How To Make Money Selling Travel Itineraries (Insider Tips!)

How To Create & Sell Travel Itineraries [Episode Transcript]

As travel bloggers, we’re always looking for ways to transform our experiences and knowledge into paid content.

So I’d love to give you an idea for doing this right now:

Creating paid itineraries.

Whether you want to be a full-time online travel advisor, are researching travel side hustles, or something in between, selling travel itineraries can be a great idea.

While you’re hopefully monetizing your free travel itineraries and blog posts with affiliate links, paid itineraries offer the added benefit of a flat fee payment. This payment goes to you for creating the itinerary.

Sound interesting?

I’ll be breaking the strategy down below so that you can learn how to become a holiday planner and get paid to create curated travel itineraries!

🎉 Also, don’t forget to grab access to my FREE Travel Blogger Resource Library! Get access to 75+ resources that can help turn your blog into a profitable business—including a sample client intake form you can use to onboard new itinerary planning clients!

What are travel itineraries?

Travel itineraries are detailed plans of a trip that outline the things travelers will do and in what order.

Because they are essentially the trip schedule, as an independent travel planner, it’s vital to know how to organize a travel itinerary in a way that is easy to follow for your clients.

Itineraries can range from highly structured, hour-by-hour plans, to more flexible outlines that allow for spontaneous exploration.

You should check with your clients to get a sense of how much wiggle room they want before planning their travel itineraries.

My experience creating travel itineraries

I’ve actually been creating travel itineraries myself for years. Here is what my journey looked like:

Iteration 1. I started off creating itineraries as a travel advisor for other sites, and people could choose any destination I’d been to—which, to be honest, was often extremely time-consuming because even if I’d been somewhere it didn’t mean I knew everything about it

Iteration 2. I then moved to only creating itineraries for my readers who booked directly through me, and people could choose any destination I’d been to.

Iteration 3. Today, I only create itineraries for my readers who book directly through me, and only for New York, where I live.

Offering custom NYC itineraries allows me to streamline the process of creating itineraries, as I know NYC like the back of my hand.

Additionally, I can really create an amazing itinerary based on my in-depth local knowledge, which also helps me feel like I’m creating something super valuable.

On that note, let’s dive into how to launch a paid itinerary planning service step by step.

Step #1: Choose your itinerary format

Will you offer PDF itineraries? Private trip consulting calls? Something else?

Personally, I offer both of those options but price them differently. I also price the PDF itineraries per day and the consults per 45-minute call.

Step #2) Choose your itinerary packages

What will people actually get when they make a booking with you?

I recommend creating a bullet list for this so that you can be super clear with customers and set correct expectations.

You also want to consider how you can make your itineraries feel special. To do this, think about the problems and pain points of your unique audience.

For instance, I know people visiting NYC are nervous about the subway. So I include subway tips and directions between places.

Additionally, I know my audience worries about navigating such a huge city, so I also include a Google Map of their itinerary.

In this step, there are a few other important things to consider and note on your sales page:

• What happens after they book? For instance, maybe they’ll receive an intake form they need to fill out in a welcome email.
• When will they receive their itinerary?
• Do you just do the travel planning, or do you also book experiences for clients?

Let’s talk about that last point for a moment, as it’s very important.

Booking things for clients does mean you can charge more; however, it’s also an added liability.

I actually know someone who once booked their client’s flights wrong—and had to pay out of pocket for new ones!

Personally, I don’t do this for clients, though I do know people who do. Just make sure to weigh the pros and cons.

Step #3) Determine how you’ll keep your business safe

Remember, the future of blogging means we need to think of our blogs as businesses. As creatives, it can be daunting to attempt to understand the legal side of our business; but, it’s incredibly important.

Before I share some advice, please note that I am not a lawyer, but am simply giving you these tips based on my own experience as a business owner.

A few things I do to legally protect my blog and business:

Get set up as a business, such as an LLC or S-Corp. This will help separate your personal assets from your business ones.

Have a Terms of Use Agreement they must agree to. I have my booking software set up so that people must agree to it before they checkout.

Put a disclaimer on the itinerary itself. Mine says “Disclaimer: This itinerary was created to the best of our knowledge and abilities, and is for informational and educational purposes only. NYC Photo Journeys cannot be held liable for any information that is inaccurate or any issues that arise during your trip.”

If you need help drafting your legal pages, here are some legal templates from attorney Lisa Fraley.

While these templates aren’t free, they’re a lot more budget-friendly than meeting with a lawyer—though if you can meet with a lawyer that is always a smart idea.

Step #4) Pinpoint your pricing

Pricing can be one of the hardest things to determine, but one thing I want to make very clear is creating itineraries will take longer than you think it will.

Even if you’re creating itineraries about your home city that you know well, you’ll still be working with clients to create something custom, which takes time.

My suggestion:

Really position yourself as an expert on the area you’ll be creating itineraries for—which can lead to people more easily seeing the value you bring to the table.

