Your source for news & insights in the experiences industry

Hi !

Things are in fast motion at Tourpreneur. Next week we have our first meetup in New York City. Our first podcast episode will launch since Shane left. We have a lot of news and insights below.

How does your tour start?

I'm currently writing this week's newsletter from beautiful Zion National Park (above). For nearly two months now I've been traveling the globe meeting tour operators, taking tours, training guides and also working as a "mystery shopper," analyzing experiences as I take them.

One theme has has stood out: many tour beginnings could be better. Here are some common problems I've experienced:

• Not creating a bond at the beginning. Guests ultimately forget the information you shared, but they remember how you made them feel. My favorite moment of all the tours I've taken was when the guide took time before the tour began to go around to each guest group, look them in the eye, ask where they're from, make a little personal banter, and welcome them to the city.
• No brand introduction. In this age of guests booking through hundreds of different channels, make sure your guide shares the story of your company and why the love working for you, and what makes your company special. Even if it's just one sentence. At the end of many tours I casually asked others if they remembered the name of the tour company, and they couldn't.
• Expert blindness. I experienced a guide who started directly into her historical commentary, without explaining what neighborhood we were in, asking a question about us as a group, or even sharing what her name was.
• Not laying out the overall tour expectations. Similar to expert blindness, don't forget that many guests have Tourist Brain: they're not great at remembering why they're on your tour, how long it is, what it's going to cover, when it's ending. You remember it because you do the tour every day, but your guests need reminding.
• Busy or Confusing meeting spots. Some of the places I was asked to meet had several tours from different companies starting in the same spot. Nobody knew which tour was theirs. On one occasion, three guides were all chatting with each other until the tour starts, not noticing the confused guests. The guide should be visible—do you need to give them a branded tote bag? Is the identifying item in the confirmation instructions? One guide started his tour by saying he hated the vest he had to wear, and asked if he could take it off. The group said yes, and then 3 people arrived late and couldn't find the right tour. Figure out what works for your guides, and design a tour start that works for your guests.

In the end, your tour really has two beginnings:

• The moment the guest arrives. The guide is in Friend Mode, creating a small sense of welcome when someone shows up.  It feels good to know you're in the right place. One company gave the guide little pieces of chocolate as each guest arrived.
• The official tour start. Now the guide is in Leader mode. Time to mark a real beginning, and creating a group bond, not individual. Raise your voice, and raise the energy! I witnessed many tours that causally "drift" into the official start, and saw guests still talking amongst each other not realizing it was now tour time. A great ghost tour I took started with a bell ringing, another one started with the lighting of a lantern, at which point the guide entered into their character. Marking the beginning and starting with a bond can go a long way to improving the rest of the experience! (The second photo above makes the meeting spot very easy to spot!)

-Mitch

Our in-person Shindigs kick off next week, Tuesday, June 14, starting at 6:30pm.

Come meet tour operators, professional solo guides, and other travel professionals.

Recently tour operators have been asking me: "Pete, if you were still an operator, what would you focus on just now?"

We are in crazy confusing times, coming out of Covid, pent up demand but super stormy economic clouds gathering and a war that has potential for massive disruption. Taking all that into account, I would do the following five things in order.

1. The highest-leverage way to grow your tour operator business faster is to double down. Focus on what is working: a sales channel, customer profile, or a specific market. Now is a time to double down on what is working well. Specifically, I would double down on what works best for each of these:

a) Result focused marketing.
b) Cashflow.
c) Profitability.

2. Regarding the economy, I see reduced risk in the major markets of North America and Europe due to pent up demand and enough savings to keep the current travel bubble inflated for this summer. Longer-term, I see increased risk. If it were me, I would be dealing with this by 100%, making sure I was generating positive cash flow from my operations, controlling costs and preserving capital until we see what 2023 looks like.

3. Spend time making sure my experiences are unique and moving them up the experience economy ladder. Do not become a commodity unless you are in the massive volume game.

