My hope that this article will help inspire many other tour operators and suppliers to think about how they can combat this crisis, giving them some hope that they might survive and hopefully become stronger and more resilient at the end of it.

Allow me to share 25 positive tours and activity stories from across the world. And if any of this inspires you to jumpstart your marketing efforts and you need help from an agency dedicated to tourism marketing, please feel free to get in touch.

01. Invisible Cities – United Kingdom

Invisible Cities is a social enterprise tour operator  that helps combat homelessness by giving opportunities to people in this unfortunate position to become tour guides in their cities. Owner, Zakia Moulaoui, told me of the various ways she is continuing to support her guides in the current crisis:

“We launched an emergency crowdfunder of £5,000 to help support our guides during this time. No tour means no income for them but we still need to support our guides as a lot of them will be considered at risk because of age or previous medical conditions.

We have also partnered with a local, family-run bakery, Il Panino, purchasing bread and cakes from them. They have kindly delivered these goodies, as well as our own bags full of fresh fruit and veg, to our guides across Edinburgh.”

02. Kooky Cotswold Tours – England

When Lee McCallum got in touch, she told me about how she is communicating with her customers…

“I have a small number of clients who book longer, more bespoke tours so in terms of quantity I haven’t had a huge number of people to deal with. I’ve been very proactive in staying in touch with them and have found that regular correspondence with them is the key.  I advised postponing instead of cancelling very early on but acknowledge right from the start that cancelling would also be honoured.

The response was overwhelmingly positive and so far I have only seen three cancellations.  Those that have cancelled have been kind enough to wait for their cash back and I am regularly in contact with them. One of them also recognised the difficulties small travel companies are experiencing and told me to keep the money! I was so appreciative.” 

03. Cortijo El Sarmiento – Spain

Yvonne Schnoor and her team have been busy creating new products and initiatives during the downtime…

“After a few days in shock we decided that we would see this as the ‘time gift’ we urgently needed. We are using this time to write down all the excursions our guests can possibly do; a list of hiking trails, cycling routes, a fine food and gourmet guide, a blog about golf, white Andalusian villages, recipes, etc.

On April 1st we launched a photo challenge for everyone to remember their past time with us, helping us to create a gallery which we can send out to everyone who participated, offering a prize to the winner. We are also updating our website and looking at ways to sell gift vouchers online.”

04. Unique Adventure Tours Scotland – Scotland

Owner Chris Wain has been utilising his love for all things outdoors by giving others free audio walking tours.

“On my daily walk outside (I have dogs which I love to walk with), I pick a person in my contacts, and give them an ‘audio walking tour’. Although partly just as an excuse for social interaction, during the walk I add in descriptions of the places, sights sounds and smells with a load of good old fashioned ‘blethering’ (Scottish for chatting). I also plan to try a series of Facebook live videos sharing stories from my travels, work and life.”

05. Go West – Australia

Managing Director Terry Smit from Go West in Australia has been on a content drive since the crisis started…

“One of our tour guides, who is currently unemployed because of the crisis, has been re-hired to assist us in creating lots of inspirational videos. Seems strange to be offering someone a job at this time, but you need to keep the positive messages flowing at times like this. One of his videos has gone semi-viral, in which he takes you on a tour of his back garden.”

06. My Private Paris – France

Bertand D’Aleman told us of their plans to fight for their company’s survival…

“After a couple of days of total emotional shock, our team has decided to stand up and fight for our great company and its amazing team of local guides and chauffeurs. Being from different regions of France and Europe, we are all locked down in our homes whether in Paris and Dordogne, France, or Andalusia, Spain and Wessex, England.

Because of this we are building a bank of blog articles to allow us to post more consistently and feeling less rushed in doing so. Instagram and Facebook posts are also being stored to be published for a more appropriate time.

Last but not least, we are about to launch a series of YouTube videos on planning a trip to Paris, giving tips on the when, what, how, etc. Of course these will be home-made videos with limited footage but we believe that will help our brand find more people online, gaining more visibility and more customers for 2021!”

07. Do You Travel – Australia

Sarah runs island-hopping tours in The Philippines and she has decided to create a new product to entice deposit payments to allow her customers to reserve a spot for a future date…

“We are going to be advertising ‘Life time DYT Tour Passes’ for $49. The tour pass is considered the customer’s deposit and they will not need to pay anything more until they lock in a travel date with us. As a thank you for the support we are also offering a bonus $500 travel voucher to anyone who buys a pass.

08. Lyon Wine Tastings – France

Owner Caroline Conner is looking at how she can take her wine tasting business online…

“This has been a tough moment for me, my business is new so I was really relying on bookings this summer. In the vacuum of actual tastings, I have been running free virtual wine classes online. I have been toying with online education for a while but thought it was impossible since everyone couldn’t drink the same wine. This crisis was actually the spark I needed to realise that it doesn’t matter what is in anyone’s glass. We can still learn together as everyone has their own glass and we dive into the technique of wine analysis together.

My favorite thing about being a tour operator was meeting new people from all over the world and watching them connect with each other across my dining table. My virtual tastings are channeling that same energy.”

09. Devour Tours – Spain

Marketing Director Rachel Schneidmill is pushing forward with a host of initiatives to generate revenue…

“Our entire team (staff, guides, vendors) came together to create a digital recipe book – something so obviously in line with our food-obsessed company, and yet a project we didn’t consider until it became necessary. We’ll be selling the book as a digital download to help create some revenue while we are unable to provide tours.

We have some other ideas brewing like quarantine-specific merchandise, virtual dinner parties, and masterclasses and I’m personally excited to see what resonates with our audience in this new climate.”

10. Mary’s Meanders – Scotland

Emma told us how she is simply spending the downtime asking past customers for reviews.

“We have always prided ourselves on our high level of customer service and at a time like this, we feel it is even more important so we have asked our guests to give us TripAdvisor reviews as this helps gives future customers confidence in booking with us as well as a much needed boost at this time.”

11. Milwaukee Food Tours – USA

Theresa Nemetz let me know of a great way they are using their fleet of vehicles to deliver packages to their customers…

“We have so many local food manufacturing partners that we work with, so we are offering ‘Shelter-in-Style Kits’ to help us and our partners generate revenue. Our buses provide the delivery while including a virtual tour experience.”

12. Gokedem Adventure Travel – Israel

Kobi Btzvi has been thinking outside of the box with regards to how to provide immersive experiences during the crisis.

“As said before ‘never waste a crisis’, so we decided to regroup ourselves and get creative about our clients’ needs and come-up with new tailored products. Our key insight is that everywhere you look people are coffined in their houses and socially distanced. The moment the virus will be behind us people will look to reconnect with their families and friends. We partnered with Atlas Boutique Hotels to provide an immersive experience for corporate travel and small groups. The SixSense 7-Day Surprise Me Adventure Game is about hacking down 3,000 old mystery to win an outstanding prize by testing your senses and your skills. We also were lucky to get new bookings for Sept 2020 from HNK and China by offering off-season prices and full refunds in case of cancelations.”

13. Experience Pakistan – Pakistan

Saadia Baber from Pakistan is creating a video series to better engage with their customers…

“Over the next few months I’ve requested my ground team to create videos about themselves, their passion for travel, what they are doing in this period of lock down and what their favourite hidden gems in Pakistan are. We shall share these on our platforms on a fortnightly basis, to keep Pakistan as a destination, and my brand, alive.

We are also using this time to review and fine tune the product offering for 2021 based on the learnings from different reports as well as reviewing our payment options and how we make it easier for our client base.

Ultimately I see this time to ensure I’m still marketing through mediums I don’t have to pay for to keep the brand alive.”

14. Culinary Adventure Co – Canada

Kevin Durkee is another food tour company thinking outside the box with an amazing way of generating revenue while helping suppliers…

“We needed to pivot and find ways to support our team, our small business partners and local restaurants, fine food shops and bakeries – that are some of the hardest hit companies during this time.

We created a new product called Food Tour in a Box (Trademarked) – a food-delivery program essentially, but it features a curated selection of the best bites from our delicious food tours. Our first box that was launched last week, St. Lawrence Market Food Tour in a Box, which included ingredients to cook with as well as other treats. We sold more than a 100 boxes in the 4 days, at $99 each.

Tucked inside is a $50 Culinary Adventure Co. Gift Certificate to enjoy towards our Food Tour or Culinary Adventures this summer or beyond.”

15. Secret Paradise – Maldives

Ruth and her team have managed to secure a new contract during the crisis…

“We started following up on emails we had sent to agents, OTAs and tour operators from previous travel shows and events. By doing so we have secured a contract with none other than Hotel Beds for our day tours. We are also  in discussions with Tours With Locals.”

16. Downtown CityMaps & Guides – Scotland

Owner Frank Willoughby, who helps promote local businesses through his city guides, has decided to create a ‘Post Covid-19 Visit Planner’ for free to help his suppliers…

“I am almost ready to publish online a ‘Post Covid-19 Visit Planner’ edition of my guide in which all of my clients current and past plus anyone who wishes to be mentioned can maintain their profile and stay visible during the shutdown. The intention is to share it around on social platforms, on websites and generally anywhere that it might be read. My hope is that it will motivate people’s pent up desire to ‘do something’, be it a day trip, short break, weekend or whatever once the travel restrictions and lockdown is lifted. Perhaps it will motivate visits and allow people to plan ahead.”

17. Gone Sailing Adventures – Canada

Howie Colt and his team are in regular communication with their customers and communities as well as creating specific products for the healthcare professionals as a thank you for all their hard work…

“I am continuing to issue newsletters biweekly. These used to detail upcoming availability and discounted sails but are now more related to sailing stories and general information. I will also offer a discounted promo code to those people that had to cancel to help with future bookings.

I am now focusing on creating a promo for healthcare and other front line workers who helped us through this time.”

18. Salzburg Experience – Austria

Michaela Muhr has taken this time to read my book, Lookers into Bookers, to update her website and expand her knowledge and learn how to use social media…

“I see this time as an opportunity rather than a burden as it gives me time to reorganise my business and think about what I want to offer in the future. I am reading Lookers into Bookers to be ready for the time after the crisis. Your Digital Tourism Show is also helping me a lot.

I am planning on a new website, to update the design and online services, optimising my tour offers and tour descriptions and finally spending time to learn how to post on Instagram. The goal is to have a more professional appearance and brand awareness.”

19. Rewind Dubrovnik – Croatia

Owner Lukša Malohodžić has decided to focus on something completely different while the country is in lockdown…

“I am using my channels around Dubrovnik to help make visors for hospital staff. We just brought them 100 visors made using 3D printers. These guys need material such as plastic and a company that makes business cards and brochures for me offered to help us with the material. As we are running boat tours we’ve put our whole equipment on disposal to the Civil Protection Unit here in Dubrovnik.’

20. Amsterdam Experiences – Netherlands

Stephan and his team are using this time to get out of their comfort zone and produce video blogs, working alongside competitors…

“Together with some other guides in the Netherlands we are developing a platform where we start vlogging about the Netherlands so people can see what they normally get during a tour.

Some of these guides have never used vlogs for their promotion so we are all learning something new. Several companies are working together to develop this platform, even competitors are working together for the betterment of our destination.”

21. Molly J Wilk – France

Molly has been taking her cooking classes online, using Instagram to engage with her community in a unique way…

“I’ve been doing live ‘Surprise Bake Along’s’ on Instagram where I share the ingredients and equipment in advance and then we all gather together to bake. The surprise is I do not tell them what we are creating as they will find out at the end. It’s been such a fun way for people to gather together and be a little distracted from everything that’s happening in the world right now.”

22. Dublin Rogues Tour – Ireland

Like many operators, Dave Kavanagh is spending this time creating new products…

“ I have been spending my time designing a brand new tour which I am very excited about. I must say it’s been a lot of fun working out the landmarks and routes for the new tour. Still have a lot of work left to do but I really feel by doing something new keeps you motivated and excited in these troubling times. I would highly recommend it if people have some spare time to do the same.”

23. Clio Muse – Greece

Daphne Tsevreni, Co-founder & CFO, and her team have spent time refining and improving their audio tours while upgrading to virtual tours…

“We have upgraded all our audio tours to virtual tours. A virtual tour consists of audio narration, real images, satellite and street views of the monument and its surroundings. In most points of interest you can move forward or backwards, turn towards any direction and see what you would really see as if you were there! In that sense, a virtual tour resembles a remote visit from the comfort and safety of your home. In order to promote them we will be starting asap to offer one free virtual tour per day.

We believe that we should keep travellers hungry for travel in order to keep their interest high and we are currently discussing with multiple tour operators to sell these virtual tours for attractions in Europe with commission to customers that cancelled their bookings. We’re also encouraging tour operators to create their own virtual tours using our platform and guidance.

All in all we try to adapt to the new environment that is forming and think that remote visits are here to stay.

24. Go Basque Travel – Basque

Ander told me about the initiatives he is moving forward with during the crisis…

“We first sent an email to all of our past clients, as well as the clients that we were expecting for this season but who had to unfortunately cancel their plans, in order to stay in touch with them, asking them how they were doing and wishing them health and safety during this delicate time. We got feedback from most of them and they provided words of support during these difficult moments. Of course, we also refunded 100% of the fees. They were grateful and replied that they will book with us in the future when the situation improves and they are able to travel again.

Following your advice in your Coronavirus Battle Plan, we have also been making an effort to boost our social media content. In this sense, we are writing new blog posts for our website, Facebook and Instagram. The type of articles that we are writing are in regard to general information about the Basque Country, Basque culture and food. Personally, I find it pointless at this moment to write social media posts with the intent of trying to sell our tours, so this is why we have decided to provide a different kind of content for now.”

25. Visit London Taxi Tours – England

Cheryl and her team have opened up their fleet to help those in need during the crisis…

“Rather than laying off employees and cutting resources, we have found new ways to use our resources, protecting the jobs of our employees.

Because the taxis are all equipped with wheel-chair ramps and our guides are police checked, we managed to repurpose our fleet into an emergency transport solution.

By reaching out to local authorities, we have been working alongside General Practitioners and other health teams, finding the homeless in London, assessing them and then getting them to the right accommodation.

We also collect prepared meals from local markets and deliver them to those who are quarantined in hotels.”

Stay Positive

These are just a small selection of some of the outstanding stories that were submitted to me  and I thank everyone who did so. I hope that by reading this, it provides some hope and positive thinking in the midst of this crisis we are all facing. I have so many examples that I may even do a part 2.

Stay positive, stay productive, and you may come out stronger at the other end.

The post Tours and Activities Action Plans and Positivity During Global Lockdown appeared first on Tourism Marketing Agency.

