Your source for news & insights in the experiences industry

Hi Mitch!

Happy Friday, and Happy July! This month will see the single greatest amount of content released to the Tourpreneur community since its beginning, all designed to help make your tour business more profitable. 

Chris, Peter and I have a wealth of surprises in store for you in the coming weeks, beginning with a range of new podcast series (see below), so get ready!

Greetings from Italy, where I'm a digital nomad for the month. The photo above is from a boat cruise earlier this week with two of my nephews. Booking the cruise was a great opportunity to reflect on the difference between a service and an experience, something we spent a lot of time talking about in our last podcast episode.

The lake was beautiful, we enjoyed the swimming, and the guide was very nice and knew interesting facts. But the entire day felt more like a good service provided than an experience. The boat took us to the swimming spot, and took us back, with a friendly guide along the way. Building an experience allows you to price the tour according to a perceived value, and not simply competing for the lowest cost or cleanest boat. In The Experience Economy, Pine and Gilmore talk about the 5 E's that make up an experience, which I think makes a nice framework for you to examine your own tours:

• Enticing: how are you build anticipation before the tour? The morning of the booking, I had to search my inbox for the confirmation to find the location. How much better to receive an email the day of, with the subject: "Your Lake Adventure is just hours away!"
• Entering: how do you mark the official beginning of the experience? The guide could've started with a little gift—a chocolate, or a candy—to mark the beginning of the boat. Like the amuse bouche of a fancy restaurant. Beginning an experience also means beginning a narrative. Set the context of where we are, and hook me into the story of the journey ahead. "Where we're going is an island filled with thousands of years of mystery. It looks so beautiful and innocent, but trust me, it is not..." Now I'm enticed and excited for what lies ahead!
• Engaging: throughout the experience, making an engaging experience means involving the senses, interacting with guests. creating moments of surprise and delight. Not just one-directional information giving, which is what I experienced on this cruise.
• Exiting: how does the experience end? The end is one of the two most important parts of an experience. The end should conclude the narrative, and make the guest feel set up for the next part of their day.
• Extending: what's the call to action to further the relationship? More than just requesting a review, can you continue the storytelling digitally? Visit your website to learn more about the story, or download an audio file of another story from the region, to be played during the drive home?

Experience design means thinking intentionally about every moment of your tour, to make something truly memorable.

-Mitch

Next week we'll start releasing a whole new lineup of podcast series in which you'll hear from a diverse array of perspectives in the industry, beyond just me, Peter and Chris.

These recurring episodes will be focusing on a wide range of topics, from marketing and tour guiding and specific destinations, to diversity, representation, inclusion, accessibility in our industry.

Our first new episode of our Women in Travel series will feature a roundtable conversation on representation in the industry, so stay tuned and make sure you're subscribed to the Tourpreneur podcast!

We have 3 in-person meetups happening in July alone. Make sure to come along and meet fellow Tourpreneurs and potential new business partners!

• July 13th - Boston (6:30pm EDT at The Greatest Bar, 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)

• Should day tour operators compete on price? Alex Bainbridge has some good insight.
• A look at travel booking through content creators. This video interview from Phocuswire helps break down 
• A look around the world at how the return to travel is causing both opportunity and chaos.
• Looking for quality staff? Your commitment to sustainability helps attract better talent. Your company's purpose is a way to set yourself apart as you search for guides, etc. Make sure you tell that story (and walk the walk).
  
• Words matter. Viking drops "cruise" from its name, following the lead of other water-based experience providers seeking to distance themselves from the reputation of the megaships.

• New research shows post-pandemic travelers are embracing mobile and touchless technology for more and more of the customer journey. What does this mean for tour operators?

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

• Advice for how to connect with local hotel concierges
• Passionate discussion around differing cancellation policies for your company and your OTA listings
• The community shares their best advice and feedback for a new Alaska tour operator just getting started.
• How to handle food tour dietary restrictions when the gluten free meal replacement looks more desirable and expensive.

After reading the Sift article titled, ‘What’s Behind the Airlines Mess This Summer’ by Edward Russell, about all the issues travellers are facing due to staffing issues (amongst others but will not go into here), it got me thinking back to a conversation I had a couple of weeks ago with one of the operators I help.

Many operators use paid advertising to market their business to their target demographics, be it on Facebook, Google, Bing or other. From experience, most will focus on keywords or their overall target audience when running these ads, but in these turbulent times, you need to be a lot more nuanced to make sure you get the most out of your ad spend.

For example, if you are running a Facebook campaign targeting, say, a demographic in the UK to visit North America, what is the status of flights currently for that route? How easily can that market get to the target destination? Are flights running? If so, how many?

These are all questions you need to ask yourself as it will impact the effectiveness of your ads.

I have seen ads being targeted towards a destination but, when you dive deeper into the flight data, there are no direct flights, which makes it harder for your demographic to make a decision. This alone can be a significant element to stop someone from travelling to that destination.

If there are direct flights, you might want to think about informing your target audience in your ad messaging that there are direct flights for only X amount so ‘they have no excuse’ not to visit. In the UK for example, flights to parts of Europe are cheaper than a few days’ worth of Starbucks! Play about with the messaging to see what resonates with your audience.

In short, when it comes to paid advertising, don’t just look at your own customer data, Google analytics or who you ‘think’ is your ideal customer. Look at every step of your consumer's purchase and travel journey to see how viable it really is. You may find that doing a small tweak here and there can have a huge impact on your ROI.

Some recent finds to help you learn:

• How to create a more inclusive travel experience: watch the webinar replay or review the slides filled with interesting stats on the global market for LGBTQ+ travel.
• Visual Search and SEO: Moz outlines the opportunities in this space.
• Not feeling productive? The Timecamp blog has dozens of articles on time management and new techniques to try to get a grip on your daily tasks.
  

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