This is a working checklist for tailor-made travel consultants. Take it, change it, use it. There’s nothing to sign up for and nothing to reply to.
Why a first reply is worth checking
The slow part of an enquiry isn’t writing the first reply. It’s the round trip afterwards.
A consultant reads an enquiry, writes a warm and well-judged response, and sends it. Two days later the client answers, and only then does it become clear that nobody asked whether the dates could move, or whether the budget included flights. So there’s another email. Then another. By the time there’s enough to quote, a week has gone and the client has been quoted twice by someone else.
Nothing was written badly. The reply just went out incomplete.
That’s why the check below is about what the reply contains, not how it reads. Writing quality is already the part you’re good at.
The check
Before a first reply goes out, these should either be known or explicitly asked for in that reply.
A. The party
- Number of adults
- Number of children, with ages — ages change room configuration, pricing and what’s suitable
- Anyone with mobility, medical or accessibility needs
- Whether the group is travelling together throughout, or joining and leaving at different points
B. The dates
- Departure date, or the month
- Number of nights
- How fixed the dates are — “exactly these dates” and “roughly September” are two different jobs
- Anything immovable inside the trip (a wedding, an event, a connecting cruise)
C. The money
- A budget range, not a single figure
- Per person or total — the most common ambiguity, and the most expensive one
- Whether it includes international flights
- Whether it includes anything already booked
D. The shape of the trip
- Departure city
- Accommodation standard they have in mind
- What the trip is for — first visit, anniversary, a specific interest
- What they don’t want: long drives, early starts, group tours, a dietary requirement
E. The decision
- When they need to decide by
- Whether anything is already booked or held
- Whether they’re speaking to anyone else about it
- Where the enquiry came from, and whether you’ve dealt with them before
The rule that makes it work
If anything in A, B or C is missing, the job of the first reply is to ask for it — not to quote.
That sounds obvious written down. In practice the pull is toward showing willing by putting numbers in front of the client early, and that’s exactly where the re-asking comes from.
D and E can be missing without stopping you. They change how well you sell, not whether you can quote.
What must not be handed to a tool
If you do put drafting assistance in front of this, keep these on your side of the line:
- Any number. Rates, totals, conversions, deposits. A wrong sentence is visible; a wrong number is not. Every figure that goes to a client should come from your own rate sheet, not from something that generated it.
- Availability, and any statement that reads as holding something
- The send button
- An unhappy client. Those don’t get a drafted reply. They go straight to a person.
The checking side is where this kind of tool actually earns its place. Producing text quickly was never the bottleneck.
How to tell whether it’s working
Don’t measure the quality of the replies. Measure this:
Out of the last twenty enquiries, how many needed a second round trip before you could quote?
Count it for a fortnight before changing anything, then count it again. If the number doesn’t fall, the checklist isn’t the problem and you should stop using it.
What this doesn’t do
It doesn’t help with quotes or itineraries. It won’t tell you whether an enquiry is worth pursuing. And it assumes you already know your product — it’s a check on completeness, not on judgement.
Written by Hirotoshi Yamaguchi, a sole trader on the Gold Coast (ABN 64 998 187 645) who works with small businesses on AI operations. If it’s useful, it’s yours to keep.
Free repetitive work review
Name the three tasks that eat the most time and you get back a single page: what can be systemised, what should stay a human decision, and the first step worth taking. No data required, no video calls.
Guardrail Ops — Hirotoshi Yamaguchi, Gold Coast QLD. Get in touch