Relying on OTAs

One running theme I’ve quickly noticed is that operators and activity providers that have a heavy focus on OTAs are more at risk than those who have a strong direct revenue channel. It doesn’t matter if you only utilise one OTA or many, as we are all in the same situation: no one is making any bookings right now.

Before I continue, OTAs only account for about 10% of the tour and activity market, and this is not an article that is here to berate OTAs. Although I have strong opinions about how they conduct their business at times, they can be used to a company’s advantage if approached in the right way. This article is aimed at those providers whose business relies 60%-100% on online travel agents… and there are many.

The issue with the businesses I’ve spoken to that are heavily reliant on OTAs is that they almost have no business. They are a passenger, an ‘employee’ of these organisations which means they have no rights in how that ‘employer’ conducts its business. No say in commission rates, no say in what they put in their cancellation policies and, more importantly, no right to their customers’ data. That data is what is vitally important to a business surviving during any crisis, but especially a crisis as unprecedented as COVID-19. Only World War 3 would be more devastating to the world’s businesses and economy… this is how serious this situation is.

Many are unable to contact the customers they serve, to persuade them to postpone and/or offer super flexible terms and cancellation policies – to do what it takes to make sure they have every possible chance of survival. Now, this is not to say that those who have strong direct channels are immune, but they have a better chance of survival than those who do not.

The explicit advice I offer those operators is to switch your focus to direct channels so that you have a stronger business in the future.

Creating a stronger business

It’s perhaps not time to focus on the next crisis, but what this pandemic has taught us as an industry is how quickly everything can change. Another crisis will hit us all again at some point, whether it’s the coronavirus coming back, another recession, a volcanic eruption, a terrorist attack or something unforeseen; you must set up your business differently going forward and have a crisis management plan in place.

If you are in this position, or you are having to restart your business again, please make sure you focus on direct bookings. I understand that OTAs are a great way to get your products out to a larger audience, allowing you to generate revenue quickly, which is fine for the short term but do not leave it there. The danger of becoming solely reliant on OTAs is that it becomes easy to fall into the trap of being comfortable with the situation as you see money coming in and life seems good.

Going forward, I implore any tour and activity business reading this to re-enforce their direct channels. Now is the prime time to be focusing on how your website looks and functions, how you are marketing your business and setting plans in motion to protect and grow your business and the livelihoods of your staff and yourself. Make sure no more than 20% of your sales are generated through OTAs, with the remaining 80% coming from direct sources.

What should you be doing right now?

Anyone who claims they know exactly what they’re doing right now mustn’t understand the reality of the situation we’re in as an industry. No one can predict the future in this crisis, but I’d like to think that my experience and contacts throughout the industry allow me to offer some well-informed best practices. Right now, you should be marketing your business organically, through good written and video content, providing inspiring stories that humanise your brand and keep your brand in your potential customers’ minds.

Why? People are self-isolating or they’ve had their travel plans cancelled due to travel bans. Some people will be depressed and eager to get out and travel once the coronavirus has been contained.

They are spending more time at home, on their laptops and smartphones, fantasising about traveling. So give them something to read or a video to watch. Inspire them, entertain them, and give them useful content that helps them plan their big post-crisis trip.

Now is the right time to plant the seed as your customers’ ‘dreaming stage’ will now last at least 3–6 months. You can see various ideas of how to market your business during this time in my Coronavirus Battle Plan or in my book Lookers into Bookers, which I made free to download to help the industry. My Battle Plan alone has been downloaded by close to 10,000 individuals.

Utilise the ‘free time’ you and your tour guides currently have to create and publish this content on a regular basis. It does not need to be perfect; it just needs to happen.

I understand that many of your guides and staff may now be unemployed with the hope of returning to employment with your company in the near future (I really hope so!). If your staff have any sense of loyalty, they will help in any way they can to ensure your business’s survival with the hope that they still have a job at the end of it. If nothing, it helps weed out those employees who could not care less. Harsh, but that’s the reality.

My own team at the Tourism Marketing Agency have been incredible — working their proverbial arses off not only to give the operators we help peace of mind that we will do anything to help them through this crisis. But they’ve also been helping me get out all the free guides and materials we’ve produced recently. Your staff should be doing likewise.

Conclusion: Direct bookings = direct control over your business

Direct bookings matter. This is because direct communications with your customers matter now more than ever. These direct relationships give you a better chance of changing cancellations to postponements, a better chance of creating more flexible payment terms and policies that work for your business and not just for an OTA or other entity who has too much control over your business.

Rely on OTAs to the point that if they switched off tomorrow, you would still have a business. This will create a stronger foundation for you, your staff, and your customers.

Need more free advice?

Chris and his team will send you a weekly email offering high-value insight and advice about a variety of marketing and business development topics related to the tourism industry. We address specific destinations, tours and activities, and the hotel industry. We also provide important travel industry news and updates.

The post Preparing your business for the next crisis appeared first on Tourism Marketing Agency.

Over the last 12 months, it has been heartbreaking and difficult to hear all the devastating stories of operators ceasing trading, and it doesn’t get easier. No tour or activity company has remained untouched by covid, with Urban Adventures recently having to pare back partnerships to make sure they survive. As a business owner, I can completely understand why they’ve had to make these hard decisions, and I sympathise with them and with their partners. However, given the size and influence of Urban Adventures, what does this mean for the operators they’re no longer working with?

I would hope some plan is in place to make sure these ‘partners’ are given every opportunity to make sure they survive in their own right. Some of them must be thinking that this year can not get any worse.

I would like to play a small part in trying to help the many Urban Adventure partners that may be lost and in a place of despair, wondering what to do next. In the spirit of this, I would like to do two things:

1. I am offering a free one-hour consultation to each of the Urban Adventure partners who have been left in this position.
2. The recent Marketing Battle Plan I have just released for USD$49, I will offer for free to each Urban Adventure partner who has had their contract terminated. My hope is that the guidance within this 200-page document will help in some way.

If you are interested in either of the two options above, please do not hesitate to email me at chris@tourismmarketing.agency.

Need more free advice?

Chris and his team will send you a weekly email offering high-value insight and advice about a variety of marketing and business development topics related to the tourism industry. We address specific destinations, tours and activities, and the hotel industry. We also provide important travel industry news and updates.

The post Urban Adventures Transition Plan – Planning for the Future appeared first on Tourism Marketing Agency.

The Glasgow Travel Massive aims to provide a supportive and welcoming community where travel enthusiasts and professionals can get together to discuss travel trends, improve skills and build meaningful relationships in a fun and inclusive environment. 

Our regular events are open to anyone involved in, and passionate about travel and tourism including individuals, businesses, entrepreneurs, bloggers, vloggers, photographers, media, travel brands, industry enthusiasts, tour operators, hospitality professionals and PRs.

Join our community and gain access to attend our confirmed upcoming free events in 2020…

Tuesday 25th February 2020

Vikki Bruce, MacLean & Bruce – Creating Tailor Made, Luxury Whisky Tours for International and Royal Guests

Joshua Ryan-Saha, University of Edinburgh – How Data, Big or Small, Can Help Grow your Tourism Business

Register for this event.

Tuesday 31st March 2020

Emma Jamieson, The Edinburgh Dungeon – How The Edinburgh Dungeon Had Kept Scaring Visitors For 20 Years

Jessica Gregory, Arival – Tours, Activities & Attractions: Ten Trends for 2020 and Beyond

Register for this event.

Tuesday 21st April 2020

Chris Newlands, Spelfie – How Taking Selfie’s from Space has Grown my Business to Stratospheric Heights

Peter Syme, Disrupt Travel – Startup Scene inTours and Activities. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

Register for the event here.

Tuesday 26th May 2020

Chris Wain, Unique Adventure Tours Scotland – Starting a New Tour Business in Scotland… the Pitfalls, Challenges and Successes

Patrick O’Shaughnessy, Visit Scotland – Digital Marketing Dundamentals… be Visible in Those Right Moments.

Register for this event.

Tuesday 30th June 2020

Peter Trowles, Cultural Perspectives – The Cultural Rebirth of Glasgow and How it’s Perceived Internationally

Paul Semple, General Manager of Waverley Excursions Ltd – What it Took to Preserve The Waverley, the World’s Last Seagoing Paddle Steame

Register for this event.

Tuesday 28th July 2020

Cat Leaver, Brand Scotland – How Brand Scotland are Shaping the Destination in 2020 and Beyond

Gemma Armit, Two Scots Abroad Travel Guides + Make Traffic Happen – The Art of Public Speaking and How it Can Help Grow Your Tourism Business

Register for this event.

Need more free advice?

Chris and his team will send you a weekly email offering high-value insight and advice about a variety of marketing and business development topics related to the tourism industry. We address specific destinations, tours and activities, and the hotel industry. We also provide important travel industry news and updates.

The post Join the Travel Massive Glasgow Community appeared first on Tourism Marketing Agency.

Matt Smith of Primal Adventures discusses how his military past has allowed him to create a product that excels and what it takes to make it in the luxury adventure market.

In this episode, we have the pleasure of speaking with Matt Smith of Primal Adventures, and he will be discussing how he has successfully grown his luxury adventure brand here in Scotland. Welcome to episode 225 of The Digital Tourism Show…

Chris:

Before we start discussing Primal Adventures… you served in the military for over 22 years, I believe.

Matt:

22 years, mate, yeah.

Chris:

So, how has that helped you set up Primal Adventures and grow the business?

Matt:

I am… I didn’t think I was ever going to join the military, you know? I actually wanted to go to the art college and be an artist. And I grew up in Ardrossan, a wee boy from the West Coast. And, growing up, there’s a castle here, Ardrossan Castle. I don’t know if any of you’ve ever seen it. So I always had these fantasies of medieval knights, and people going away on adventures. And, being down on the West Coast, you’ve got Isle of Arran, of course. You’ve got all the islands, and you’ve got the coast, and the hills. And that was… just amazing. But I kind of just took it for granted, you know what I mean? Because you kind of grow up there…

And then I went to school, and then Top Gun came out, and I realized I wanted to be a pilot. And then I went to Buchanan Street, and there was the RAF, the army and the navy recruitment center, on the same street. And I went into the RAF, and they looked at my grades, and they went, “Ah. Go next door, wee man. We’re not recruiting this year.” And I went to the navy, and they were like, “Go next door to the army, mate. I think they might be accepting.” And they were like… And I was like… And 22 years later, here I am. I have no regrets. I loved it. And it’s a real leveler. They give you loads of opportunities.

But, no, I loved it. A wee boy from Ardrossan, growing up, I’d pick tatties and fry chips, and made ice cream, and wash windows, and the army gave me so many opportunities. That was amazing. From stepping out of my comfort zone and and getting in front of people, and meeting cultures, and going out in the world, and… And that, in itself, is a bit of an eye-opener. Because, growing up, if you didn’t have it going for you, you didn’t have an apprenticeship, it was either like… There were only a couple of options you could really go. It was kind of making the most of that.

So that’s what I done. I got into… It was really either technical trades in the military, or kind of the more kicking in doors and kind of infantry stuff. So that kind of niched myself around teh middle, as well as passion about the outdoors. So I started taking expeditions and going around the world, and leading expeditions. So, from the organization to planning to actually taking it. And then I really loved the kind of winter outside, and I pushed myself into ski touring, and kind of Alpine and Nordic skiing. And that opened a lot more doors for me. And, yes. So that was awesome, because it gave me the skills and the confidence and the self-discipline to do what I’m doing today.

Chris:

Cool. So how did… Obviously, with that background, Matt, and from what was in the video, Primal Adventures is not your typical adventure tour company that you would normally see. So how has your background shaped the type of products that you bring into the business? Because, obviously, shooting and carving up…

Matt:

Yeah. I just kind of organically do it. Because, if I’m being honest, we always… I was actually in Afghanistan in 2014, and I knew… Sorry, 2012… And I knew that I was getting out of the army in 2016. And I didn’t want to be that guy who was like, “Oh, get out the army. Don’t know what I want to do. I can’t get a job.” I always knew I wanted to watch myself and do something. Because I had all these skills, and I was really passionate about doing what I do.

And then, so, I started… Obviously, I was in Afghanistan. I was like, “Oh, yeah. I want to do…” And there was something inherent, and there’s always the basic needs of survival. When you strip everything back, it’s the basic needs to have food, have protection, have water, and warmth, and all that good stuff. And so I started thinking about that. When people are kind of shooting at you and blowing you up and stuff, and trying… It kind of really hones those senses. And, really, it says, “There’s something here, and this is something I want to really deliver when I get outside.”

So, I started thinking about that. And then it just… Initially, we started in 2014 doing Primal Bushcraft and Survival, and that company’s still going now. And we don’t do courses, but we run skills days, teaching people about our primal ancestors and their food, fire, water, shelter, safety, survival skills. And then it was like, “Okay, well, what’s on our doorstep?” And it was the whole West Coast of Scotland and all the islands. And then we started doing sailing trips, and doing island survival and castaway trips. And then, through the whole authentic wilderness experience, it was like… What Scotland’s really got.

And then it was kind of really going back to how our ancestors lived, and kind of what a Highland we kind of niched ourselves into a Highlander theme. And the whole kind of Jacobites, and how they… Not just the Jacobites, but just the Highlanders in that kind of whole area as a time period. And then we kind of… It was like Outlander was like, “Okay, that’s a little bit cheesy.” But we’re not kind of going by area, but it’s more about how they lived. So, it’s about what they ate, foraging off the land. The training, the weapons they used. How they stalked their prey.

So, as it became a whole course, so that was another area that worked. And it’s took us like five years now to actually work out what has worked and what doesn’t work. And that’s… Any business, as you’re going through a journey, you find that out, what works and doesn’t work. You kind of get rid of the chaff, and use the stuff that works. So, yeah, so we’ve got a really good product now.

Chris:

Oh, okay. Excellent. Excellent. So, what… Now, you class yourselves as sort of a luxury product. So what makes what you guys do a luxury? I know a lot of people wouldn’t think shooting or carving up animals is a luxury.

Matt:

No, no. I know. Well, so, a luxury…

Chris:

So, what’s the luxury element of it?

Matt:

Well, I don’t know… Well, again, we’re always doing it.

Chris:

Yeah.

Matt:

And then, what I’ve always learned is, people like… You have your hardcore people who want to do it. And you’ll have those who like the idea of doing it, but they only want to do it for a wee while, you know? And you have those who are like, “I’m never doing that, ever.” But, throughout the journey, we realized that people wanted to experience it, but then go on to stay in a nice five-star hotel, or go and have a spa, or a couple of drinks afterwards. And then you had those who were hardcore, and just, you know, “I want to get in amongst it.” And then you had those who are like, “I want to go hardcore, but then I also want to do the five-star.” You know, it was a bit of a mixed bag.

