Travel agents

Save Travel Enquiries from WhatsApp to Google Contacts

The situation

Enquiries are highly seasonal and rarely close on first contact. Someone asks about Bali in August and travels in December, or does not travel at all and asks again next year. Every enquiry is a chat, and the chat list is useless as a prospect list.

What goes wrong today

• A good fare on a route appears and you cannot find who asked about it two months ago.
• Enquiries show as raw numbers, so a family of six is indistinguishable from a solo backpacker.
• Past travellers — the most likely repeat buyers you have — are not identifiable as such.
• Passport and booking details are scattered through chat history.
• Seasonal enquiries from last year are gone by the time the season returns.

The workflow

1. 1

   Open WhatsApp Web on a desktop and scroll the chat list

   Only chats rendered into the page can be read, so scroll to the bottom first.

2. 2

   Save the backlog under one prefix

   A prefix like `TRV BACKLOG` keeps the first clear-out reviewable as a group afterwards.

3. 3

   Name the live enquiries by destination and travel month

   Destination and intended travel month are the two things you will search by. Group size is the third, because it changes the quote entirely.

4. 4

   Mark past travellers distinctly

   Someone who has travelled with you before is a different prospect from a cold enquiry. A `PAST` marker makes that visible on caller ID.

5. 5

   Keep documents in the contact, not the chat

   Put the useful reference details in the contact's notes. Keep actual passport scans in whatever secure storage you already use, not in a contact record.

6. 6

   Re-scan before each season

   Duplicate checking means a pre-season scan adds only the enquiries you missed, so it is cheap to repeat.

A naming convention that suits this work

Unknown numbers arrive without names, so they need one. The convention is the cheapest possible CRM, and it works because Google Contacts search matches any part of a name.

What you get

• A fare drop can be matched to the specific people who asked about that destination.
• Caller ID shows the destination, travel month and party size.
• Past travellers are identifiable, which is the cheapest repeat business available.
• Seasonal enquiries survive to the next season instead of being lost.
• The prospect list is in your Google account and survives a phone change.

Where this stops being enough

Said plainly, because finding out later wastes your time:

• No itineraries, quotes, bookings or payments. This organises who to talk to, not the trip.
• No messaging or broadcasts. LeadSync is read-only, and blasting fare offers from a personal number is how numbers get reported.
• Do not store passport or payment details in a contact record. A contact is synced across devices and is the wrong place for sensitive documents.

Free tools that help here