Your source for news & insights in the experiences industry

Hi Mitch!

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is improving rapidly. In fact, one of the articles below was written entirely by an incredible AI content writing engine, Jasper. See if you can spot which one! (Answer at the end of the email).

The Customer Journey: A Tale of Two Quesadillas...
I promise this brief story has takeaways for tour operators!

I'm at the beach. Time for lunch. Two Mexican restaurants serving quesadillas. I order a meal at the first one, and for over one hour I wait for it. Every time I check in, the server doesn't have any update on when it'll be ready. After 90 minutes, I ask for a refund.

I go to a second restaurant. Fantastic service, I order and my food comes in 7 minutes. And it looked wonderful (photo on right). But while the presentation was delightful, it was impossible to eat. The plastic utensils they gave me made it impossible to actually cut the tortilla, turning the whole meal into a messy, frustrating salad.

Two takeaways:

• I wasn't in a hurry at the first restaurant. I was on the restaurant's side. What aggravated me wasn't the wait, it was the lack of clear, accurate communication about what to expect given the circumstances.
• The second restaurant suffered from expert blindness. They knew their food was delicious, but they probably haven't eaten it as a customer would for a while. They were blind to the novice's perspective.

Of course this culinary experience made me think of tour operators. Moral of the story? Be a regular customer of your own tours, to truly understand their experience. Earlier this year I took a tour from an operator who didn't realize that their separate email marketing, SMS, restech and waiver services were all sending out pre-departure messages to the guest. And each one looked a little different. Some messages had a logo, some came from the SaaS company's name. Each one followed up then with a review solicitation focused on a different review site. It was at best an inelegant customer journey, at worst, losing raving fans because of a poor utensil experience (to extend the metaphor). The guests didn't mention this, and it never came up in reviews, so they didn't realize it was happening.

Be a customer of your tours means:

• Don't rely on reviews to gauge your customer experience. Personally, I feel compassionate towards restaurants right now, and won't write a poor review, or any review at all. Many people will forget or not care enough to tell you their experience.
• Make a regular calendar item every 3 months to actually go through your booking journey. Don't assume everything is working the way it was 3 months ago. Book through your OTA partners if you use them. Ask critical questions about every stage of the booking experience, and every communication you receive.
• Don't simply ask is this information accurate, but also: How do I feel receiving this message? Am I telling the story of my brand at every point? Are these communications written in our company's voice?

-Mitch

Join the indie Travel team hosting Tourpreneur's next two in-person Shindigs in Boston and Toronto! And join a TMA-sponsored London event with Peter and Chris in attendance.

• July 13th - Boston (hosted by Janice Sousa of indie Travel)
• July 20th - Toronto (Janice Sousa of indie Travel)
• July 28th - London (Peter Syme and Chris Torres, sponsored by TMA)
• August 10th - Seattle (Melissa Philips-Hagedorn)
• September 22 - Washington, D.C. (Peter Syme)

• Europe: "Summer will be Monstrous"
• Half of the biggest tourism economies close to full travel recovery.
• An old man rants that teenagers today just aren't behaving the way he wants them to at historic sites. I wish this poor article made reference to the millions of students who engage deeply each year with history through the powerful facilitation of an excellent guide or tour manager.
• Chris Torres: What I Learned from Running a Non Profit OTA 
  
• The young, beautiful and so Instagrammable: One tour operator's way to capture the millennials. An insight into photography tours today; one excellent point: photography tours can teach travelers to take not more photos but more meaningful ones.
• $10,000 is on offer from ASTA, for their Entrepreneur of the Year awards
• Speaking of awards, Peek CEO Ruzwana Bashir wins EY's Entrepreneur of the Year - congratulations from the Tourpreneur team!
• Booking.com research: Travel remains challenging for LGBTQ consumers
• The Current State of influencer marketing. Lots of good nuggets in this extensive report.

This week I have been travelling around southern Scotland and northern England in my van, experiencing the best of the UK heatwave and local tourism offerings. Another reminder is that local travel can inspire even after a lifetime of travelling the world. 

During several calls with tourism businesses, I got various answers to this question: why do guests buy from you? None of them mentioned what I consider essential to marketing and selling well.  