And we didn’t actually realize we were doing it, because people are… Private clients and bespoke stuff. Because we were doing bespoke stuff. They were like, “Can we pick a luxury yacht, and… But we want to do a bit of wilderness survival, and time in the wildlife.” And, “Yeah, sure.” And that didn’t happen until about the third year. And it’s only really in the past two years that we’ve went, “We’ve got something here. No one else is really doing this. So, let’s kind of do a bit of a pivot, and switch fire to dealing with that market.”

And then, so, in the past two years, we’ve had clients who want to… Who are ultra marathon runners, and they want to do a four-day expedition up the West Coast of Scotland, go out in luxury yachts and speedboats, and, okay, hammocks and bell tents. That’s not luxury but… it depends on what they want to do. And it’s like, peaks and trofts so they’re out of their comfort zone, and then they’re back into… well, their comfort zone.

And that’s also a big part of it. Because we’re very much… Not quite insular and safe into these environment and technology, and there just is a cultural… Like we’ve got everything. You know? We’ve got your TV, and the car, and a nice house and that. There was actually a power cut in my house a couple nights ago. And I was like, “All right, this is it. I’m getting the boat. Where’s the boat? I don’t know-” And the missus comes upstairs with the tot, and she’s like, “Oh, there’s a power cut.” She’s looking out the window, and all the other houses have… There’s a power cut, you know? It was like…

And straightaway, she’s on Facebook, and she’s like, “Oh, everyone else’s power cut.” I was like, “Oh, this is it. This is the start of the apocalypse.” You know, maybe you don’t preach the fear and doom and gloom, because there’s enough of that out there. So it’s about getting people outside, getting back to basics, and learning about authentic wilderness living skills, and actually having really good experiences. Because, at the end of the day, they only check in if they’re wanting to form some nice memories. So whether it’s good or bad, and then good experiences. So, that’s what we want to give people. So that’s basically what we’re all about.

Chris:

It’s always tha tway with a power cut, where did I pack the candles. But one of our last speakers here is very much in the sort of adventure market was Neil Lapping. He spoke about how he grew his business through lots of Google ads and things like that. So, that was a predominant sort of angle that he took, and the marketing channel that he took. So, what channels have been successful in terms of growing up Primal Adventures? What’s sort of worked for you, and what hasn’t worked for you, that you feel?

Matt:

It’s been a real minefield Chris I’m being honest mate. When we first started… The army doesn’t teach you about entrepreneurship and going into business. Certainly there’s courses that they’ll give you money to go in, you know? But I’m still learning. It’s a tough learning curve. So, actually, before I went to Afghanistan, I made a website. I made it myself. And I went to Afghanistan for a seven-month tour. And I came back, I was like, “Oh, I’m going to have loads of bitcoins,” because I just said, “The business, I’m set. I’m set for life.” And it was like, “No hits, no nothing.” It was like Whats going on”. And so I had to learn a lot.

And then through trial and error, through Facebook… Facebook is good. You’ve got to know your target audience. You’ve got to know all your keywords. And, initially when we started, it was like, “Put some money down. I have seven million people I’m going to target. Great.” And then it was like, you don’t… You’ve only got a couple of hundred hits. So then I would just niche that right down, and things would start to work. Google ads work, but again, you obviously need funding for that. So, what’s… Because we have had time served, what we found really works is word-of-mouth. People come on the course, and they go, “That was awesome,” and then they… And it just kind of naturally grows.

I’ve also made that video. The other guy just out of interest is Mark Canalannonfrom We Make Good Video Happen, if you want to check that out. But he’s a really cool guy. He used to work for BBC, and he does some awesome videos. So when we do big stuff, I get him on board. And just through videos and that… And all our videos that are made… of course, they work at the back end of that. But the wife, now, she’s all like, “Stop making videos. All right? Just start getting us a bit of money.” Because all of my videos, right? So, but word-of-mouth, I’d say, is basically the big one. And then, obviously-

Chris:

Just for the marketing?

Matt:

Yeah. I mean, also, through the military, I haven’t really tapped into the old kind of veterans network. But just a couple of weeks back, a good friend of mine has been invited to… Because the survival is part of it, part of what we do… to go to Antarctica, to deliver Arctic survival training-

Chris:

Nice.

Matt:

To some people, some research scientists who are flying out to Antarctica. So I’m like, “That’s pretty cool, you know. Three trips to Antarctica. Yes, please. I’ll do that.”

Chris:

So, when it comes to your trips in Antarctica and the things that you do, do you find it has to be people who are generally fit and it’s not just anyone who decides to come along…

Matt:

No, so, that’s a separate trip. That’s nothing. Now, I’ve been invited to go along to that. But that’s more of a kind of consultancy thing, which we do as well.

Chris:

Right. Cool.

Matt:

But that whole… Having those opportunities through that network to go and do things like that is some really good leverage, too. That should maybe start…

Chris:

That may open up more doors for you, for-

Matt:

Makes sense, yeah.

Chris:

So, for the people here, and anyone watching thinking about starting up an adventure-based company, what’s the sort of one piece of advice that you would give them, then? Obviously not everyone has 22 years’ worth of training in the army, so.

Matt:

No, no, no. It’s the… They used to call me… I finished up to Sergeant Major, they used to call me the Zen Sergeant Major. I don’t know why, because I was quite chill, though. Maybe that was why. But, and obviously people would, you know, “What does he want to do? What is he good at that?” And, well, I don’t know. Because nobody’s ever asked. It’s not… Nobody’s ever asked me that question. You know, “What do you enjoy there?” And so it sounds really basic, but that’s at the crux of it, isn’t it? Whatever you’re passionate about and what you’re good at, just start off doing that. And then just slowly start building up social media, your following.

And start before you’re ready. That was 2014, when I made that website, thinking that I wasn’t ready. And there’s actually a really good story when I was in the military, waiting on the P company, which is the airborne training to jump out of planes in the paras. And it was a really arduous course. And we got there, and we were in the auditorium, and there was a big Sergeant Major on the stage. And he goes, “Okay, guys, congratulations. You’ve done the hardest thing so far, and that’s completing the form, the actual form, to come on this course. Because now the real work, the training, begins.”

And I was like, “Awesome. Isn’t this really…” It’s a bit like in life, as well. If there’s something you really want to do, then just go and do it. You’re either going to have success, or you’re going to have failure. But you’re always going to learn from your failures, to then not immediately go and do it again. And on that course, it was mega arduous. There was a lot of guys that fell away. But it was like, “We haven’t started this course, and this guy’s saying, ‘Good effort, because you actually stepped out of your comfort zone.'” And you probably know people, for your own kind of walks of life, who’re like, “Oh, he’s gonna do that, I’ll bet…” To go, “No, I got married. No.” Whatever. But I always… You know? I mean, it’s like, “Stop making excuses. Just go and do it.”

Chris:

Yeah.

Matt:

So find out what you’re good at, follow your passion, and just do it. Just go for it. And start… I think it was Tony Robinson. “Start before you’re ready.” I think, yeah.

Chris:

Yeah.

Matt:

And it’s

Chris:

It’s a bit like that. But we were saying that it’s coming from the heart, what you’re doing.

Matt:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris:

It’s that passion, and stuff like that. And of course you’ve got your joy in that.

Matt:

Of course, man. 100%.

Chris:

So, I’m going to open up questions to the floor. If anyone’s got any questions for Matt, you can put your hands up… Is that a question at the back?

Matt:

All right.

Chris:

Jess, could you pass that over to Amanda, please?

Amanda:

Thank you for that. That was really interesting. I have a question about your video, actually. Are your tours only open to men?

Matt:

Whoa, no, of course not! No, no, no… No, there’s a couple of female in there. There’s usually a couple of female.

No, actually, some of them Visit Scotland phoned me up, “Matt, those videos are great. There’s a real niche for women to go on these.” And I was like, “Of course.” I was like, “You want to send me…” So, that’s something I’m actually going to make, a specific video for women. Of course, men or not, it’s open to anyone. Anyone can come and do it. It’s just, being a guy, being in the military, coming out, I don’t have… That sounds really sad. No, I don’t have loads of women, “Hey, come on the course.” You know? So that was just guys that I worked with in my environment. So, yeah. Yeah, of course it was. Yeah.

Amanda:

Well, just FYI, there are loads of female content creators that are based in Scotland.

Matt:

Oh, okay, good, yeah.

Amanda:

Who are super outdoorsy. Wayfaring Kiwi, Yvette Morrissey, she was the first woman to solo hike the West Highland Way. She did it with no training. She did it to raise money. And there are numerous people around that would be really interested in that, I’m sure, so.

Matt:

It’s interesting you say that, actually. One of our instructors, female instructor, she’s part of… was an ambassador for Women Gone Wild. And she’s obviously one of the ambassadors. So we’re doing more with her to actually… Because, obviously, you take this… And this is her kind of leading. She’s going to go on with exactly what you were saying, bringing more women into… Women are doing it anyway. And I’ve got a lot of female instructors that… It’s quite hard. I mean, for me, as a guy, it’s quite hard for me to find them. Do you know what I mean? But I know they’re out there. Because maybe I’m not just looking at the proper areas. So if you can give me some help me, that would be great.

Amanda:

Yeah. Happy to connect you.

Speaker 5:

Thank you very… Oh, sorry. How you run your business. And we spoke briefly earlier on. I’m just stepping into this kind of world. I work in the outdoors. I mentioned that. I’m just looking at adventure tourism as a business, my background was electronics but now into outdoor instructing. Do you… I was strongly advised, by people in the tourist industry, not to get involved in booking hotels and accommodation for clients. Do you book on behalf of, or do you book the whole package?

Matt:

So, there’re a couple questions in there. When we first started, it was just me and a couple of guys, just really passionate about it, doing what we do. And then things started to happen, and it was this is getting serious. So then we started to actually build the proper business, whereby I had to get a proper assistant. Now I’ve got someone who actually deals with the day-to-day emails and administration and a little bit of HR, which allows me… It frees me up to, now, come away and do stuff like this. And then I’ve got an ops manager who can facilitate training and take the guys. Then I’ve got a lot of freelancers, because a lot of the stuff we do is bespoke, and we can’t just be sitting out there waiting for someone to give us a call. So that was kind of the growth part of the business. And then, so, what was the last part?

Speaker 5:

This question was just, I was advised not to get involved in that-

Matt:

Oh, yeah, so-

Speaker 5:

The booking accommodation. But you recommend-

Matt:

I think, ideally, it is certainly not. No, I wouldn’t, no. I mean, there is platforms out there, and there’s people you can go to, and that’s solely what they do, and they’ll take commission. But I think just get yourself out there, get the ball rolling, and then you go out and actually meet people who will niche with you and kind of your product, and you’ll be like, “Yeah, you’re a good fit. Can you just deal with that?” And a lot of the time, it works easier for them to do that, because they know that business. And it’s about just playing up your strengths. When it comes to… I’m not a ones-and-zeroes guy. I’m out meeting people and juking about, and ducking and diving. But when it comes to management, I’m like, “Somebody else deal with that.”

Speaker 5:

Yeah.

Matt:

So, you’re spending so many places, especially in the early stages. And to try and do it all, you just end up burning yourself out.

Speaker 5:

Yeah. Thank you.

Chris:

Yeah. I think when it comes to the hotel side of things, a lot of businesses do it, where they provide that service, where they book up all the hotels for you and everything else. But I think you have to build up that raport first, dont do it straight off the bat. Make sure that they’re right for your business.

Speaker 5:

Yeah. But, as soon as you open up service out there, you’re actually a connected operator-

Matt:

Yeah. Yeah, it’s out there. Yeah.

Frank:

Really interesting business. And, from a point of view of how you set about the actual itineraries that you do for guests, do you strictly do it bespoke to what people want? Or do you give them an idea… Do you have some sort of a template that people can come and say, “I’ve got a group of six, and-“

Matt:

Yes, but… Yeah.

Frank:

“This is the kind of…” The sort of the high, medium, and low. “We’re good, we’re not so good, and…”

Matt:

Yeah.

Frank:

You know, “We’re not so fit,” maybe.

Matt:

So, you’ve got products that work, and people who go, “I want bespoke.” But you’re still kind of spoon-feeding them ideas, because they don’t know what they want. And so it’s kind of… You’re giving them the ideas. So we have stuff that we know really works, and that is good. But then if people are like, “No, I want to do this, this, this, and this,” then we make it happen. And we’re kind of a niche that finds ourselves to be the folk who are the go-to guys for, say, the destination management companies, if they get a request, and they’re like, “We can’t do this.” They’ll come to us, and then we’ll make it happen. And it’s normally to do with…

And what we’re finding is, more people are switching to… I keep saying switching barracks, an old army term. Sorry, folks. But when I started doing this, I just spoke talking about military terminology, and all my instructors had to go in Google what I was actually talking about… So, yeah, sorry. So, I’m sorry, I digress there. I forgot what your question was.

Frank:

Oh, it was about the diversity of…

Matt:

Yeah, the bespoke-ness.

Frank:

that you actually do, and…

Matt:

So, yes. So what we’re finding is, more people are disconnecting from technology to reconnect with nature. And the way we explain it to them, there’s only so many ways you’re going to reconnect. And I’ll probably get it for you guys as you’re connecting through people. You’re connecting through nature. You’re connecting through experiences, and the outdoors. And then when you’ve done all that, then you jump on technology, and you go, “Oh, yeah!”

Chris:

Just looking at everything, do you know what I mean?

Matt:

Yeah, honestly. Just cut all that out, and just go back to grassroots, and then give them… So, it’s a bit of a mix-and-match of, “We can do this, this, and this.” And they’re like… “No, we want to do this, this, and this.” So then we make it happen. So, yeah. Anyway, we’ve got packages, of course, that work. Yeah.

Chris:

Could you put the phones in a safe…

Matt:

We can do sometimes, yeah. It depends how hardcore they want to go, do you know what I mean? Like I said from the start, some people will just like the idea of it, but it… Psychologically, and that’s what it’s down to at the end of the day, “Great, guys, we’re all gonna head out for a week, and we’re going to go into Wales and survive.” For some of yous, that’d be your worst nightmare. For some of you, it’s like, “Yeah, it’s great.”