I know for my NYC itinerary planning, because people realize that I’m a local and licensed tour guide from my website and they see all of the unique local tips that I provide through my blog, they know I’ll be able to plan a New York itinerary for them that is unique and isn’t something they could easily plan on their own or through a travel agent that sells trips to 101 destinations.

Step #5) Decide on your itinerary planning tech tools

This includes:

Your booking system. What will you use to securely collect payments?

Your itinerary creation tool. If you’ll be accepting automatic bookings, I recommend finding a tool that can handle taking both travel itinerary bookings and secure payments—and that will automatically send onboarding emails to new clients.

A booking calendar. If you’ll be offering private itinerary planning Zoom calls, I also suggest having a tool with a booking calendar to streamline the booking process.

Personally, I use PeekPro as my booking and payment tool. Honestly, it’s really more of a tour booking software; but, since I also offer NYC photo tours it made sense to also host my itinerary creation product here.

You can check that out, though also research other tools that may work for you.

If you’d like to keep things simple, you can always start by having an inquiry form on your site, which you can use a plugin to set up.

This can also work well for those of you covering numerous destinations and who want to screen clients before taking a payment to make sure you can plan the type of trip they’re looking for.

Itinerary creation tool. Finally, you need to choose what tool you’ll use to actually create your travel itineraries.

Personally, I use Google Docs, as I find it easy to format and add links and images; however, I know many people prefer using a graphic design tool like Canva.

If you search “itinerary creation software” loads of different options come up—many of which accept bookings, handle payments, and offer a way to create beautiful itineraries—so do your research.

Step #6) Create your client onboarding process

In this step, you want to think about what happens once a person books with you.

For instance, when people book my NYC itinerary planning service, they’re automatically sent a welcome email that includes an onboarding form they need to fill out.

I also let them know within how many business days they can expect to receive their itinerary once they send in their intake form.

By the way, if you’re not sure what to include in your onboarding form, I’ve shared a copy of mine in my free Travel Blogger Resource Library.

Step #7) Create a marketing strategy for your itinerary service

When it comes to how to sell travel packages, it’s important to map out a strategic marketing plan to get your service seen. A few tips:

Become an expert on your destination. As I shared earlier, the best way to set yourself up for success is to become an expert on the place or places you’re covering.

This way, people come to you when they need help planning a trip to that place–and will be happy to pay a premium rate to work with you.

The best way to become an expert on a place is to constantly share tips about that place through the content you create across your blog, email, social media, and other digital touchpoints.

By doing this, you’ll also naturally have places to promote your itinerary planning.

For instance, along with having a sales page for my NYC itinerary planning in my main website menu, I also share it in all of my relevant blog posts.

And because these blog posts are optimized for SEO and increased site traffic, I’m constantly getting new clients organically; as in, without needing to pay for ads.

Just think about where you have eyes looking at your content, and make sure you’re letting those people know what you offer.

Focus on collaboration. Additionally, don’t forget about the power of collaboration. An easy way to get in front of your target audience quickly is to cross-promote with other creators and brands who share your same audience and who don’t have competing products.

You might also consider creating an affiliate program to reward people for promoting your itinerary planning service. This is a great way to make sales even if you have a small audience, since other people are doing the promoting.

Utilize a travel itinerary marketplace. While I don’t do this anymore, you can utilize the reach of a marketplace like Thatch to help get the word out about your service. This way, you can make money selling vacation packages sooner rather than later.

Spread the word about your travel itinerary service. Now, we could discuss this section on marketing your itinerary planning service for weeks; but one tip I want to leave you with is to really make sure you’re spreading the word about your custom itineraries.

So often, I’ll talk to bloggers who tell me they sell a certain service or digital product, but when I visit their website it’s impossible to find.

Make your products and services clear to people as soon as they visit your website—such as in your main menu—and don’t be afraid to promote these amazing offerings you work so hard on in your regular content.

Bonus tips for selling itineraries

Okay, before we end, I just want to share a few bonus tips:

Use affiliate links where it makes sense. But, also make sure to disclose when you do so. Personally, I only use affiliate links if it’s truly a link I would want to checkout on myself.

Set up partnerships when it makes sense. If you’d prefer to recommend that people book locally instead of through large online booking platforms, reach out to local companies to try to set up partnerships.

Especially if you’re creating itineraries for one specific destination, you’ll likely find yourself recommending many of the same places and experiences over and over again.

Consider if you can offer any checkout upsells. These could be things like expedited service for a fee or a discount on one of your other related products.

This strategy can really help you increase your per-booking profit and more easily monetize your travel blog.

Final thoughts on launching travel planning services

Alright, now I hope you enjoyed this episode on how to sell travel itineraries online.

I hope you feel inspired and empowered to monetize your blog through itinerary planning.

Don’t forget to grab access to the free travel blogging resource library. There are a ton of resources in there on growing your community and increasing your blogging profits.

And of course, make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss future episodes sharing these bite-sized strategies for bloggers who want to turn their blogs into profitable full-time businesses.

Happy blogging!

Itinerary Planning Q&A Replay

Shortly after this episode went live, I hosted a live itinerary planning Q&A on YouTube that answered 15+ questions from the community.

Here is the replay:

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