The underlying reason guests buy anything, including your tour or experience, is psychological tension. Guests feel tension between what they currently are experiencing and what they want to experience. A guest has a current reality that they are living in, but in their mind, they have a desired reality they want, because they

imagine life would be better than their current reality by purchasing a tour or experience you offer. Guests buy experiences and tours to resolve this psychological tension.

A tour operator who pays for a coach to help with their business does so because they feel psychological tension between the tour operation they currently have and the tour operations they imagine having in the future. They might have tour operations that are good by industry standards, but they feel chained to them. They think that it’s a bit too much hard work and they are the one who has to make every sale. They meet other tour operators who have just been on a long international holiday with their families. The dissatisfaction builds up into psychological tension. This tension drives them to buy something that might help resolve it. 

You have all had guests who focused on the price or payment terms or cancellation policy, and all these things are essential. Still, they often conceal the underlying psychological tension at the true heart of guest purchase decisions.  

The more you as tour operators understand this underlying tension, the easier it is to make sales. Experience providers that are clear about the tension they resolve for guests create better marketing materials, charge better prices, have more effective sales communication and deliver better guest experiences. Understanding this tension in your potential guests is essential if you want to succeed in building an exceptional tour operation. 

Pain and dissatisfaction is a form of tension. You want something to stop or change. A different type of tension is desire or longing, which comes from wanting something you do not have but want. We have all been angry over the last two years at certain times, which comes from something not working the way it should. The travel industry springs to mind!

In short, every time a guest buys from you, it is an attempt to close this psychological gap between current reality and a desired, better future.

-Pete

Our Facebook group of nearly 4,000 operators is the industry's water cooler. Over a dozen new discussion threads every day.

• Multi-day operators try to figure out what to do about uncertainty surrounding flights.
• An incredibly rude and disrespectful group leaves a 5-star raving review. And the reverse happens. Operators discuss.
• Support and love and tons of insight given as an operator deals with the disappointment of a postponed event. The growing pains of being a tourpreneur.

Social shopping is already growing at an incredible rate. A recent study by Forrester found that social commerce will be a $29 billion industry by the end of 2022. That's a huge increase from the $2.3 billion it was worth in 2017. So what's driving this growth?

There are a few factors at play. First, social media platforms are more popular than ever before. According to Pew Research, 88% of millennials use Facebook, and 71% of Gen Zers use Instagram. These platforms provide the perfect platform for shopping, with easy-to-use features like buy buttons and product galleries.

Second, retailers are increasingly focusing on social commerce. In fact, a recent study by Shopify found that 78% of retailers plan to increase their investment in social media in the next year. This is because social commerce is a great way to reach new customers and build relationships with existing customers.

Finally, consumers are embracing social shopping. A study by Social Media Today found that 66% of consumers have made a purchase as a result of seeing something they liked on social media. Social shopping is convenient, easy and fun, and it's quickly becoming one of the most popular ways to shop.

TikTok and E-Commerce

TikTok, the popular social media app, has announced a new partnership with Shopify, the leading e-commerce platform. The partnership will allow Shopify merchants to sell their products directly on TikTok, and it will also allow TikTok users to buy products directly from merchants.

This is a huge development for both companies. For Shopify, it means that they can now reach millions of new customers who are using TikTok. For TikTok, it means that they can now offer a convenient and easy way for users to buy products from merchants.

Social Media Today found that more than 60% of TikTok users are interested in buying products through the app. This is a huge opportunity for both companies, and it's only going to continue to grow in the future.

So what does this all mean for the future of shopping, and tour operators?

Social commerce is here to stay, and it's only going to continue to grow. We have seen how successful this has been in China with WeChat and now the Western platforms are playing catch-up. Operators need to start investigating this opportunity if they want to increase the direct channels they can sell experiences through.

• How to Create Wow Moments: I am interviewed by Claire Bown of The Art Engager Podcast
• The "New You" Business: a great follow-up article by Joe Pine et al on the Transformation Economy
• As you think about staffing and management and empowerment: The Importance of Role Models for Women in Business
• Great insights for your business: The Best Questions to ask about your business.
• Your SEO results looking very different recently? You may have been affected by Google's May Core Update

Quiz answer: Chris's article was generated entirely by AI, with a few altered words to apply to operators. While not perfect, it can go a long way to creating base content for you to drive more direct sales.

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