But if I say, “We’re just going to do a couple of days, and then we’re going to go to a five-star hotel,” you’ll go, “Ah, pff, yeah, count me in.” Because you know there’s an end state. But it’s when you don’t know there’s an end state, that’s when… And it’s quite good, in seeing people change and come out of their comfort zones, and then, at the end of it, they look back and go, “Wow, that was awesome.” And actually, if you look back in your own personal lives, the most vivid times you remember is when you were probably uncomfortable. And you go, “They were actually the best times.” You don’t think it at the time. Somebody’s going to go, “No, that’s not true.” You know what I mean? But for a lot of people that is. It just depends how you look at it.

Chris:

Oh, that’s good, because do you know what? I remember when I… I think it was halfway up Mount Fuji, and I was going, “What the hell am I doing?” And then, when you get to the top, you’re like, “Okay. This makes it worth while.”

Matt:

Yeah, of course. yeah…

Chris:

Any last questions for Matt? Jessica’s got one.

Matt:

Okay.

Jessica:

So, for most tour companies, they’re obviously, especially in Scotland, going into their kind of low season. What do you do as a company to prepare for that, and the reduction in sales? Or, actually, when you plan out your diary, do you actually have that, if everyone’s kind of a little bit more extreme?

Matt:

Of course. Yeah, yeah. So, a few years back, we… Obviously, we plan it like a year in advance. And we started… Well, what have we got in Scotland when it’s cold? We’ve got snow, and we’ve got the mountains. So we’re doing winter survival. We’re going ski touring. We actually took bell tents up the top of the Cairngorms, and the Scottish ski tour will go at the top, and they will come off, and they will go home. And they will come back, and they’ll do the same thing again on a weekend, when there’s a few…

We’ve got halfway house, with a wood burning stove there, then that’s something different. And it’s just thinking out of the box, and doing different things. So, yeah. Through trial and error. And then we’ve got packages where we can go to Norway and do a ski tour, and stuff like that. So… Yeah, of course. But, so, you just kind of keep the ball rolling, and keep yourself alive and active.

Chris:

Yeah, there’s plenty of those different sort of products and services, depending on the seasonality and stuff. A lot businesses just shut off, and that’s it.

Matt:

Yeah.

Chris:

And at the end of the season, you’re thinking of what other sort of opportunity you could be looking at, and making more money stuff. So, yeah, completely agree. Well, I can’t thank you enough for your time. I appreciate you coming on. And-

Matt:

All right. Thank you. Thank you, guys. Of course.

Chris:

Before you leave, could I ask, what is your favorite place in the world? Is it Scotland?

Matt:

Scotland, mate, yeah! Obviously, when I got out of the army, because I was still passionate about traveling and doing expeditions, I was going to Bulgaria, doing horse archery. I was going to Norway, and I was going here, and I was going there. And the wife was, “Why did you quit the army?” And I was like, “Because I wanted to spend time with you and the kids.” And she was like, “Well, you’re not doing that.” I was like, “Oh, nether am I.” She goes, “Everything’s in Scotland.” And I was like, “Do you know what? You’re right. Everything is in Scotland.” And I’ve been here ever since. I’ve been here all my days, and I always come back. Even when I was in the army, and I’d go away, I missed the greenery, and I missed the hills. So, yeah. Scotland, mate. Through and through.

Chris:

Thanks again. Could everyone give Matt a massive thank you? Goodbye.

Matt:

Thanks. Cheers.

Need more free advice?

Chris and his team will send you a weekly email offering high-value insight and advice about a variety of marketing and business development topics related to the tourism industry. We address specific destinations, tours and activities, and the hotel industry. We also provide important travel industry news and updates.

The post Growing a Successful Adventure Brand in Scotland appeared first on Tourism Marketing Agency.

A little background on cookies

For those who don’t know what a cookie is (the digital, less-delicious form), I’d like to explain in a little detail. A cookie is a piece of code that provides the website owner or webmaster with information on how a user interacts with a website — telling them how a user finds the website and also how they move through the webpages on the journey towards making a purchase. The two most well-known third-party cookies are Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel, and the insight they provide marketers is immeasurable. So, with this in mind, you will understand why Google Chrome’s intention to restrict third-party cookies is going to be a ‘ball ache’ for all tourism businesses and marketing professionals alike.

Cross-platform targeting

We’ve covered the theory; let’s look at a more practical example: cross-platform targeting. A typical cross-platform targeting strategy may look something like this:  you run a Facebook campaign that directs users to a specific product page on your website and they don’t make a purchase. So, in order to hold on to the user’s attention, you run Google display ads that ‘follow’ them around the web so that they remember your brand later,  when they are ready to make that purchase. Without third-party cookies, cross-platform targeting may no longer be possible.

Why is Google changing its cookie policy?

Google isn’t just trying to frustrate business owners and marketers the world over with this change in policy; it is doing this to protect its users’ privacy — which for some may seem enjoyably ironic… But Google really does seem to be taking the right steps to protect privacy and safeguard its users, however, it is not yet clear how this will work in conjunction with Google’s own advertising platform.

How might this change benefit Google?

One benefit to Google that will almost certainly come from this change, is the additional control they will have over where you spend your hard-earned ad budget. For a while now, I have been an advocate of Facebook Ads as they are a cheaper and, arguably, more targeted way of advertising to your target audience – especially as the price of Google Ads is ever increasing, which is partly due to OTAs (Check out my Battle for Tours and Activities – Part 2 for more on this topic). With Google’s changes, you won’t be able to tell in Google Analytics whether a booking on your website originated from a Facebook Ad. It’s obvious that this would benefit Google and harm Facebook. However, I do expect that you will still be able to see these transactions from within Facebook’s own analytics.

I have mainly concentrated on channels like Facebook and Google, but consider how this may affect OTAs like TripAdvisor, GetYourGuide, etc. It may end up being harder and more expensive for them to track the user journey or to create their own paid ad campaigns on Google. Time will tell…

What this means for your marketing campaigns

Although it’s very early days, it seems that you will need to run your ads on both Facebook and Google, and that you will have to keep your campaigns separate to have a chance of seeing where your customers are arriving on your site. This will increase the amount of time required to review and report on your strategies as well as possibly making it more expensive for marketing agencies.

Tracking conversions is something Google is looking at, along with Apple, who are at the early stage of developing a way that businesses and marketing professionals may be able to track conversion data without identifying the individual user. It’s still unknown whether this will be free or a paid feature…

This move will do one of two things to your marketing efforts: i) you will continue to use multiple platforms and it will just be harder, or impossible in some cases, to know where a customer’s purchase journey started or, ii) you will be forced to choose one platform and concentrate your marketing efforts on this. I suspect many will still use multiple platforms, but I urge readers to be prepared to spend more time reporting and analysing how effective they are.

How you can future proof yourself?

If you really want to be able to market your business through any channel, you need to collate and own the data you collect on your customers at the booking stage. This enables you to make better marketing decisions and create better, more-informed strategies that adhere to the rules that Google and the others have set. Collecting data on potential customers will now take more effort through email campaigns or competitions rather than relying on scraping this information from Facebook or Google. Luckily, we have been doing the former with our own customers for years so this will help offset some of the upcoming ‘issues’. If you don’t know if you’re ready for the upcoming changes to Google’s cookie policy or you’d like some help with your digital marketing, please feel free to get in touch; we’re always happy to hear from new tour and activity companies.

Google’s changes to its cookie policy also highlight something I have said many times before and I will say it again: without owning the data you collect on your customers, your business will not win in today’s digital world… and this will only become more apparent in the months and years to come.

Need more free advice?

Chris and his team will send you a weekly email offering high-value insight and advice about a variety of marketing and business development topics related to the tourism industry. We address specific destinations, tours and activities, and the hotel industry. We also provide important travel industry news and updates.

The post Google just made tracking your marketing campaigns a whole lot harder appeared first on Tourism Marketing Agency.

The Digital Tourism Show, episode 224 is brought to you today by tourpreneur.com the podcast for tour professionals. Welcome to a special episode of The Digital Tourism Show. And this episode I have the absolute pleasure of speaking with Shane Whaley of Tourpreneur.

Now, if you’re unfamiliar with Tourpreneur, I urge you to subscribe today. Tourpreneur is a podcast for tour operators where he offers advice, and news about the industry, but not only that, he speaks to other tour operators so they can share their stories and share their advice to help businesses like you grow and prosper. If you haven’t subscribed, please do head over to Tourpreneur.com and subscribe today.

Shane also provides a daily, yes daily email newsletter where he collates the latest news of that given day, and sends out the link to your email inbox.

In this episode I will be covering topics with Shane that have happened over the last 12 months, as well as looking ahead to 2020 and what the future holds. So welcome to The Digital Tourism Show, episode 224.

Chris
It’s good to see you again Shane. I guess Arival was the last time we actually met in person and you booth looked amazing. It looked like you had a lot of people coming up for interviews, so it must have been really good for your own show.

Shane
It was better than I could have imagined. I was a bit nervous beforehand, because I worked on booths before but I’ve never had to organize one. You know yourself being an entrepreneur you have to wear so many different hats, which is why I called my podcast Tourpreneur, because you do the marketing, payroll, taxes, insurance and booth organising is one. And I’m eternally grateful to Checkfront, because they stepped in with Arival, and said, “Hey, we’re sponsor Tourpreneur specialty space.”

And it enabled me to produce content that I would not have been able to do beforehand, because what I’ve noticed with podcasting is, if you go up to someone and shove a microphone under their nose, most people will immediately… get quite frightened off by that. Whereas having prearranged appointments, and sharing some questions in advance, and making it just a 10 minute espresso interview, just to really get a little snapshot of their business, and some of the challenges that they face.

It was phenomenal, and you put out a lot of content as well as being a digital marketing ninja, you’re also a content provider when people come up to you. But you must have had this after your book, Lookers into Bookers where people come up, they shake you by the hand, they look you in the eye and they’re like, “You’ve saved my business,” or, “You really helped my business.” We both look up downloads and read reviews, and they’re all great, but when you have that person to person contact, I was blown away, quite frankly.

Chris
No. It’s amazing. It’s almost like they can psych themselves up before hand They might be a little bit shy, or wanted to talk to you on stuff otherwise they can set themselves up. But in terms of Arival with book, etc the amount of people who came up to me, who I’ve never met before, just come up and say, “Hey Chris, I loved your book, loved your video, love this and it’s phenomenal. And that’s what we try to install in or our own customers to say what content, what… there are good content, good videos, good podcasts, good written content, whatever it is to sell your story, show your personality that ultimately is what will open doors for you. I’m a big believer on that. That’s why I do so much of it myself.

Shane
Absolutely. And I knew about you before started Tourpreneur because having been a former director at GetYourGuide, I came into tours from the hotel industry. I spent 13, 14 years in online hotels. Tours was very new. So I used to watch your videos to educate me at GetYourGuide about what it was like on the other side, and what tour operator challenges there were.

So I was very grateful for your content and I gave a shout out to our friend Matthew Newton this week as well for his book, Sell More To Us, because that was very useful as well.

Chris
Definitely. Got a copy myself.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean he was saying he’s a little out of date now, but I think the gist of what you’re saying is still true and that’s a difficult thing I guess even with your book. Two years down the road, the way things are going here in the United States without getting political, some of the presidential candidates are saying, “Oh, we’re going to break up Facebook.” So that may look completely different this time, right? You never know.

Chris
Well that’s it. But in terms of the fundamentals of marketing, it doesn’t matter the platform, doesn’t matter what it is you use, or the medium you use. Ultimately it’s all about you telling a story. So that is never going to change. So it’s just adapting to the platforms that go into it. I found Arival great. I thought it was an amazing conference. Again, once again.

Shane
What I really liked Chris was I had some listeners of the show come up to me and say, “Oh we were on the fence about coming. It’s a lot of money. It’s time away from the business. But we’ve absolutely loved it. We’ve loved meeting all these rest tech companies face to face, meeting the OTAs, meeting other bike tours from around the country.” And nobody came up to me and said, “Nah, that was not for me.” Everyone absolutely loved it.

And that was really cool to hear, because I know we are both huge supporters of Arival, and we feel that listeners and viewers and subscribers should go and attend, because it will help grow their business. And a large part of that for me is… And I’m not sure if Arival a really would be happy with this, but I’ll say it anyway. For me, Arival now is almost like a school reunion in many ways, where you see people that you talk to online, or you read their posts on LinkedIn and then you meet in person, have a beer or coffee, catch up.

And actually this year, because Arival was getting bigger and bigger, there were people I couldn’t get to see. So Joe Robinson for instance, who was at Redeem, he’s moved now. We were supposed to meet there, we never got time. And there were various others that the time wasn’t enough.

So I like the learning. I love the networking, but also it is like having a couple of beers with people who are in the same boat as you, and we’re all speaking the same language, whereas I’m sure when you go to the football, or have a beer with friends, they don’t really get what we do, and to be around people who understand the challenges, and frustrations and you can use acronyms that they understand. I love that about Arival.

Chris
Yeah, I’m exactly the same. Meeting up with all friends and making new friends, et cetera. And that’s… I think that the Arival there between me and Jessica, who at that point worked for me, now works for Arival.

Shane
Absolutely.

Chris
So now we had about 40 meetings between us, just at Arival, so been able to network, meet new people. And most of those meetings were… I think that it’s just part of my ethos, we of course told them about what we did, but most of the people who came up to us was talking about, “How do I create a better experience on Facebook?” Or, “How do I attract people on Facebook using ads?” Et cetera.

And it was basically stepping out, advising them in most of those meetings. So and off the back of that, that’s made some good business. So every year we make new customers from Arival, so it stimulates their… it’s the go to event, absolutely love Arival. And I’m going to just say me and Shane don’t get paid from Arival or anything.

Shane
Very true.

Chris
So we just love the event. So what was your one takeaway from Arival last time? What would you say was a highlight?

Shane
Ah, well I think what I hear the most, so here’s the thing that was different for me this year, I had 25 interviews racked up, so I didn’t actually get into any of the sessions. However what I experienced was people who were coming in to be interviewed, what they were experiencing on the sessions.

And the one that came back the most was the race tech debate. And it was really interesting too, because my show was mainly geared towards small to medium tour operators, right? So the big guys do listen, but it’s mainly smaller to medium that listen and some of them are like, “Oh, we were really shocked because we work with FareHarbor, we love our FareHarbor account manager.

Our market manager support is great, but what we saw on stage was not what we thought the company was.” And I was hearing that from quite a few different guests that came on the show. So I watched the video, and I could kind of see what they were doing. I thought, is this being blown up? Was it exaggerated? And that was a fascinating debate to watch.

Chris
I watched the video later, and I felt the same way. It was almost as if Max came onto the stage almost in a defensive mode straight away, straight off the bat, rather than just sitting down and discussing about how they can push the industry forward, because in my opinion they all have a place.

