23/5/2020
Set your objectives and start seeing results
Without a roadmap, you can’t know where you are or where you are going. This is why objective metrics and performance evaluations are so important in all types of businesses – but particularly for travel agents.
In today’s challenging market, it’s important to know where you can improve. You should be taking steps to build a better business and bring more customers to your door.
With the OKR process. Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) are a powerful framework for planning your company’s strategy – both in the short-term and the long-term.
Keep reading to learn more about OKRs, and how OKRs for travel agents can implement to help boost your overall performance.
What Are OKRs?
OKRs stands for Objectives and Key Results. Objectives are self-explanatory. They are the goals for your business, and they should be:
- Qualitative: meaning that they are not always measurable by statistics. “Increase customer satisfaction” or “Get more bookings to Puerto Rico, for example, are good examples of qualitative goals.
- Ambitious: meaning that they should be challenging to accomplish. You should not be able to easily reach your goal without some serious effort.
- Non-ambiguous: meaning that each goal should have clear, obvious conditions. Once these conditions are met, the objective can be considered to be accomplished.
The key results, on the other hand, are the steps that you need to take in order to reach your goals. They are always quantitative in nature – meaning each one can be measured explicitly using statistics and measurements.
OKRs For Travel Agents – An Example Of How They Can Be Used
Need an example of OKRs, and what an objective and its key results may look like? Let’s say that you want to get more referrals to your travel agency. Here is what OKRs for travel agents may look like if you want to boost your referrals.
| Objectives | Key Results |
| Increase bookings via referrals by the end of the current quarter | 1. Aggressively market our referral advertising campaign on social media with two posts per week, and reference it in each monthly email newsletter 2. Provide at least 2 more referral rewards for current customers to choose from 3. Follow up with every customer within 24 hours of their trip ending and mention the referral program |
As you can see, the objective is the overall goal that you are working towards – while the key results consist of more granular, individual things that you can do to achieve your goal. Breaking things down like this makes it easier to track your success – and get a sense of accomplishment as you work towards a larger objective.
Need another example? Let’s say that you are looking to sell more package vacation and all-inclusive trips, and look at a set of OKRs that would help you reach this objective.
| Objective | Key Results |
| Increase sales of all-inclusive vacations and bundled vacation packages | 1. Train all travel agents and sales representatives on your available vacation packages, and ensure they are mentioned during each conversation customers 2. Add 5 more all-inclusive hotel partners to our travel portfolio by the end of the quarter 3. Create 3 pamphlets to hand out to customers after meetings that show example bundled vacation packages |
Why Do OKRs For Travel Agents Matter?
Wondering why OKRs for travel agents matter, and why you should implement this system at your company? Here are a few of the benefits of using OKRs for travel agents.
Helps you develop a plan and roadmap – Using OKRs, you can quickly develop a plan for the growth of your company. The way that OKRs work makes this process very intuitive.
All you have to do is think of an objective – a goal you want to achieve. Then, you think backward, and consider the actions that you can take to achieve this goal. By starting with the goal and working backward, it’s easier to identify the actions you can take to accomplish your goal.
You can plan for both long-term and short-term goals – OKRs can be used for both immediate strategic planning and long-term growth. The system is extremely flexible in this way – it allows you to cover all of your bases, and develop plans for immediate growth as well as future expansion.
Boost performance and efficiency – You and your staff will be more motivated and have a clearer idea of how to work more efficiently, thanks to OKRs. The key results you create during the process will be easy to implement and allow you to take actionable steps towards accomplishing your company-wide goals.
For these reasons and quite a few more, OKRs are a very powerful tool for boosting your performance at travel agencies.
Implement OKRs Today – And Start Seeing Results At Your Agency!
If you take the time to learn more about OKRs and their benefits, you’ll see how powerful they truly are. So start thinking about implementing OKRs at your travel agency today – once you do, you’ll see why this method of strategic planning is just so useful!
