How to 'bullet proof' your tour business.

If you’re like me you’ve been keeping a pretty close eye on the spread of the Coronavirus over the last few month.

Because as a tour operator (especially if you’re one that relies heavily on inbound visitors from travel markets such as mainland China) it has the potential to decimate your business.

Coronavirus brings back memories of my first few years as a tour business owner. 

 I started up at a time when global travel was still recovering from the outbreak of SARS and just a few months before the Global Financial Crisis took hold. Then within a year we saw the outbreak of Swine Flu, plus ‘once in a generation’ bush fires in Melbourne’s surrounds...and a US dollar that lost a ton of value and resulted in bookings from the USA almost completely drying up - our number one visitor market. 

 It was a tough time to be starting a tour business - though at the time I had no idea how tough it was as I had never known it any other way. I just thought that these were the kind of challenges you needed to overcome if you wanted to succeed.

 On reflection, although it was a pretty tough time - and pretty stressful and exhausting - it was the best possible initiation to ‘business owner’ I could have hoped for.

I needed to hustle, to find lots of different types of customers, to customize tours to appeal to different markets, to work out how to distribute my tours in more places, to get creative and to implement ideas. I had to scale... or I would have been doomed. 

I had to immediately get to work building a resilient business with plenty of different types of revenue streams and customers so that when one or more sources of tour bookings dried up, I could shift focus elsewhere to a revenue stream that was performing and work on growing that stream.

 So whether you’re holding your breath right now to see how the spread of Coronavirus is going affect your tour or activity...or you’re comfortable that you won’t be impacted…

 I reckon, as a tour or activity business owner, you should be thinking deeply about how you’re going to build a healthier and more resilient tour business, with a variety of different customers for whom you may or may not be customising an experience, with a bigger mix of distribution channels.

 Because you just don’t know what’s around the corner that could be completely beyond your control.

 If you’ve got all of your eggs in one or two baskets right now then I would definitely be making it a priority to do something about that and start thinking about how to drive bookings from more places.

Why? 

 Here are 4 big reasons:

#1 You may have a huge reliance on one Online Travel Agent, or one Inbound Tour Operator or Travel Wholesaler...but guess what? Businesses can and do collapse. Imagine if that happened to your biggest supplier of bookings and literally overnight the tap was turned off and bookings dried up completely (not to mention a whole bunch of forward bookings were cancelled)

 #2 If you’re selling a lot of tours via online channels, algorithms can and do change and you might wake up one day and find the visibility and positioning of your tours has completely changed overnight if a distributor decided to change the way they do things.

 #3 International travel markets can be affected for many different reasons (economic, political, environmental) and visitors from one country or region could dry up almost overnight (not ideal if this is your number one source of customers). If this happens then you definitely want to be producing bookings through other channels and from different markets.

 #4 Different channels and different travel market have different peak and slow periods. This helps to combat seasonality. Take for example the Singaporean market, who love to visit southern Australia through June and July (right out of peak season) and get a dose of winter weather (a novelty for them). Visitors from India and from the Gulf Countries love to travel ‘off peak’ as well.

Another great example is the Corporate market. The needs of the corporate market run through all 12 months of the year (company Christmas experiences, team building days, end of quarter team rewards, pre and post conference tours and events…). This adds an awesome new dimension to a tour or activity business that’s heavily reliant on a short peak season.

So here are some ideas that you could adopt to grow your business by exploring different markets and different booking channels offline:

1.        Hotel concierges

 Hotel concierges were a booking channel that worked really well for me in the early stages of my business. The relationships I built and the subsequent bookings really got that fly wheel spinning and the cash register ringing quickly when I was starting out.

 At the time, I had no marketing budget for memberships, brochure inclusions, SEO or web design or improvements. I couldn’t afford to wait months to start getting traction with Travel Partners or OTA’s. But what I did have was time, lots of energy - and I was desperate to succeed.

 So how did I start generating booking via Hotel Concierges? I worked really hard to build awesome personal relationships. 

 I kept showing up. I listened and I learned.

 Because as we grew into a more established business - a tip i can offer you here is that hotel concierges are incredibly loyal. 

They like to have their ‘guy’ or ‘girl’. Things like regular email banter, sharing of on tour images, inviting to industry events, giving a 'heads up' on cool things going on in town, fresh and regular personal messages to show you care and see them as a friend more than just a sales channel...these kind of things go a long way to ensuring a concierge is loyal to you

 So here’s what I learned about growing sales via hotel concierges…

• Make their life easy. When the phone rings, the answer should always be ‘yes’. They’re super busy people with lots of customers with high expectations often standing right in front of them whilst a concierge speaks with you, demanding they deliver.
• But If you just can’t do it, help the concierge come up with another solution. Shift the focus to what you can do to help. They’ll appreciate and remember your effort to help them find a solution.
• Remember that most hotels are different. It’s important that you learn about their internal procedures. How do they work? Don’t make assumptions about them or their hotel guests. What do you need to do differently to win their support? How does their booking and payment process work? I would avoid telling a concierge how things work in your business and what they need to do to fit in. Go about it in reverse.
• Make a concierge feel special. An attitude like ‘I’m only doing this for you’ is going to go a long way to winning their support.
• Be consistent and reliable with your booking incentives

2.        Office building concierges

In many cities around the world, we are seeing the ‘concierge’ springing up in the marbled lobbies of city office blocks - in addition to exclusive hotels. 