They all have their own unique selling points. But I just felt it was a very much our defense stance he took right away from the start, and he was berating other operators, all of other Booking platforms that were they all et cetera. And it just didn’t come across well at all. I really don’t know.

Shane
And the weird thing for me is I interview a lot of our guests. I think if I go back over there, most of the guests FareHarbor is the most popular booking platform they work with. So they’re doing really well in the market. Yes, that they’re aggressive in the market, they’ve been bought by the Booking group, et cetera. But I don’t think that had anything necessarily to come on the stage to be defensive about.

It wasn’t like they’d hiked up a ton of rates, or something had gone down. So I was surprised by that stance, especially when you contrast it with Peek, CheckFront, and Rezdy, who are pretty calm and measured and just talked about how have they saw the market what they are, as opposed to kind of… Mean that the quote that Max came out with that, I forget it now. It was something that some elephants die or something. And I was like, “No, this is our industry. This isn’t wall street.

This isn’t an investing conference.” The cool thing about our industry is we all share knowledge. Yeah, we compete but we share knowledge. We help each other out. I really see that especially with tour operators. I always remember one of our shows Mike Down in Charleston runs a ghost tour and really bad car accident, hospitalized for six months, or so, and Bulldog Tours towards jumped in and ran his tours for him, they’re big competitor. And they were like, “Don’t worry, we’ll help you.

And I see this throughout our industry that, and we’ll get on to get you go to Originals in a minute, because that’s going to be interesting how that goes down in the marketplace. Yeah. I’m not sure if somebody had coached Max incorrectly or he didn’t read the room was with my opinions. It’s a shame, FareHarbor do a lot of good stuff. But what I will say is some of the FareHarbor customers who I spoke with were like, “Yeah, we’re not going to leave FareHarbor. We love our market managers. We were just taken aback by the stance.

Chris
I think a lot of people were, But no I’d say, I don’t see how they’re going to affect the business. They’re too big to be honest, so it won’t affect the business that much. Not like I thought.

Shane
Yeah. And there was that central question and I guess this is probably why Max felt he had his back to the wall, because Bokun weren’t up there. And of course, FareHarbor got bought by Booking and there was that discussion should an OTA on a Rez system, et cetera. And I don’t know what you find talking to your customers and people in the industry, but most of my listeners, they don’t really care.

Chris
Yeah. No they don’t.

Shane
And I know this makes the case that why would you let an OTA on your plumbing? And I understand it, but most small to medium size tours I was like, “I don’t really care as long as it works. As long as it’s price I can afford it, does everything that I need, doesn’t give any headaches. I don’t really care who owns it.”

Chris
Yeah. Oh yeah. No, I agree to a certain extent. I’m not talking about OTAs, et cetera. Whether it’s them buying up Booking platforms, or them promoting their own businesses, etc. OTAs have a place, I think the OTA should be there to compliment the suppliers, and the operators and everything else to help them generate more business.

But what I agree with Peter Syme in terms of his angle owners is I think OTAs are now getting to a stage where it’s more of a detriment to the industry from a personal perspective, than as a help. Though a lot of businesses out there are looking to grow their own brands and grow their own businesses and actually be a business, but a few are hiding behind a TripAdvisor or GetYourGuide, or any of the other OTAs.

And your brand is not at the forefront, and you’re also not in charge of your own customer data, then to me that is a major issue. That was an article I wrote all about OTAs, competing onGoogle ads against their own suppliers and everything else is unsustainable suppliers just won’t be able to afford doing their own marketing as well as being on OTAs, is paying the commissions as well as the operating costs, et cetera, et cetera.

And all these litte things when you’re talking about bookkeeping, another thing else and the whole Tourpreneur aspect of it is how are they going to make money? So something has to change and it’s just unsustainable in my opinion at the moment.

Shane
Yeah. I mean I come to it from a different view. I worked for an OTA for 15 years or so on the hotel and the tour sites. So I’ve seen how much money can be made by tour operators-

Chris
Oh for sure.

Shane
… who work with OTAs. And let’s be honest, you deal with Facebook ads, Google ads, you know that’s not cheap and costs are rising. So if you are pairing and paying an OTA 25%, and you’re getting good business out of it, and it’s saving you from either trying to learn Facebook yourself and throw a load of money down the toilet quite frankly, because it’s a tough thing to learn. It takes a while.

That’s why there’s people at your own Chris that do this professionally, or going with a digital marketing agency who promised the world and doesn’t deliver. There’s a lot of that going on. And then you look at that 25%. I know Peter Syme is right, you’ve got to look at your bottom line and your profits.

But then I do think, “Okay, how much time should you dedicate to running your own Facebook ads and Google ads, versus getting out with your tour guides and doing quality evaluation or talking to your customers to find out, ‘Hey how can we improve this? How can we enhance it? What else would you like to see?'” So I understand the dangers of it. But I do also know the OTAs have supported a lot of tour business.

Chris
Oh, for sure. I know a lot of people may think I’m completely against OTAs. I’m not, like I say, the have the place to have… they do help a lot of different businesses. But I know, I suppose I come to it from the aspect of if a person also who wants to grow their own brand, and have their own brand name and everything else being seen in the industry.

It’s going to be harder relying on OTAs for that, because obviously a TripAdvisor logo or GetYourGuide logo, or Booking.com logo, or whatever it would be is always going to be at the forefront. But where there’s always…

To me there should be like something like I don’t know how I would want that, like a noncompete clause. So if you are helping our supplier, you can’t run ads against their own ads and that type of thing. So I think there’s a lot of things that should come into it.

Shane
You see that that does happen if you have enough clout. So I don’t think I’m betraying confidence, to say this is across the board. So my time at GetYourGuide Empire State Building would come after you, their SEO police and SEM police would really chase you. And I know all the OTAs were threatened with Empire State Building walking away, because they will, because the problem at an OTA…

And again, I haven’t worked to GetYourGuide for almost two years, right? So things have changed. It’s the same thing Booking.com. You’ve got almost this room full of geeks that are locked away in a vault and they’re doing all the SEM. So there’s not much conversation, and they don’t want to have keywords that they can’t use, because they’re running all these algorithms and whatever else.

So occasionally you will get an error where suddenly an OTA will be keyword in Empire State Building and guarantee you get a phone call from the managing director saying that if this isn’t off by the end of the day, we’re ceasing working with you. So if you have enough clout, there is almost that noncompete. But a rafting tour, or walk in tour, a brewery tour the OTA just going to laugh at you. And then the other day I was looking at, I think this is the big difference I’ve seen.

So in my time at GetYourGuide I would scream at them to spend more money on PPC, and adwords for some of our kind of secondary tours and not the Empire State Building but for instance, Jeff who runs Chicago Underground Donut Tours promote that.

And I did see a couple months ago that suddenly they are spending a lot more money on those ad-words. Now I don’t know how Jeff feels about that. I’ll have to ask him on another episode of the show, or maybe he wants to respond to this on the Facebook group. He may be happy thinking, “Well yeah, and I’m paying them 25%, but I don’t have to worry about my Google ads.

They’re taking care of it for me.” Or he can be like, “No, this is cannibalizing my own campaigns. I want to be in control of it myself. This is something.” And he’s a from a marketing background, so maybe he does feel that way. But for a lot of tour operators it… You’re outsourcing all of that to an OTA.

Chris
No, I completely get that, from our perspective, and I don’t want to dwell on this too much, but from our perspective it’s driving up the cost of Google ads. So it’s actually becoming to a stage now where a lot of operators, especially the smaller ones, just can’t afford to do Google ads and all at the moment are migrating over the Facebook ads, because it’s a lot cheaper and ads are more targeted to be fair, but it’s a lot cheaper option.

So it’s almost like Google ads is now going to become just for the few other than the many as such. So it’s a double edged sword. I can see the many benefits of OTAs, but I also think it’s having an effect to the industry as a whole, sort it’s just finding that balance, and I just don’t think the balance is there at the moment.

Shane
You’re right. And I hear the advice, just give the OTAs the tours that you’re struggling to sell or if it’s a quiet period. But I know from experience the OTAs will be all over you if they want your top products. They don’t want your secondary. They want your flagship product and they want it on their books.

So it is tough to adhere to that strategy. What I’m excited about with OTA, so last week I was at the America Outdoors Conference in Salt Lake City in Utah. Very, very different sector of the industry. It’s one that I’m not that familiar with. I’m not really much of an outdoors man. I don’t ski and snowboard, but a lot of those guys are… One guy I was talking to, he was asking me about OTAs, and I have to say to him, “Look, I wouldn’t worry about him just for now because he runs snowmobile tours in New Hampshire.

And what I can say is that the OTAs are not touching the… I mean I’m sure TripAdvisor have product there, but they’re not certainly not prioritizing it. They’re prioritizing New York, San Francisco, Chicago, LA, et cetera. Those secondary tertiary areas. They will come in time, because the same thing happened in the hotel industry when I started my career in the OTA I worked for a small British company called Active Hotels and Active Hotels went on to be bought by a more well known company called Priceline and Booking.com.

But at that time why Active Hotels did really well and ran rings around Expedia was because they had a system where you could be a small BMB Inverness and you could work with the active hotel system. You couldn’t work with the other OTAs at the time, because they took money on Booking, whereas the active model was payment on departure. But my main point is active were able to get into those regions and deliver revenue. That’s what I want to see, and I do feel it’s just a matter of time.

So whether it’s New Hampshire, or Inverness for instance, it’s like, “Yeah, I want to see the OTA is promoting those areas,” because the big issue I’ve heard about this year is actually discovery for sure, and how are these most specialist tours get discovered, that’s the headache and that’s when they do need to use ad-words. But even then they go spend a lot of money to the crack of that. And that’s what I’m excited about going forward.

Chris
The sustainability part of that as well, rather than always promoting the heavy populated areas, it’s telling people about and letting them discover the lesser known but equally as great destinations, et cetera and cities, et cetera. So I think-

Shane
This is why we are talking about Booking this year. So we’ll go onto this Booking have basically shelved their experiences team, which was a big shock. I think to everybody. I still have not found out the reason why. So if there’s any Booking.com HR directors listening, you guys have done a good job, because nobody will talk to me.

They’re all like, “No, we can’t say anything,” and I know redundancies are at play, and some people are moving within the organization, but they’ve clammed up. And the reason I bring that up, because I really felt that with Booking with the data that they have. So let’s say I did book a hotel in Inverness.

Booking knows I’m there, and then they can flash up on the app, “Hey, here’s three really cool tours or activities in Inverness, that I may not be aware that there’s a biking tour, or a particular walking tour, or a whiskey tour,” whatever it may be. And they’re pushing that to me. So that’s what I was really excited about with Booking.com.

Chris
There is almost a natural journey… your hotel, flights and hotel and then what can you do, what experience can you take? And it all fitted in.

Shane
And again, if you think about it, they know like, “Oh that person’s inverness for five days. We might be able to offer them a multi-day tour of the highlands and islands.” That’s where I was, and I’m sure the others will get there. But I really felt Booking, we’re kind of in pull position just for the sheer amount of data they have, I mean…

Chris
It was a shock, especially when, was it Glenn Fogel the CEO, was talking about it just at Phocuswright conference on the video. He was talking about how they are building that area up. And they are actually… Although I find it quite funny about his quote saying they mostly deal with or try to promote direct bookings rather than using Google ads, et cetera.

Which I thought the irony of that was not lost on me, after talking about that then literally a week or two later, or whenever it was, then they announced that they are pulling out… I don’t know are they pulling out completely, or they’re just not bringing any new ones on board, or they’re still going to offer experiences at the end of the booking and they’re just not bringing in new ones, or they actually… or is that them. Completely done what do you think?

Shane
So what I had heard, and bearing in mind, this isn’t confirmed, but I’d heard that they basically got rid of all their experiences teams. So you have to ask yourself if they’re keeping attractions, and experiences who’s going to be managing those. But the press office did say we haven’t abandoned that, our strategy is still the same.

So we could argue, and again, I have no evidence to offer here that Glenn Muller turned around and said, “Right now this team are not recruiting a product at a speed that we need to compete. We are way behind everyone else. We’re spending all this money on staff. Why wouldn’t they just use FareHarbor?” I was just about to say that maybe this is a precursor, because the agreement they have with FareHarbor is that they bought and now own FareHarbor, but they treat it as a separate company. I wonder if it’s now going to be more integrated and that FareHarbor’s actually going to be running as part of it. And to me that makes more sense.

Absolutely. And I thought that from day one is that’s why they were buying it. The plug it in and say, “Right now we can have this connected trip that Glen is often talking about.” And I was lucky enough to work closely with Glenn for quite a while.

We have a good friendship and he’s one shrewd guy and you just got to look at Priceline stock price for instance. Compare that with Expedia, and compare it with TripAdvisor, and they’ve done amazing things under his stewardship and most of the acquisitions that Priceline/Booking holdings have made were actually made by Glen, that was his department.

So I was talking to a couple of Booking people just last week, and what they did say to me, it was that they’re really pleased to have Glenn at the helm and he’s doing really good things internally. So I don’t think they’ve completely pulled out the space. Why would they? It’s valued at 180 billion. They sat and all it’s data, I just think they haven’t quite worked out.

I actually think they couldn’t acquire at the speed they needed. Which is quite surprising, because that was part of my role at GetYourGuide and when I was at Booking.com and for them to walk into a tour operator and say, “Hey, we have all these people Booking hotels with us in your city. We want to offer them your tour.” I’m surprised that they weren’t able to acquire it at a quicker pace.

Chris
I think maybe them and… We talked about share prices, obviously TripAdvisor, et cetera lost a lot of shares recently, or the value of the shares. And I think it’s maybe because it’s two fold, it’s one they maybe they underestimated how hard it is to acquire this market, or run in the top tours and activities market.

But also because it’s not like flights, and it’s not like hotels where it’s quite standardized. It’s such a… And that’s sort of, when it comes to tech, it’s such a fractured industry in that sort of sense. And I think that’s maybe what they’re starting to realize. “Okay. Right. Let’s see.

It’s take a lot longer than what we thought.” They blamed Google. I don’t agree with that personally. But I’ve got own thoughts on that but they… I just think that they’ve suddenly realized, okay, this is not going to be as easy a nut to crack, because some of the other industries like flights and hotels.

Shane
I think you’re absolutely right. But then when you think about how, see this is how I view it at Booking, I think that tours and activities was like the ugly stepchild. They probably weren’t getting the resources, because their stock price lives or dies right now by lodging and accommodation.

