:: Religious Travel ::

Travel Ministry Leaders

Leading others on
life-changing travel experiences

How to build a thriving Travel Ministry

Congratulations! You have made the decision to launch a travel program.
Now, let's help build you a thriving ministry!

Where to begin? First, talk to your pastor or religious leader. Ask for their support, approval and blessing of the new travel program. Once they are onboard, it's relatively smooth sailing from here on out. Second, unless it's you, find someone who can serve as the official travel ministry leader (or leaders). You might ask your faith community leader to make an announcement about the new program and ask for volunteers to step forward.

Next, develop a full calendar year of events. Activities can range from overseas holy land journeys to missionary trips to guest speaker travel nights (e.g., travel agent specializing in faith vacations) to sharing travel experiences. You might consider offering monthly events with maybe one big annual trip per year.

Speaking of trips, you will want to find a good travel agent, tour operator, or travel company that can service your group travel needs. Asking fellow members for recommended travel professionals and searching the WRTA Online Directory are the two best places to begin.

After all this you should be ready to conduct a survey. Poll your faith community and find out where and what types of trips they most often embark on each year. Do many of them travel overseas? Take cruises? Visit attractions? Go skiing or hiking? Whatever their preferences, offer at least one or more annual vacations for the entire faith community or organization.

Once you've designed the list of travel ministry activities for the year including the big trip (or trips), it's time to publicize it. How can you most effectively promote it? That's our next topic.

Top 10 keys to promoting your trips

Unless you are a seasoned pro at sales and marketing, the task of promoting a trip to your fellow members can feel overwhelming at first. No worries though – just relax for two reasons. First, as travel is a popular conversation topic you'll find that many people are receptive to hearing about a faith community-sponsored trip.

Second, below are 10 easy steps for promoting your trip which you can implement. By following these strategies, you will be well on your way to selling out your trip.

1. Word of Mouth: Nothing almost works better than word of mouth, especially in a faith community or religious group setting. Best yet, it costs nothing.

2. Flyers: After receiving approval from your pastor or religious leader, place the vacation flyers in the bulletin, hand them out after services, and give copies to key leaders (i.e. leader of men's ministry, women's ministry, etc.).

3. Posters: Hang posters everywhere about the trip around.

4. Phone calls: Conduct a calling campaign to fellow members.

5. Spiritual Leader Joins the Trip: Get your pastor or religious leader to serve as spiritual director; this always increases interest in the trip.

6. Religious Leader Makes the Announcement: Whether the religious leader can make the trip or not, still have this person make an announcement about the trip to the faith community (i.e. at the conclusion of religious services).

7. Email: Send out a blast email to members or to those on a select list that may be receptive to hearing about the trip.

8. Web page: Design a Web page about the trip and place it on the “travel ministry” section of the faith community's Web site.

9. Travel Show: Host a travel show after services about the trip.

10. Special Groups, Committees, or Events: Advise the leaders of fellow ministries about the trip and ask them to promote it at their meetings.