In office buildings in cities all over the world, the days of an unattended desk, and a floor directory on the wall are gone and an upmarket hotel lobby, complete with hotel-trained staff is becoming the norm.

 This presents a wonderful opportunity for tour and activity operators to drive all kinds of business (weekend social tours and events, visiting family activities, company reward and recognition days, team building, Christmas events and more) 

Why couldn’t you customise something specifically for that office building and promote it through the concierge? Then organise a familiarisation trip for company decisions makers - and the office building concierge team to see first hand how great you are!

Check out the team at https://firstcontact.co/ to get a sense of what kind of services an office building concierge team provides - and how you might partner with them.

3. Local tours/activities that offer a different experience to the same market or markets

What kind of tour or activity within your destination would share your customers and compliment what you offer?

Pull together a list and start viewing these as potential collaborators, rather than competitors

For example, if you run a foodie walking tour, you might reach out to the operator of a lanes and arcades walking tour, a boutique brewery tour, a sommelier-led experience or a cocktail experience.

If you run bike tours, you might reach out to a kayak experience.

 Or, if you run SUP tours, is there an operator in your destination running sailing adventures, or surf lessons?

 Ideally reach out to tours or activities with a similar theme or style to yours at a similar price point.

 Get some dialogue going. To make sure you’re both a good fit you might want to ask a few questions like:

• What kind of customers are taking their tour?
• Which international markets do they appeal to and are generating bookings from? 
• Are they having success with specific interstate and intrastate market segments? 
• What's been working? What's not? 
• What kind of trends are they seeing? 
• Are there emerging markets in which they are getting traction?

 You'll be surprised how many of your fellow tour and activity operators would be more than happy to have a chat with you and share their experience and insights and explore a collaboration. 

 There are many great examples of such initiatives all over the world. 

 One such is: https://experiencevancouvergroup.com/

  These guys are a great example of local operator collaboration. Five locally-owned tourism businesses - all with an impressive collection of five star Trip Advisor reviews and all with a strong belief in each other’s product.

This is one of the best examples of a collaboration I’ve seen and has enabled all 5 to grow their businesses significantly.  

 They have common goals - and have shared their marketing and promotion costs to build the ‘Experience Vancouver Group’ platform, which has provided them with far greater reach. 

 They are now playing a bigger game.

 What’s stopping you doing something similar in your destination?

<<Quick break from the article everybody... 

If you're enjoying the article, I'm sure you'd love to get your hands on my 'Drag N' Drop Operations Manual.

I built out this manual at a time when were doing around $200k annual revenue and it was still our ‘systems and processes bible’ 6 years later when we had 10 x our revenue to $2 million + annually - and we sold the business. You’ll be able to literally drop this template into your tour business, drag in the processes you’ve already built out…and create new ones based on the example ones you’ll see in the manual. It's a comprehensive resource that'll help you scale up fast.

Back to the article>>

4.        Other tour operators - similar tour to yours in a different destination

 Where are your customers going after they leave you? 

 Where are they going next? 

 Reach out to other tour operators offering a similar kind of tour to yours in these destinations. 

 For example: If you’re running a 10 pax foodie walking tour in Melbourne, Australia that retails at $179 per person, reach out to operators running similar tours in major destinations in Auckland, New Zealand, or in Sydney,Tasmania, or Perth.

 My ideal customer was a 45-65 American couple on a first time, 3 week Australia/New Zealand trip and most customers had a very similar itinerary. Do you have a pretty good idea of the travel itinerary of your ideal customer?

 If so, you should be collaborating with a group of tour/activity operators in these destinations to increase sales. 

 By reaching out, these fellow tour operators will no doubt be grateful for the support, for your efforts to build a like-minded community - and for the chance to learn from you as well. 

 Share your insights:

• Which visitor markets are hot? 
• Which ones have dropped off? 
• Which markets are spending? 
• What are customers wanting? 
• What’s working? 
• What’s not?
• What patterns are you seeing with enquiries and with forward booking?

So what could this collaboration look like? 

 You can go about it in plenty of different ways...but the key is to be ultra-professional about it. You don’t want a ‘wishy washy’ “Hey we should send each other some customers” kind of approach.

That never works.

 You need to document your idea for a collaboration with a considered proposal, with goals and targets, clear responsibilities, practical sales and operations processes and regular check ins to review. 

 Why don’t you be the one to get something going?

 5.        Travel partners

 Why should you consider selling your tours through carefully selected global travel agents, Travel Wholesalers, Destination Management Companies and Inbound Tour Operators?

 The international exposure you’ll receive for your tours or activities is next level.

The scope that re-sellers have often goes far beyond the reach of a single tour or activity operator. Good travel partners take part in multiple international trade shows, workshops and sales calls every year.

 When they’re out there doing deals, meeting potential partners, pitching themselves and building relationships, they’re not only talking about their business.

