Travel Services

Imagine walking into the lobby of your favorite tanning salon and having the opportunity to select the vacation of your choice. Now, consider those same tanning customers selecting their vacations and making money for you.

This is not just a daydream for many salon owners who have supplemented their incomes with revenue from travel services operated right out of their salons. Why is it so successful? The answer is simple: Americans love to travel. According to the Travel Industry Association of America (TIA), the growth in travel volume, the total number of trips taken by Americans, has outpaced the U.S. population in the past decade. Prior to Sept. 11, 2001, pleasure travel increased 50 percent the past decade, and more than 75 percent of U.S. adults took at least one trip of 100 miles or more away from home for either business or pleasure in the past three years.

According to the Travel Industry Association of America’s (TIA)Domestic Travel Market Report, 2003 Edition baby boomers generate more travel than any other age group in the U.S., registering more than 241 million household trips. Mature travelers (age 55+) took 31 percent of all household trips; Generation X and Y took 26 percent.

Baby boomer travelers are also the most affluent, with 44 percent having an annual income of $75,000 or more, much higher than any other age group. Not surprisingly, baby boomers spend more on their trips than other age groups, averaging $491 per trip, excluding transportation to their destination. Fourteen percent spend $1,000 or more on a trip, excluding cost of transportation.

Baby boomer household trips are also the most likely to include travel for business or convention purposes (24 percent) and air transportation (22 percent). Consequently, their overnight trips are more likely to include a stay in a hotel, motel, or bed and breakfast establishment.

These statistics make for interesting reading, but how can they help your tanning salon make more money? The basic reason tanning salons and travel agencies work so well together is the natural evolution of a cross-marketing concept that has been in existence for a long time—tanning salons and travel companies referring each other’s businesses to customers.

People who are going into tanning salons oftentimes are tanning because they want to achieve a base tan for an upcoming vacation or they have just returned from a trip and want to maintain the tan they received while traveling. Therefore, they already have travel on their mind.

In the past, it has been natural for tanning salons and travel agencies to develop a referral-type system. However, historically, this referral system has been extremely one-sided. The travel agency usually derived revenue through the referrals, but the tanning salon received nothing in return and gave up control of its clientele.

One Washington salon owner agrees, citing that when he opened his tanning salon three years ago, he desperately wanted to include travel; however, settled on a referral system with a local cruise-only travel agency instead.

"It was far from what we envisioned and what we wanted," he says. "The most disappointing part of the relationship is that we made absolutely no money from the partnership. The only positive aspect was that we learned a lot about travel and cruises."

What national recreational service businesses have done is create a system where each individual tanning salon owner also becomes a travel agent. According to experts, one of the most important aspects of introducing travel to the tanning salon is realizing that while there is an affinity between tanning and travel, they are not complementary.

While other products that traditionally are sold in a tanning salon, like lotion and swimwear, have the same seasonality as the core business, travel does not. The travel market is more year-round and less seasonal. By adding a travel agency to the tanning salon, you are basically creating two different markets with one client base, as well as adding another group of potential tanning customers from the clients drawn to the salon by travel opportunities.

Another reason the relationship between a tanning salon and travel group works so well is that many tanning clients are repeat customers, which allows salon owners to continue to touch base with their customers throughout the year. The addition of travel services also can allow current customers to become more involved in your tanning business, as well as bring in new clients who are not tanners.