Step 5. Planning travel agency tasks

Due date planning

Planning due dates is a critical process for the travel agency staff. The employees of the agency should plan their tasks in order to avoid procrastinations, missed tours and lost clients. The way the travel agent plans dates for a travel will orientate other concerned employees of the travel agency and define whether the client will be satisfied with the tour. For example, the guide needs to know a client's name and when this client will arrive at the airport. The travel agent can create a new task "Arrival of the Jessica Albert", set the date of arrival as the task due date and assign the task to the guide. Once the task was assigned, the guide gets notification and watches the task to handle it further. VIP Task Manager allows users to set due dates and plan start/finish dates for the tasks. The travel agent can use this option to set duration of a tour with task start and finish dates.

Priority planning

When planning multiple tasks or actions, the supervisor needs to show which one is the most important, so the employees of the travel agency will know which tasks to begin with. For example, the agency has several late deals for the end of summer and they should be sold out as soon as possible as the season is over. The supervisor can create new tasks for each of the late deals and set high priority. VIP Task Manager helps plan priorities and define the most important and urgent tasks. The software allows to plan tasks with six different priorities, from Lowest up to Urgent. The most important tasks can be marked with Highest or Urgent priorities. The travel agent can see prioritized tasks using filter in Task List view of VIP Task Manager.

Planning by task order

Another way to plan tasks is to put then in order they should be completed. Arrangement of tasks in proper sequence allows to be quickly guided in to-do list and find necessary task by its number. The travel agent can use this way of planning to arrange his task list in strict order. For example, he can define a task template and to describe action plan of how to find and support a client. The template can be as follows:

1. Place an advertisement in:
• newspapers
• journals, magazines
• Internet
2. Create a list of obtained clients
3. Ring round the clients
4. Find out the client favors and preferences
5. Check and sort out available tours
6. Prepare photos, advertising materials for the tours
7. Think over details for the presentation
8. Assign date and time of appointment
9. Conduct appointment
10. Inform Supervisor about the result of the appointment
11. Build a report

The travel agent can use function "Duplicate" in order to copy the template any time he launches new search. For example, it could be useful at the beginning of a new month.

Step 6. Sharing travel agency tasks