 They’re pitching the experiences they use — and they’re using their tourism expertise and experience to pitch your company to the right international travel partners that will love what you have to offer.

 Guys, if you are paying a travel partner a 20-30% commission, you can be assured that the good ones are putting that money towards marketing and promoting your experience. That’s marketing $$ you don’t need to find.

 They offer a reliable source of income.

Once your relationship with the right travel partners is in full swing, you’ll discover that the ones you really connect with can deliver a super consistent and reliable revenue stream. This is something you can rely on year in, year out, and will give you the confidence to make smart business decisions.

 I’ll give you an idea of how this tactic impacted my business. At the time that we were generating over $2 million in annual sales, our top five travel partners were bringing us $700,000 annually.

 When you looked at our top 10 travel partners, they were worth over $1 million in annual revenue. This revenue had grown by between 11% and 14% for four consecutive years. The consistency in growth made it easy for us to make the decision to sell through these channels. And ultimately, it was a decision that helped propel our business forward.

 Let’s take a look at the figures from this time:

There it is. The real revenue generated by each of our top travel partners over a one year period. Whatever your business size, travel partners provide an awesome opportunity to make some serious additional revenue.

And it’s ultra consistent revenue - and that's the holy grail for a small tour operator.

6.        The Corporate market

The thing I love most about the corporate market is the tantalising potential. 

There are so many opportunities to grow your business here: 

• Company and Departmental Christmas Parties
• End of Financial Year Events
• Team Building Events
• Reward and Recognition Days
• Hosting international guests
• Pre & post conference tours
• Social Club tours and activities

And the best bits? 

#1 The opportunities aren’t seasonal. There are opportunities for bookings year round - many of which are outside peak travel times. There’s also the likelihood that you can start generating bookings now if you get ‘in’ with the right decision makers, rather months down the track (as can be the case with OTA’s or Travel Partners)

#2 The market is massive. Consider how many businesses in and around your city potentially have a need for what you offer. In larger companies, there is also scope for multiple annual needs from multiple departments. If you get ‘in’ with, say, one of the major banks, then you could find yourself running company-wide team building days, pre and post conference tours, reward and recognition days, departmental Christmas parties, end of financial year activities and more.

#3 I’ve always found it to be a highly lucrative market. Not only are the sales commission-free, but generally the numbers you’re seeing per tour/activity/event are larger than normal. For us, more customers per tour, event or activity translated directly into more revenue and bigger profits.

7.        Local businesses who share your customer

What other things are your customers doing while they’re in town? Are they dining out at the city’s best restaurants? Hitting a wine bar or two? Taking in a show? Indulging in a little retail therapy? 

Do a little digging while you’re with your customers and find out exactly where they’ll be spending their time (and money) while they’re in town.

Pull together a list and start getting in touch. 

Who’s sharing your customer? 

Which of these businesses would be willing to collaborate with you? 

So how would this collaboration look? There are a myriad of ways that you could promote each other’s businesses and increase bookings and sales if the fit is a good one.

8. Clubs, groups and societies passionate about your niche

If you run wildlife adventures, or bird watching experiences...or brewery tours, you should be marketing and promoting your products to groups of people that are passionate about your niche. 

A great way to find potential customers in your target market and let them know what you do is to show up online in clubs and groups - Facebook and Linked In groups work especially well.

Reading group posts and comments are an unbelievably valuable way of learning more specifics about your target market’s needs, passions, desires, ways they like to experience things - and problems you can solve.

Joining groups in your niche is also a great way for you to start showing up and becoming recognised as an authority. 

Remember though...you don’t want to be ‘spammy’ and be seen to be promoting your tours or your business. 

Your aim should be to start showing up and provide value to the group. By doing so you’ll quickly become seen as an authority in your niche. 

The marketing and promotion will happen organically once you’re seen as an authority.

Take bird watching as an example. 

A 5 second search on Facebook reveals groups such as:

Or if you run ‘coffee’ tours, a similar search reveals:

Start showing up in these groups, adding some value and building your authority. It's a highly effective way of finding new customers in your niche. 

 The next logical step would be to start a group of your own!

So, hopefully this is all the motivation you need to get out there and start ‘bullet proofing’ your tour business by selling more tours in more places to more people.

<<If you want to learn EXACTLY how to systematically grow your sales, scale your operations and drive serious profits in your tour or activity business to seven figures and beyond...then come and join us on one of our free online workshops using this link>>

Please comment below and I'd love it if you would share in any circles that would find it helpful.

Josh Oakes is the founder of The Sunshine Tribe - helping tour and activity operators across the globe build amazing businesses and create awesome lives for themselves.

He is also the co-creator of Seven Figure Tour Business- an online program teaching his proven, step by step system to get more customers, scale operations and drive more profits in your tour business.

In 2007 Josh and his wife started a day tour company in Melbourne, Australia. They had no experience in tourism, no business experience, no networks or support and no funds. After 2 exhausting years they had come very close to throwing the towel in. Fast forward 7 years however and they had grown that business to $2 million plus in annual revenue before ultimately selling the company in 2017 for over 7 figures.