How to Use Digital Signage in Your Travel Agency

The travel agency is far from dead - in fact, stats suggest that the high street travel agent is seeing a significant resurgence. With the boom in travel, post-COVID, more of us than ever want to head off to explore the world, but not all of us have the time to hunt down the best deals.

When it comes to enticing potential customers with your best package deals, cheapest flight packages and tempting luxury hotel offers, the old poster in the window is not the tool you need on your side.

Like many industries, travel agencies are discovering the power of digital signage to showcase your latest vacation packages. And, as you're about to see, there are some great reasons for this...

Digital signage in your travel agency

While your local shopping mall will likely be wall to wall digital signage, travel agencies haven't been as fast to embrace the screen. And considering the visual and dynamic nature of travel, this seems strange. Whether it's showcasing the best of your all-inclusive packages or sharing stunning images from the cruise ship deck, there are lots of reasons to use travel agency digital signage.

1. Easy content updates

Any travel agent will tell you that deals change fast - but paper posters don't. Digital signage allows you to quickly share updates such as last minute discounts, limited deals on destination packages, or simple price changes - all without needing to reprint a thing.

Using digital signage you can quickly update whole slides or important details and then relaunch that content in minutes. No more apologizing for outdated promotions.

With ScreenCloud, you could use our Canva integration to easily import updated content in real time. Or, if you need it done fast, our QuickPost app is designed to create professional looking digital signage displays in minutes.

2. Localize your deals

Travel agencies with multiple locations often have unique deals, with packages leaving from local airports, or local breaks being promoted. If you're managing a chain of travel agencies, you can both manage the content centrally, and give local permissions for local branches to update their own content.

No need to rely on one person to refesh the content, add granular permissions for local managers to promote what they think will work locally.

3. Repurposing content from socials and review sites

One of the main sticking points for many businesses is the time it takes to create fresh content for digital signage. But there are so many integrations that you need never run out of fresh images and content to display.

For example, you could stream content from:

• Your Instagram account - Repurposing your latest posts on screen.
• Your Facebook account - Share deals, reviews, testimonials and more directly from your business Facebook page.
• Hotel review sites - Share ratings from sites such as TripAdvisor, Yelp and many more.
• Google reviews - Highlight your online rating on Google and share your latest feedback and testimonials.
• YoutTube channel - Create your own playlist channel in YouTube to stream hotel reviews or content of your choice...

This is just a small handful of ideas for repurposing content to share on your travel agency digital signage.

Types of digital signage content to share in your travel agency

If you’re thinking, hey that sounds great, but you’re still wondering exactly what you can show on screen, here are a few ideas that other travel agents are using in their store windows.

1. Share information

One of the easiest ways to start your content flow (even when you don’t have any) is to share general information that’s going to make people stop and linger near your screens.

This could be:

• Weather - perhaps you share the weather in top destinations to make your audience wonder what it might be like to step out into that sun….
• Opening times - use Noticeboard app to easily create signs for your open times, giving you more flexibility if and when you need to change them.
• World clock - a simple way to share timezones from across the world.
• Currency - easily display the latest currency rates.

2. Visuals

Large, high-resolution images and videos attract attention. According to studies, digital media in public venues reaches more customers than videos on the Internet or Facebook. More importantly, 8/10 customers have entered a store because of a digital sign catching their interest.

This is a powerful reason to set up your best photos and videos to capture the attention of all passing by. Apps that help make this simple include Dropbox Gallery, for adding any images you have saved to your digital signage screens and video apps such as Vimeo and YouTube, for sharing video playlists.

3. Reviews and feedback

Online, it’s likely most customers are going to check out TripAdvisor reviews, so why not let them do the same in store? Using the TripAdvisor app you can select a hotel or location and choose a star-rating of reviews to show.

If you have specific customer testimonials, or feedback from vacations, you can also easily set these up to display using Quote app.

How to set up a digital signage display for your travel agency

Now you know which content to use, it’s time to set things up. Here, we take you on quick spin of the three areas required to set up your easy-to-use digital signage solution.

1. Which screen?

For digital signage, you can technically use any screen including consumer grade TV screens. However, we do recommend using a more hard wearing professional screen for a number of reasons such as:

• Professional screens are designed to display content all day for long periods of time
• Better visibility in direct sunlight
• Designed with uses such as digital signage in mind

You might find that smart TVs powered by Samsung Tizen, Sony Bravia or LG webOS offer an easy way to connect. And you can download the ScreenCloud app for all of these devices. But we recommend using made-for-purpose digital signage media players to connect your screens.

Using a device like our own PIXI player means you can quickly and easily setup and scale, you get better control and security and a device designed to function 24/7.

Check out our recommended screens and media players in our hardware page.

2. Digital signage software

Once you have your hardware setup, downloading your software is easy. Head to one of the App Stores below and search “ScreenCloud” (unless you're using our PIXI or P1 Pro products which are ready to go).

• Chrome Web Store
• Android App Store
• Amazon App Store
• iOS App Store

Once the app is downloaded you’ll need to enter a pairing code. Visit ScreenCloud from your laptop or desktop and set up an account, with a 14-day free trial.

Then select “Add Screen” to enter your pairing code and link your account with your screen. That’s it folks, now you can manage content and send it to your screen ready to play.

3. Apps and choosing content

ScreenCloud has two primary options for setting up content. First up, you can use content you already have and love. This could be videos, images or anything you’ve created.

ScreenCloud supports file types such as jpeg, gif and pngs as well as Office and iWorks formats so you won’t need to do anything other than click ‘upload’.

Secondly, you can use one of the many apps we have available in the  ScreenCloud App Store. As mentioned above, there’s a huge variety to choose from that will help you achieve your content goals, fast.

Get started

Travel agencies are one of the most visible retail presences, and with such an appealing product its a shame to remain hidden amongst paper posters. Digital signage can be an incredible way to bring your shopfront to life, build that bigger sense of FOMO and draw more potential customers into your agency.

Want to find out how digital signage can help your travel agency?

Book a demo or try ScreenCloud for free today!