So was Ram’s team given enough resource to actually build what I just described pushing out towards to the app and things like that? Or is it a case they were feeding off scraps and that’s why they didn’t grow as fast? I don’t know. And again, I have no intelligence on that. Just how I perceive having worked for OTA is it’s really hard to get resource.

Chris
Yes. No, I agree. I agree. I think it’s a resource thing. It’s just like I say, it’s a difficult sector to crack, and to get people, and I know this is the same at other destinations as well but, Scotland where I’m from is such a… Has really high rates of tourism coming over to Scotland as you can imagine. But most tour operators over here don’t have websites, or booking capability yet.

So it’s like that’s why they rely so heavily on OTAs, et cetera for that type of thing. So when you’ve not got that aspect and people so far behind in this industry, and many destinations that’s why we will often Bokun at 0.01% or wherever it was at the time, and stuff and all that’s gone up since then. But they’ll just trying to get people on to our booking platform, which…

And that’s part of the strategy that TripAdvisor had. I thought it was a good strategy just to get as many people on to a booking platform as possible and allow people to book online. I agree with that, that there were maybe it just didn’t happen quite as fast as what they hoped to. Maybe they’ll shareholders decided to know the investment they had and that this is not what the shareholders decided who don’t really put the brakes on here a little bit or something. So I don’t know.

Shane
I mean Glenn’s got a track record of being quite ruthless, coming in. I mean he’s come in, he… Then CEO Gillian Tans is now chairwoman. He made that decision quite quickly, so he doesn’t hang about, he won’t let anything linger. He’ll make those quite quickly. So my feeling is they haven’t gone away from the industry.

They will be back. I think they will plug into the FareHarbor content and start using that. I just can’t see why they would walk away from an industry that… They need to grow, and it seems to me that they’ve got maybe, I don’t know the percentage, but nearly every lodging in the world pretty much. So where do they grow? How do they grow? They’ve got car hire and also on their website it was kind of hard to find the experiences side as well. So I think there’ll be back.

Chris
Yeah, no, definitely. I don’t see any reason why they wouldn’t be, to be honest. No, if I keep it under sort of a track of the OTAs and what was your mostly to GetYourGuide experiences, I know you had some thoughts on that. What was your… Obviously you used to work there.

Shane
Yeah, I did, and at the tail end of my time and GetYourGuide the whole originals came up, and I was never a huge fan, and I’ll tell you why. And this was coming from the OTA perspective not even the Tour operator perspective, but what I loved about my time at Booking.com so I manage…

I opened up Scandinavian markets. I then opened up West Coast and Canada, oversaw a lot of offices, a lot of important markets, and I loved walking into a hotel with my market manager and saying, “Hey, our data is telling us if you have a minimum of eight photos, if you have a photo of the TV and a photo of the bathroom hotels that have that increased the conversion,” and then it was down to the hotel to say, “Okay, we’ll act on that. We’ll do it.

We’ll get someone in to take pictures.” Or they wouldn’t, and that was down to them. And I love that. Giving the data to everybody, making it a level playing field and saying, “This is what we’ve learned on conversion.” Now I don’t know, because obviously I left GetYourGuide a while ago how that’s working now, but there is a part of me that just feels, “What if they have GetYourGuide, are they just going to give all that data to their originals partner, and not to the rest of the market?”

And that’s something that had I still been there, I would have struggled with, because I want to see everyone take advantage of that data and succeed. And if anyone can get you guys listening, if that’s completely incorrect and you’re still giving that data out, then forgive me and I apologize and let us know, but that was what… When you start to pick favorites in a market, and also on the flip side of it there is…

I remember Tao Tao did his, Ask Me Anything Arival Berlin and I got my microphone out, spoke to some tour operator said, “Hey, you want to come on and share your views about GetYourGuide Originals .” They were like, “No. We want to come on air. We’re really annoyed about it. We think it’s competing with us, but they give us so much business.” I don’t want to go on the record, which I completely understand, because why would you. I am hearing from the industry a lot of discomfort around this.

And then there was the talk that my former boss, Johannes Reck the CEO gave where he was saying that in a few years time he wants 50% of their business to be GetYourGuide Original, and you just start to think, “Well what does that mean? That if you’re running Walking Tours in Edinburgh and they’re coming in and branding another Walking Tours, what does that mean for your business? Why should you bother working with GetYourGuide if they’re just going to have that one favored Walking Tour. How do you do that?”

Chris
Yeah, it’s going to go… Obviously they’re trying to go along the model of Airbnb, or the Airbnb experiences, or even other Tours by Locals as well, because they’re always branded up Tours by Locals and they use their own guides and they actually train up their own guides as well and stuff.

So they’ve obviously been working at that model and thinking, Okay, for whatever reason they like that model, rather than trying to be another TripAdvisor. So maybe I can see maybe why they’re doing it, because they’re trying to do something different from their TripAdvisor, et cetera. But not what other people that are doing it all. Like I said, Tours by Locals and Airbnb.

So it’s a funny one. That’s a funny one. I feel like if you’re just an operator who does tours themselves, and you don’t really want the aspect of running our business then yeah, Tours by locals or GetYourGuide Experiences or Airbnb experiences, perfect. That’s probably the ideal situation you can be in and just take out passive income from it. But if you don’t want to be an Uber driver as such with your own business and with your own brand it’s not going to be for you.

Shane
Yeah. And I think… I mean I get it from a brand perspective as well, because I think it’s fair to say there is no brand loyalty in tours and activities yet. There’s some global players like Gray Line for instance, or maybe city sightseeing or Big Bus, but generally like I went on a tour in Salt Lake City, I don’t even know the name of that tour operator because we work in this bubble, right?

But if I was Joe public, I would not be able to tell you that it was city sites who ran that tour. So I think what you got to try to do is to build the originals up. So let’s say I’ve come to Edinburgh, but a really good experience on GetYourGuide Originals. I’m going to Berlin, “Oh, I wonder if they have one of those Originals tours GetYourGuide. I think that’s also a route to them building that brand.

And I get it, they have a lot of criteria in order to be a GetYourGuide Originals, I think it’s the average score was 4.8 out of five, whereas their average across the board for most of their non-original product is 4.4. So I get it. They’re creating… They’re trying to create a standard, which we’ve talked about a lot in hotels, star ratings, et cetera. We don’t have that in tours. So I agree with you in some ways that it’s a double edged sword.

I like the standard. Creating standards. I get they’re trying to build a brand, but in the shoes of a tour operator, I’d be very, very nervous.

Chris
Yeah. And you made a good point when you mentioned Gray Line and Big Bus et cetera, et cetera. I know it’s technically, and they’re going to probably hate me for saying this, but they are technically for lack of a better word an OTA as well as people going to buy into the brand, or whether it’s a licensee , or a franchise or whatever it will be that are buying into that brand.

Shane
But that’s people consciously think, “Okay, I want to run my business. I want to change my brand from this to this,” because they value that brand, Gray Line et cetera. They are all amazing brands that are well known across the world, so why not. And also that’s what GetYourGuide are trying to do with that as well. So yeah, it can work for big businesses as well, but it’s…

As well as those big businesses that would want to… But you can imagine like… Gray Line Orlando for example, suddenly not going to be Gray Line Orlando anymore. We’re going to be getting GetYourGuide Originals. It’s going to be a harder nut to crack I would have thought.

Yeah. And what happens when… So as I understand listening to Wilfred Fan at Klook, at Arival Bangkok, he was saying that there wasn’t a route they were going to go down, but that could change, because all these OTAs are looking and if they see, GetYourGuide achieving success with Originals, they’re going to pile in. So what are you going to have Klook Originals and Expedia Originals and it’s again, again, very interesting marketplace with everyone picking favorites.

Chris
Yeah. And look, it’s going to be, well, you mentioned Expedia is going to be adjusted, but they are going to do it after the CEOs resigned. So it’s… Was it Mark? Was is Okerstrom? Is that how you pronounce it?

Shane
Yeah.

Chris
Allan Pectoral so it’s… That was a shocker. I wasn’t expecting that one. But it just shows you how… Like I said, we mentioned earlier it just shows you how volatile this industry is in terms of them trying to crack it… they obviously has a lot of disagreements and some… I don’t know what those disagreements were, but obviously didn’t align with what Expedia are trying to do.

Shane
Yeah. And it’s all tied to the stock price for these big public companies. Once that starts plummeting, as we know it will start to roll. Barry Diller he’s not shrinking violent either. He will take action when needed to protect the business, so I don’t… I don’t know how you feel about the tours and activities with Expedia. I don’t come across them so much.

I don’t really come across them promoting their tours. Not many of our guests have really talked about them as an OTA that delivers a lot of bookings. I’ve always… Again, you would think maybe they suffer the same issue I discussed with Booking where maybe they are not getting the resource out of Expedia in order to build this into a real kind of OTA for tours and activities, because they’ve got the data…

Chris
They’ve got the data, and they are a massive company I think, no, obviously the bigger than Europe, I believe, than they are anybody else but always remember Expedia way back when we used to develop websites and did all these things as well, et cetera. Or when you actually looked at the systems Expedia had at that time, and maybe even still today, there were still quite far behind some of the other tech companies in that sort of sense.

And I think that maybe playing a little bit of catch up in terms of that. So I think that’s what their thought process are still going through. Though I would hate to say it, but that’s one of the reasons why Thomas Cook went under, but they were playing catch up or they left a hell of a lot… They left too late, to be at forefront of the industry in terms of… When you think about it…

The amount of data Thomas Cook would have had as well, with all the shops that they had and everythng else. The flights, the accommodations, the experiences that they had and everything else. The packages that they offered, they should never have went under, but they just left things a lot to late. And I think Expedia are still going through that phase as well personally, but…

Shane
Which is why I always felt… And again, I don’t have any evidence for this, but I always thought Expedia were going to come in and buy GetYourGuide at some point. Or it would either be Booking would buy them, because at that time GetYourGuide we’re an affiliate partner at the end of your booking hotel, there was a GetYourGuide link plus Kees Koolen the former CEO of Booking was on the board of GetYourGuide. But I always had a feeling that Expedia would come in and buy GetYourGuide.

Chris
Yeah. That’s what I’m saying. I just think that they just do things that a little bit slower than they maybe should have done. And I think that’s maybe why they are where they are at the moment. So yeah, it’s an interesting one. I’ve got a funny feeling we’re going to hear more from Expedia for good or for worse over the next year or two. I think.

Shane
Yeah. I don’t hear much from them. That’s the thing. It’s like I never hear on the tours and activities side anyway. Maybe that will change with the new order over at Expedia or where they just doubled down on their lodging product and flights if that is sent down. I think another interesting thing that I observed with Johannes Rex talk in Berlin where he said GetYourGuide is number one in Europe.

We’re number two in the United States and soon to be number one. Now, obviously a few years ago he was privy to those numbers. There was a big gap quite frankly. But looking now, for instance when I was in Salt Lake City last week, I pulled up both apps and TripAdvisor, this was the score. It was like a rugby score. TripAdvisor 68, GetYourGuide four in terms of activities.

Now again, Salt Lake City, lovely place. But I’m guessing it’s a secondary or tertiary city. I’m pretty confident that GetYourGuide haven’t really focused on Salt Lake City yet, which… There’s a lot of outdoor activities that go on there, and there’s…

I can say TripAdvisor had 68 activities, so when he says they’re going to be number one quick soon in the US, I did kind of raise my eyebrows and thought, “Is that just fighting talk.” And then I’m not privy to the value that they’re delivering in their biggest cities, but I’m pretty sure if I did an audit of these secondary and tertiary destinations, that trip would be some way ahead.

Chris
Yeah. No, I would agree. I would agree. Yeah. Just go back to your point about not Expedia, possibly buying GetYourGuide et cetera, I couldn’t happen now with that the amount of investment they’ve had. It’s impossible for anybody to buy GetYourGuide. Unfortunately, GetYourGuide they are now in that position where they have to make it work, or they’re going to have to sell it cheap.

Shane
Yeah. And I’m being pretty candid on this chat today. I mean, if Johannes listens, I’m not picking on you, but he also said at Phocuswrite Yeah, SoftBank or an investor, but they’re just along for the ride. And I was like, “No. No one has to chip in millions just for the ride.” And the whole SoftBank thing. It’s like you and I, putting money on Rangers and Celtic to win the title, because they pump money into Klook and they’ve pumped money into GetYourGuide. It’s a really odd situation.

Chris
After throwing money aboard, I’m sure we can take some to help from all the podcasts and shows and everything else.

Shane
Absolutely

Chris
That’s a punt for you if you can do that.

Shane
Doesn’t feel wrong for the ride, right? I mean…

Chris
But it really is interesting and I know you are focusing on that and you’ve spoken about Groupon and Amazon, what they are possibly going to be doing, et cetera. Groupon are a funny one in my opinion, because especially here in Europe. Groupon are seen by many as a provider of huge discounted products, whether it’s tours or other products or restaurants or any other things like that…

And I think that is one of the other issues. I know that trying to really get into the space and grow the space within the tours and activities market, but I think a lot of people will only use them because they expect huge discounts. And a lot of operators just can’t provide the discounts that they’re looking for.

And I think they’ve got a bit of an issue with the brand because of that. They really have got a lot of work to do to overcome the discount sort look and feel to the brand. I don’t know if they could pull off to be honest. I don’t know what your thoughts are on that, but-

Shane
Yeah, it’s interesting, because at Arival Orlando, there was a poster in the foyer, which was something like Groupon and there was some… I’ll have to pull up the image now of the photo, but they said no discounts or whatever else. I was like, “Okay, interesting.” And I went over to their stand, and I spoke to someone who was there and she didn’t really know what was happening.

And then I said, “Look can you get your sales director to call me? I’d love to get him on the show, because a lot of our listeners are confused,” because she was telling me, “No, no. We’re not discounting on the tour side,” yet I spoke to someone fairly recently and he was a Tourpreneur and said, “No, no. They made us discount.”

And maybe they have a two pronged approach, but I would love them to come out on your show or and just explain it a little bit more about what they’re trying to do. I feel you’re right. And also what I’ve heard from our listeners is when they have run deals with Groupon, I think it used to be if you worked with Viator automatically added to Groupon. There was something that…

Chris
Yeah, that happened to Peter Syme, again to mention him. I know that he had some one of his tours through Viator, then all of a sudden he came on Groupon and now and it just happened automatically and it wasn’t really the type of customer that he was trying to attract. So yeah.

