Not knowing how long you have been in the travel business but you probably have realized this by now, that leisure travel is highly cyclical - based on the overall economy. Right now that cycle is quite negative (still waiting to bottom-out). The leisure traveler is also the highest discriminating consumer - that is they search for rock-bottom fares and the web has made this industry almost a pure competitive market (that is that it is price driven - not feature driven).
Advice - stay away from the highly competitive leisure travel industry - go for the business & college travel market. The business travel market is a lot less cyclical and businesses are not usually going to search for the cheapest fare even - they will opt often for time convenience over fare price.
That said - I would market heavily toward business travel. Get your local area first - look for businesses locally that require frequent travel and package deals to the areas they travel (tossing in leisure options - stay over the weekend - golf is offered at such & such resort). Once you have the local pitch honed - go for the broader business market (yellow page by yellow page of the phone book - with direct calls to companies). You can also do the web - traffic drivers a try as well. Web strategies that drive traffic to your sight.
This should get you the most travel "business." However, I see that your company is part of an MLM - marketing to businesses will most likely not increase your down-line. But you might get a stray employee from the businesses you market to - that signs up. In fact - it might be an interesting sales pitch to the company - to have them sign up as their own individual travel business - which would afford them - their own discounts and even commissions off their own travel.
Another traveler that usually is quite regular is the college traveler. This can be done by getting in college newspapers, college radio stations, etc. Even posters for college dorms - college travelers - will travel during semester breaks, weekends & holidays. They all do this - these customers usually go for bargains but they usually have limited time factors. I would start with flyers and then pursue the newspapers, radios, etc. Do this at your local colleges but you can also do this at other institutions across the country. Start by getting their schedules and time your campaigns to their schedules. The MLM appeal may also be to college clubs - the ski club could start it's own travel company and earn commissions from the travel their members arrange through their web-sites.
I also noticed the stock value of your parent company - in the penny stock range. You should develop a plan "C" for when this company changes (goes under or is purchased by another company - potentially changing all the pay-out rules). I don't want that to sound too ominous. Just -eyes wide open here. Googling YTB - one of the directors sold off 10% of the company which he owned. Two of the directors had property purchased from them by the company. These are not necessarily unscrupulous dealing. Just notice that when you have penny stocks - the company is highly at the mercy of the executives. There is usually very little institutional investing here and the company executives can play by the rules and run the company into the ground. When executives sell their private property to the company whose stock is not all that robust - it is usually not something that I would say is the first best thing for the company to invest in. I am not saying they are going out of business
tomorrow. I would say again - look into plan "C," it might have a higher upside potential for you.
I hope this helps, God Bless, Ed R.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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