
Yet in many agencies, requests come in through several channels, pile up in an inbox and wait until an agent has time to deal with them. Here is how to take back control.
Why speed matters so much
When travellers send a request, they are actively thinking about their trip. A few days later, they may already have received other offers, or booked elsewhere. Answering fast does not mean rushing: it shows you are available and that you understood the need.
Set yourself a simple goal, for example a first reply within the business day, even if it is only a personal acknowledgement with one or two clarifying questions.
Bring every request into one place
Website form, email, phone, messaging apps, social media: requests come from everywhere. The first step is to bring them all into one place, with the same record:
- who is asking, and how to reach them;
- the destination or type of trip;
- the dates (or period) and length of stay;
- the number of travellers, adults and children;
- the budget, even a rough one;
- the date of the request and the agent handling it.
A request jotted on a sticky note, or sitting in the personal inbox of a colleague on holiday, is a sale lost in advance.
Ask for the right information up front
Every round of questions costs days. Your website form should therefore ask for the essentials from the start, without putting visitors off: a few well-chosen fields beat a long questionnaire.
The most effective approach: show specific offers on your website (a holiday, a tour, a package) with a “Request a quote” button. Customers start from a real offer, with its dates and indicative price, and you know exactly what they mean.
Build proposals without starting from scratch
Much of the time spent on a quote goes into finding prices and reformatting the same information. If your offers are already in your catalogue, with their services and prices, a proposal takes minutes instead of an hour.
A good proposal is:
- clear: what is included and what is not;
- priced: total price, deposit required, balance due date;
- dated: how long the price is guaranteed;
- personal: it uses the customer’s own words and wishes.
Follow up, without pestering
A proposal with no answer is not a refusal. The customer may be discussing it with family, or waiting for their leave to be confirmed. A short follow-up a few days after sending, then a second one before the price expires, is often enough to restart the conversation.
So nothing is forgotten, each request needs a visible status: new, in progress, proposal sent, accepted, lost.
Turn the request into a booking, without retyping
When the customer accepts, everything you already know (contact details, trip, dates, travellers) should flow into the booking without copying it again. That is where data-entry errors appear most: swapped dates, a misspelled name on a ticket.
Measure to improve
A few simple figures are enough to know where you stand:
- the number of requests received each month, and where they come from;
- the average time to first reply;
- the conversion rate: requests that became bookings;
- the reasons for losing a deal, when the customer gives them (price, dates, competitor).
Tracked over a few months, these figures quickly show what works: an offer that attracts many requests but converts few may be poorly presented, or wrongly priced.
How ATHIX helps
With ATHIX, your offers are published on your own booking website. The customer picks an offer and sends a quote request; it lands in your workspace, next to your bookings, and becomes a booking when the customer accepts, without retyping. Discover the travel agency software, or book a demo.