Shane
And I also heard that the discount buyers are the absolutely worst for leaving bad reviews. They’re expecting a lot more quality or whatever it may be, and they’re quick to leave negative. And that’s weird, isn’t it? You get a 50% off a hotel room, or an activity and then you leave a crappy review. And I worked for a couple of years as VP of sales at a company called Secret Escapes-

Chris
Oh yeah…

Shane
… which I’m sure you’d be familiar with in the UK. So they did flash hotel deals, deep discounts, but only four star and up. And I’ve got onto a lot of these hoteliers and they won’t touch Groupon with the barge pole. They call them the ramen noodle brigade, or pot noodle brigade for your British listeners.

And I don’t mean to be snobby here at all, but what they were saying was those customers would come in, they’d buy cans of beer for their room and sandwiches, they wouldn’t spend it. And the whole thing about flash deal is those hoteliers… Yeah, they want to fill up some rooms, but they want you to have a couple of drinks at the bar, or maybe a meal, or a breakfast, or something. And they never did spend that.

Chris
That’s the whole point. It’s because it’s people looking for something cheap. And that’s… Yeah, that’s a viable market to go after and if that’s what you want to do, but If you are a four or five star hotel, you want people to come in and take meal, et cetera. Then that is not the customer you want.

They are going to just go out and go to McDonald’s or beer in McDonald’s and have a couple cans of beer. Other burger chains do exist by the way… That’s a… No, it’s just that, that’s not the customer you’re going to try to attract if it’s a four or five star hotel. No, that’s…

Shane
Yeah. So that’s interesting because maybe they are going to… I mean let’s see what they do. They’ve been very, very quiet about it, but yet they must’ve pumped a fair bit of money into Arival to be a launch partner. That doesn’t come cheap, so maybe they’re going to take this seriously. And you are quite right to mention Amazon. There was a discussion a few months ago.

Shane
I know some of our listeners said they’d been approached by Amazon confidentially. They weren’t allowed to say much about it. But I haven’t heard any more about that. And I’m reminded a few years ago of Amazon, we’re going to come into the hotel space and in fact they were in the United States for a grand total, I think it was of three months. And then they just pulled the plug and said, “Yeah, this isn’t for us.”

Shane
And I’ve always admired them for it. Bit like maybe what’s happening with Booking we were like, “Oh yeah, this is a lot more difficult than we anticipated.” And I dodged a bullet there, because they headhunted me to head up their sales division for these coasts and it’s Amazon. I was really tempted, but in the end I said, “No, I’m loyal to Secret Escapes. I’m going to stay there.” A month later they go, I’m like, “Whew. Wow.”

Chris
Dodged the bullet.

Shane
Big time. Big time. So what do you think they’re up to?

Shane
There are for sure. They’ll get into so many different things now that they are… They want to be the Walmart of the online, which they are already with that, and they know what to do. So they want to bring in activities, they want to bring in tours. They will eventually come back into the hotel space again.

Chris
I would be surprised if they eventually do have flights to become what Virgin are at the moment, there are probably aspirations for that as well at some point. So they will come back into it and I have been hearing similair rumors as well that they’d been approaching certain operators, et cetera, and trying to bring that part of the business in. So it makes sense for one of the biggest online retailer that is in the world.

Chris
So why would you have something on there but people can buy an experience and give a gift for a loved one, or just to book up a holiday. I think it becomes a one stop shop for pretty much everything. It’s very much like WeChat in Asia where you can get everything on WeChat if they can do that in terms of the Western market, then yeah, they are going to make up.

I would be surprised if someone like Amazon would come in and buy one of the OTAs, or buy one of the Booking systems whatever it would be to integrate it even more. I wrote an article a while back, a bit more tongue in cheek but I still think it could happen, or Facebook buying TripAdvisor for example. But that doesn’t mean to say Amazon could by TripAdvisor, or something.

They have the money to do it. Or even Apple, I think Apple will come into the space as well, they’re developing autonomous vehicles that will no doubt… bring in tours and things aren’t then that as well. So there’ll be other companies out there that’ll be… We don’t realize who will come into the space at some point.

Shane
Yeah. I always say it’s like the gold rush right now, isn’t it? Everyone’s rushing to the West to dig for gold. Some companies are meters away from the seam, and giving up. And then others like GetYourGuide got to give them credit. They’ve been around for a long time at this. There was a lot of learning.

I think that’s the key to acquisition. If you think about it, GetYourGuide have got 10 years of mistakes behind them. Whereas if you want to start a fresh like an Amazon, I mean you’ve got all those mistakes to make. Whereas if you come in, and buy that knowledge and expertise.

Chris
And admit to me that makes me makes more sense for Amazon, or Facebook, or whatever the looking at the industry of what’s happening. Just know over the last three or four years they’ll see how turbulent it’s been and the success.

Shane
as well its had. And then within a few years time they will go, when things may look as if it might… Might take another five years, but if it starts to get a bit more standardized, and things like that, that’s when we’ll just come in and go, “I’ll have that.” And they’ll have another space.

The company we haven’t talked about, because they’re primarily consumer. They’re an OTA, but they’re concerned mainly with attractions is Tiquets with a Q, because they got 60 million from Airbnb, which was a puzzle to me, because it seems to be different from Airbnb experiences, whether again they’ll merge them at some point in the future.

But well done to the tickets team, because I had fears about them. I didn’t know if they could last with all the money being pumped into GetYourGuide and Klook and up against Trip. I was a bit worried for Tiquets and that’s not because I’ve heard anything bad about them. I think they’re a great company, but taking real deep pockets to compete in that space…

Chris
That’s going to be a… It’s going to be an issue for many of the booking. I think it was Arival there, they mentioned something like the 150 Booking platforms that then reservation systems, or whatever it is. It’s incredible. Not within the next five years. I’d be lucky if I was going to be 25 of them, or 50 of them or several of them. If enforced, there’s going to be acquisition.

Some are just going to fall to the wayside, there are a lot of good companies, Tiquets is one. There are a lot of good really good companies out there. And I like the aspect that they are more independent, or this is one of the reasons why I like things like Peek Pro and all the other ones, because they are independent.

They don’t have a FareHarbor or TripAdvisor hanging over their head and shareholder’s saying, “You need to make this, you need to make that.” There’s always going to be a place for an independent system. But yeah there has to be consolidation that can continue with 150 different platforms.

Shane
Yeah, you say that… My eyeopener last week was… So there was a massive kind of exhibition area, vending area and I was like, “Wow.” So Peak were there, they had a booth, FareHarbor had a booth, FlyBook. And I didn’t realize until last week that FlyBook actually started out, which was a Booking engine for Fly Fishermen and Fly Fishing Tours.

So they kind are of that ilk and got them being there. And then there was these other booking platform guys that I was not familiar with. And when I was asking around some of the attendees, or “Who were using your online Bookings,” it was two or three of either these adventure booking platforms that I want to say 90% of people were using, no one said Peak, no one said FareHarbor.

It was these guys. And, I said to Douglas Quinby, because we had dinner together and I was like, “I hadn’t even heard of these guys. Are they in the 150 that we think are out there?” So I think by niche, maybe if you’ve got someone who’s like, “Yeah we’re just specialize on food tours,” or, “Yeah, we’re just specialize on ghost tours.” Now, I don’t know if that’s sustainable as a business.

I don’t know the margins and the finances, but I think… Then I could see a smaller Booking platform working, because you know you’re running a food tour, they understand the challenges, they understand what you need to run that food tour. But yeah, I think it will be a blood bath. And I hate to say this, but every time I attend them on Arival I think, “Oh. You know what Booking platforms are not going to be around this year that I met last year.” It’s a market economy. It’s competition. It’s what happens.

Chris
Yeah, it’s actually quite funny. And I do a similar thing. I take… There was a roll banner of all… it was obviously not all 150 but I put quite a lot of Booking platforms on it. I took a photograph of it, and if they have a summer thing of the year.

Chris
at Arival I take another photograph of it, and just sort of see what the differences are each year on year. Let’s see who’s dropped off or merged or so. Yeah. It’s quite an interesting one. So what would you say was your sort of finish off more positive notes, etc. So what would you say is your highlight of the year? What stood out for you in 2019?

Shane
There was a lot because obviously Tourpreneur started in January of this year. It was an idea-

Chris
Well done to get past your first year?

Shane
Yeah. 

Chris
This was your first year?

Shane
Yeah. And when I was at GetYourGuide, one of my frustrations and I think every sales director experiences this, that you are so involved in strategy meetings. I think 80% of my time there I was involved in recruitment, because we were building a big team that I just didn’t get enough time to get out and sit with tour operators. Yeah.

I sat with the Empire State Building and Disney and all of those, but I never sat down with a brewery tour, or a walking tour. So I’d always… What they fascinated me, and what fascinates me about this space more than any other, is if you have a passion for local breweries that you can build a tour around it and you can make a living out of it. Yeah, it’s tough. It’s hard. It’s not easy at all. And I love hearing these stories of how people are, “Oh yeah, I was a lawyer, but I got fed up of all that.”

Or I got fed up with in the corporate world and I run brewery tours, or a punk rock walking tour of New York. And I love what I’m doing. Every single day I get out of bed with a smile on my face. And I think for me that’s been the real highlight is speaking to people who are happy to go to work, happy to build a business they love that seeing smiling faces on the guests. And also just what’s available in terms of technology. If you think…

I was joking with someone the other day about 20 years ago, 10 years ago to an extent, marketing you’d put an ad in the paper and wait for the phone to ring. You had no idea if that ad was resonating. Whereas you know more than anyone else, because you stick a Facebook ad up, you see straight away, “Oh it’s not converting, let’s change image. Oh now it’s converting. Oh no, it’s not. Let’s change the title.”

All of that ninja tricks that you guys do, and we are able to do within a matter of days to kind of work out if the ad is effective or not. So I’m really excited about more people discovering more of the specialised tours. Everyone who goes to New York city know they can get a… Actually I say that about the Empire State Building.

One of my frustrations always used to be still as I was there last weekend, I walked past the Empire State Building, I see a big line of people outside. That’s just the line to buy a ticket. That’s not the line to get in. And I’m like, “You woke up to smartphones. Just use them to book your GetYourGuide, Tiquets, TripAdvisor, whatever. At least book your ticket to get in there. So we have a long way to go-

Chris
We do.

Shane
… even with the big, big names, but I really look forward to smaller tour operators using the technology that’s out there, because let’s be honest as well that yes, of course your business relies on paying customers that like, “Yeah, I don’t have time to do it. I don’t have time to learn it.

I don’t have time to make mistakes with Facebook. I’ll give them money to Chris, let him go do it.” But for people who are just starting out who don’t have any revenue, there’s YouTube videos they know what your channel is, like I said at the start of the show, I learned so much through watching you.

Even when I started Tourpreneur and I always share that I just paid 400 bucks for a session with someone and then the next week you put out a show that basically covered what she told me and I’m like, “Wow, Chris would have just saved me 400 bucks,” right? So I am excited about this. I’m excited about more Arivals next year. I think they get better each year.

Chris
Skift announced that they are having a one day tour event. That’s interesting.

Shane
One day summit for tour operators. And let’s be clear, because they reached out to me and said, “No, no, no.” He said, “We’re not competing with Arival. This is for the multi-day tour sector, which is still a really important sector.”

Chris
Certainly is a lot of our customer base is multi day. We have obviously a lot of day tour companies here as well that we help. But multi-day is such a huge part of industry. And that’s a funny one, because it’s all the really Tour Radar that are the OTA that helps with that. So everyone else hasn’t really looked that market or cracked that market yet. So it’s… But the guys at Tour Radar they’re doing a really good job with that.

Shane
Yeah. I think GetYourGuide will get in there. I think right now they want to do day tours then they’re going to move into multi-day tours, and maybe that is something where they can be I think more successful. The best multi-day tour I ever did was actually in your home country of Scotland.

I did a Rabbies tour if Highlands and Islands, and one of the best tours I ever went on, it was just you sit back in a mini bus, let someone else drive, someone else sorts the hotels out, the tickets… Anyway, I can go on. So that’s exciting. And then also on the back of that, Chris there was a… I wasn’t able to attend it, but there was I think a one day event or a half day event at World Travel Market this year for tours and activities.

There was a day at ITB in Berlin. So these are big powerhouse names. WTM, ITB, Skift who are all now taking our industry seriously. It’s almost like, “Oh yeah, we’ve ignored this sector,” and what I love about Arival every year they’re getting more and more attendees, and I’m hoping the Skift event draws a good crowd as well, because they know these people are not going to run the events.

But I know, and you know from your subscribers and viewers that tour operators are hungry for information. They’re hungry to learn. They want to take that knowledge and implement it in their business, because there are a lot of empty suit gurus out there that will charge them a load of money for so-called marketing advice, and they don’t understand the language of tours and activities. You do. You’re in the middle of it. This is what you do, Tom Crouch at TRK is another one.

Chris
Yeah. He does it.

Shane
Yeah, absolutely. These are good people in the industry. So I’ll shut up now, but I’m really excited about next year and the years after for tours and activities. This is why we do what we do.

Chris
No. And you hit the nail on the head this is why I put so much free content. So yeah, I run a business, I run a marketing agency, I’ve got staff to pay. Obviously I need to make money to keep the business going. And to make my wife happy. I’ve got a wage coming in and feeding the kids. But then I’m a big believer in terms of when you’re doing marketing as offering as much free advice as possible.

I want to see the industry grow. I want to educate the industry as much as possible. Because at the end of the day people will off the back of that will just come and approach me anyway and ask for help if we need to have the need to et cetera. I understand that we can’t help everyone. There’s a lot of small businesses out there just don’t have budgets for marketing et cetera, or using an agency for marketing.

So I’ve been able to sort of say, “Look, this is what you need to do. And then maybe a few years down the line when you are out of the stage where you want to know work on your business rather than that you do want to look at an agency then that’s what he had for you. But I’ve given up free advice.

I want to see the industry grow as a whole, because it’s such an… As I’ve always says for me, I’m the same it really is the best part of travel. No one really remembers the flights they take or the hotel that they stayed in, but they’ll always remember the experiences they had in their destination. And that to me is the absolute spine and backbone of the industry.

Shane
Absolutely. And here’s the thing, your book right now, up until 31st of December, Lookers into Bookers is five bucks. That’s a pint of beer, or maybe half a pint in London. I live in Vermont.

Chris
But I always say. I thought, again, it’s just one of these things. No, I don’t make money from the book. It’s purely there to… Basically the money that I’ve made so far is basically it’s covered the print costs, because it wasn’t a cheap to print but 400 pages, et cetera. It wasn’t a cheap book to print.

So yeah, I thought now, the print side of it is sold out at the moment. I hope to do another print run. So I thought with the digital one Christmas coming up in January is always a busy time for tour operators, or for most tour operators. But I will not stick up for a fiver, if helps someone know for five pounds to book a few extra tours, then to me it’s done the job.