4. Content, more of it, better quality, involving guests and guides. Better content allows for higher price points.

5. Communication strategies. Focusing on how I can communicate with the potential guest in real time on whatever channel they want to talk on. Speed wins in this always-connected world.

If you run a multi-day business or focus on group and corporate experiences, speaking to your potential customers is still the best way to close sales and even upsell new products. Because of the higher ticket price for many of these types of experiences, most potential customers want to feel assured that you’re capable of delivering and exceeding their expectations. Because of this, consumers prefer direct contact with the operator.

One common way you can drive leads and enquiries is to use Calendly so your customers can schedule a meeting with you and your team directly. However, the details you received from Calendly were minimal...until now.

Calendly has launched a new feature called ‘Routing Forms’, which is a system that allows you to ask for details to help you conduct the call faster and know ahead of time what they are looking for.

Group sizes, budget, dietary requirements, travel dates, etc, can all be asked before they schedule a call. What this also does is add a layer of qualification to that lead, as they are more likely to appear in the scheduled call if they took the time to answer your questions.

If you wish to see how this works and how to set-up, please do follow my video guide here.

Also look out for this and more strategies in my upcoming Tourpreneur Sprint on marketing for multi-day and custom products!

Great content marketing is a fantastic way to drive direct sales. But it can be hard to get good advice and inspiration. We wanted to highlight two lesser-used tools:

• Twitter: Twitter isn't just a cess pool of short-form political rants. It's also filled with thought leaders putting out excellent content as longer Twitter Threads, Semrush has released this fantastic list of its Top 100 Content Marketing Influencers - and all their twitter handles.
• Pinterest: are you searching for blog article ideas? Lead magnet inspiration? What people are doing to create travel guides, including maps and sample itineraries? Logo design? Even business plan guidelines? Pinterest provides you thousands of great examples for anything, as easy to consume visual infographics.

• Mayhem: Shortages of flights, rental cars, staff... The U.S., UK and European travel infrastructure is not prepared for this summer.
  
• Book your hotel on Instagram? The travel startup TripScout keeps raising money and innovating. Bigger picture: as other startups like Hopper transform mobile-only travel booking, will Meta create the western version of WeChat, keeping the user in one place for everything?
• The Adventure Travel Trade Association (ATTA) has released its annual State of the Industry Snapshot Report. (requires free account signup)
• Skift interviews industry giant TUI Musement's new CEO. Takeaway: Is TUI Musement demonstrating what GYG originals would like to be but struggling to make happen?
• If you're looking for travel trends, airport volumes are a good place to look. OAG compares airport passenger volumes from 2019 to 2022.
• LGBTQ+ travelers don't look for badges and certifications, they rely on word of mouth to decide what kinds of destinations, accommodation and travel experiences are safe.
• The SEO giant Ahrefs revealed their secret project to create a search engine that rewards content creators. “Creators who make search results possible deserve to receive payments for their work. We saw how YouTube’s profit-sharing model made the whole video-making industry thrive. Splitting advertising profits 90/10 with content authors, we want to give a push towards treating talent fairly in the search industry,” says Ahrefs founder and CEO, Dmytro Gerasymenko

Our Facebook group of 3,600+ operators is the industry's water cooler. Over a dozen new discussion threads every day.

• The Great OTA Debate: my editorial last week on whether Headout's unique business model among OTAs is good for small tour operators provoked a response from Christian Watts of Magpie, and a lot of subsequent group discussion (including my response to Christian).
• Jason got lots of advice about wether and how to create an outbound sales strategy.
• Stefka stirred good discussion about how to create demand for off-the-beaten-path destinations in your region.
• Carolyn asked about best practices and strategies for managing social media on your own and got 37 pieces of advice!
• Matt asked about how to manage excellent guides who want to please guests by going over allotted budgets.

Tourpreneur exsts because of you, and for you. So don't be a stranger if you need help, want to share your experience on the podcast, or connect for some other reason.

Be well,

Mitch, Chris & Peter