Shane
Yeah. And I have both versions. I have the print version, because I’m old school, but I love having on my Kindle as well when I’m away from the office, or if I just want to quickly the search for something. So thank you for making it… Someone asked me the other day on Instagram, “Are you going to release an audible version?

Chris
It doesn’t really lend itself to that, because there’s pictures and guides and workshops within it. So I don’t think so in having 400 pages of listening to me doing the audio It might work too well. I don’t know. But it’s a… But I’m going to need to probably use a translator for it if that was the case.

Shane
That’s what I said. I said, “Well I dip in and out of your book. I don’t read it cover to cover.” I will be like, “Oh I need to do some work on Instagram, let me go and read up on my book.”

Chris
And that is the beauty of the book… it’s Broken up into sections so you can do that.

Shane
Yeah, absolutely. So thank you for writing it, because I rely on it a lot.

Chris
Not at all. Not at all. Now I’d like to also sort of mention that for what you guys do and Tourprenuer does. I don’t listen to that many podcasts. But your’s is one I listened to religiously and I was like, without giving you a big head… what you’re doing in the industry, giving tour operators a voice and everything else’s it’s required and it’s needed.

And I commend you for it, and I know you’re looking at doing it for a year, and I know you have to… You’re not going to be there for another year, et cetera. And so hopefully fingers crossed you can continue and keep it going.

Shane
Yeah, the plan is, recruits from sponsors, because obviously like you said, got to keep family happy and put food on the table and everything else. As much as I love doing this, I can’t really afford another expensive hobby. But yeah, I just think that what I’m trying to do with the podcast is Chris, you are an expert in your field. People, pay you to market their tours and activities. I’ve always worked for an OTA. I’ve not run my own tour business.

So what I try and do on the Tourpreneur show is the guest is the expert. The guest is the guru. I want to help flatten the learning curve by sharing someone’s challenges or a nightmare situation they had, or how they got started. And I think the most encouraging thing for me is the amount of people who write and say, “Hey, you know what? I’ve been thinking of running my own tour for years and wasn’t sure how to go about it.

I love listening to your show and I’m planning on launching next year.” What I call Tourpreneurs in waiting, because the great thing about capitalism and market economy, and the free market is we have the tools to do this and we have the tools to get out there and make a living doing what we love.

I read a lot online about people that doom and gloom merchants, and lots of stuff going on in the world. But when you look at the economy and the tools we have, we can build a business. It’s not easy. It’s tough. I know many fail, but the tools are out there, and the knowledge is out there that will enable us to make a living doing something we love.

Chris
Yeah. Oh, definitely. Yeah. And I can’t wait for the Toupreneur global event to happen at some point when you bring it all together.

Shane
I leave the experts like Douglas of Bruce or Alex to do events. I’m more than happy to support all the tour operator that are out there. But I appreciate the vote of confidence.

Chris
So I’d like to finish on sort of I know who I would select, but with all the tour operators you’ve spoke to or seen over the last 12 months, who has been your most outstanding tour operator that you’ve came across so far? Who do you would think? I know you’ve probably got so many you can choose, but if you had to pick one, who would it be?

Shane
I think we’re going to pick the same one here. And that’s Invisible Cities.

Chris
Yeah, that’s exactly what I was going to say.

Shane
And I love what Zakia is doing. I love her passion for this. She’s not doing it to be a celebrity. She really believes in her mission, and the fact that they donate 100% of their profits back. No, not 50%, 70%. It’s 100% of their profits back. It’s really hard not to be motivated by that, and inspired by it.

So that’s one I’d pick. And then I think the other one I actually, just put another one in there, is Jessie at Walk on the Wild Side Tours in New York City, because he was telling me he loves music, he loves punk, post-punk and all that. And he’s built his own tour around walking tours around these sites in New York, which is a very expensive place to live.

And I went on the tour with him and he said, “Yeah I’m making profit now. Now I’m making a living. It’s taken me eight months,” and now I take my hat off to him because it’s hard work. It’s lonely what we do. It can be quite isolating because our friends don’t understand our industry. And so yeah, I mean all the Tourpreneur guests are great. That can be wrong. But that story can resonate with me. How he’s taking his passion for music, built a business around it and making a living in New York City, one of the most expensive cities in the world.

Chris
And that’s when you meet the more successful tours. It’s when it’s something you’re passionate about, you can tell good stories, highlight the experience. And that to me, that’s a… From a marketing company’s point of view, that’s an absolute dream to work with because that’s what you want.

But do I agree with the first one Invisible Cities and for anyone listening or watching who doesn’t know who invisible studies are, watch the Arival video that they posted on there, and she was one of the first speakers. Zakia basically takes homeless people, turns them into tour guides and gives them their lives back.

And I know for a fact that after that speech at Arival, the amount of people who came up to and spoke to her through that whole event was incredible. And the amount of awards that she has won this last year as well, it’s been well justified. So it’s a company I keep watching, I love what she’s doing and long may it continue.

Shane
What I like about Zakia she’s honest. She doesn’t… Yeah, she says, “Yes, sometimes it’s tough to get those guys to turn up on time, and look presentable because that’s the…” But she’s honest about that. To quote her, she said it’s bloody hard, and that’s why I admire her as well.

She’s not getting up like a Gwyneth Paltrow saying this is like unicorn poop or whatever. I know she’s really saying, “Yeah, this is-” Sorry Gwyneth, I know you’re listening to this show… and Chris Martin and I don’t like Cold Play. But no, I respect the fact she’s being honest about how tough it is.

Chris
No, no. True. Exactly, and all credit to her. It’s a very, very hard job. But no, giving people the life back is such an incredible thing. And doing it in a way that… The thing I like about what she does with their businesses is not a charity. It’s actually set up as a proper business, gives the people that she’s helping a sense of security, because it’s seen as a job, not as a handout as it were. So it’s a… Should I say that’s incredible.

Shane
I’m excited, I’m chatting to her shortly. I’m going to start next year. The first two openings we will be with her, because I want… January can be a tough month, right? You’ve had Christmas, new year and it’s like back to it, and I want to start the year with some inspiration, and I just… I don’t think there’s anyone who can beat her right now in our space.

Especially just after the Christmas and new year period and especially for a lot of homeless people, not going to be on the ship. Some good stories and things I had to tell from that one.

Shane
Yeah, absolutely.

Chris
So finally, what would you say is your… What are you looking forward to in 2020? What do you think is going to happen in the next year?

Shane
Oh, really tough question. I don’t know. I think there’s going to… I think I agree with you. I think there’s going to be more acquisition news, I think.

Chris
I think there’s going to be a lot more of it than it has been over the last couple of years. I think 2020 is going to see a massive amount of acquisitions, and some surprising people coming in, whether it’s Amazon, or something along that sort of lines coming in and buying one of the systems, or one of the OTAs or whatever. I think that’s be a big shake up in 2020 personally.

Shane
I also hope… And again, I know this is really difficult for tour operators to offer, but I would love to see dynamic pricing coming in as well this year. I just think there’s such a big opportunity there to sell spaces on your bus when you’re quiet and have a premium price when you be again, I know this is really, really hard in terms of the technology and I’d love to see that come in.

Chris    

Yeah, no, definitely. But again, that’s why all the OTAs are having issues. there’s nothing standardised at the moment. The industry needs to have a more standardised system and I know a lot booking platforms may not like that, but that there has to be something to standardise the industry like what happened with hotels, because it’s not going to…

It’s going to get to the stage where it can’t grow any further, or it’s always going to be sort of left behind compared to the other industries. So it has to… Something has to happen over the next couple of years. Hopefully that will happen at some point.

Shane
The other thing I’d like to see happen, maybe a bit controversial is I would like to see Airbnb become a proper OTA. All these policies they have about minimums and you can only take air… Which they turn a blind eye to a lot of that. You can only take Airbnb. Again, there’s a lot of data and I’m thinking of the tour operator out there, particularly those who have more specialists towards using Airbnb.

I know they’re being very picky who they’re working with. I’m like, “Oh, come on, just be on OTA. You can still curate and have some slightly different than the main OTA. But I really would like to see you just become an OTA.”

Chris
No, I agree. I’ll put my hands up… Anywhere I’m going on a destination. The first place I look at is an Airbnb. I haven’t bought an experience on Airbnb yet, but certainly for accommodation it’s the first place I’ll look up. I think they’re sitting in a little Goldmine now. All they need to just push that button, and they can really blow up and I think.

Shane
I think you’re right. And I think, as I said, the big pin point I’ve heard about in 2019 we’ll hear it again next year is discovery. How do my tours get discovered? And they can play a huge part in that.

Chris
And to be fair enough, Booking are moving more out of the experience space that opens a door for Airbnb. And so why not push a button on it?

Shane
I agree.

Chris
It’s going to interesting times, that’s for sure.

Shane
Definitely. That’s why we do what we do. Every morning I wake up, I write the brief. It’s like, “Okay, what’s happened today? Who’s resigned? Who’s being bought? What new tours are out there?” It’s just such and I know it can be a frustrating industry to make money out as well, but it’s… I can’t see myself ever working in another industry and especially if you say I’m going to do his best part of travel as well. So it’s exciting.

Chris
For sure. I must say I’m so ingrained in this industry and I’m so invested in it and I love it. It’s a bit hard to work on anything else.

Shane
Definitely.

Chris
Well Shane, it’s been an absolute pleasure. We need to do this more often, I think maybe…

Shane
I think you are right.

Chris
Yeah, maybe every six months, or so we’ll do a lot of review view of what’s happened at least or something like that. We can buy enough forces to do another wee mashup. I think that’d be-

Shane
I think that’d be great. And what do the listeners think? That’s the important thing. Just like with tours, asking guests, “Chris and I rapped on too much here and rambled, or have you enjoyed it? Let us know in our respective social media channels,” because that’s what puts gas. Sorry, petrol in our tanks, right?

Chris
Yeah, diesel or unleaded. Even my son Kyle, he obviously… My son is going to be four in January and he, as any kid is is glued to his iPad, et cetera. And he’s… I’ve been to the petrol station. He said, “Are you putting gas in the car.” And I’m like, “Oh God, no.” He’s watching too many American shows. I was like, “All right. Okay.”

Shane
True. Very.

Chris
If I start spelling color without the U, I’ll be mightily unhappy.

Shane
I hear you. I have to be careful. I’m an American citizen now. So I have to adhere to both. I have to be bilingual.

Chris
Of course. Of course. I only joke Yeah, I was going to say we didn’t invent the language first but us Scot’s didn’t really English, so there we go. Even we don’t speak proper English.

Shane
But I am a Welshman so I’m with you there.

Chris
But Shane, an absolute pleasure. And let’s do this again. And as you say, if the listeners love this episode, or the Watchers love this episode, If you want to see us again, just leave comments and we’ll look to do more of this.

Shane
Cheers Chris.

Chris
All right thanks. Cheers.

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Chris and his team will send you a weekly email offering high-value insight and advice about a variety of marketing and business development topics related to the tourism industry. We address specific destinations, tours and activities, and the hotel industry. We also provide important travel industry news and updates.

The post Industry Review of 2019 with Shane from Tourpreneur appeared first on Tourism Marketing Agency.

Welcome to episode 223 of The Digital Tourism Show. In this episode we have the pleasure of speaking with David Bulloch of Travelport.

Now, Travelport as a business you’ve probably never heard of, but they power most of the travel apps and booking systems that you use daily. For example, they developed the EasyJet app. So if you’re interested to know more about what Travelport do and how they can help promote your products through their system, I urge you to watch this episode.

Chris Torres
Thank you very much for coming along.

David Bulloch
No problem. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Chris Torres
That’s alright. It was a while back we first met once it was’nt it

David Bulloch
Yes.

Chris Torres
I’m trying to remember through LinkedIn, wasn’t it? It was Shapr. What was the app where you can have-

David Bulloch
Yes, LinkedIn developed an app called Shapr, it was a bit like Tinder for professionals and you swipe it.

Chris Torres
You’re swiping, going-

David Bulloch
You’d like to let that swipe left and right.

Chris Torres
Just swipe left leg and he’s a marketing is an [inaudible 00:01:07] . Yes. so that was quite interesting. I don’t even know if that still exists. I’m going to have have to check it out. So you’re here on behalf of Travelport. So tell us about more about who Travelport are and what on what you provide to the tourism industry.

David Bulloch
Okay. So can I get a little bit of a history lesson on from Travelport? So we are, historically we’ve been known as a GDS, so if anyone knows that terminology over there if you want to go even farther back a CRS.

So our job was very much collecting all their airline’s, contents so fairs and availability and being able to mix that together and then putting that onto travel agents, desktops, those then evolved into APIs. So you see out there are on kind of website, Skyscanner, et cetera. So we’re probably one of these companies that’s kind of always in the background, incredibly big, but we’re probably behind a lot of the, the brands that you know and you work with but don’t necessarily come across us. I think one of the, you said one of the numbers I wrote down the numbers cause I can never remember it. So we’ve got like 400 odd airlines, including a lot of their low cost carriers, 650000 hotels. It’s so interesting reading numbers out to people and I can’t help it. There are 37000 car hire, but as you said, one of the biggest things in the, certainly from your point of view, and we’ll talk about, we’ve got 68000 agencies and that’s in 180 plus countries.

I don’t know why our marketing department says 180 plus. We could just say 183 that’s the number, but that’s the desktops on front of 235000 actual agents themselves as well. So it’s quite our kind of big spread across globally. The Travelport name that we do.

Chris Torres
So with the benefit of the audience would if they were here for accommodation or tour providers or would they connect or, direct with Travelport or would be through a third party with Travelport. How would that work?

David Bulloch
From, from a hotel point of view, if we took hotels as an instance, it used to always be historically where we’d have the big chains, so Mariott et cetera. Or if somebody was already working with a large kind of provider or kind of aggregator that we would then add into that content. However, I know through a couple of acquisitions we’ve made over the last few years, we can be a lot more agile to bring hotels Airbnbs or apartments on board.

Quite often we’ll do that in conjunction with a local travel management company. So if they’re making a lot of bookings in a particular property, they may come to us because it can streamline the whole process for them and obviously saves on phone calls and the back and forth from that point of view. So it’s something that we’re kind of streamlined. From a tour point of view and that kind of thing, it’s something that we haven’t quite got there properly yet. So there’s been a lot of different ways of approaching it and it’s one of the things I think we’re quite open to as and how we do it. For instance, our agent desktop, which is Smartpoint, has the ability to have kind of apps or plugins on it. So in the past we’ve had different companies, for instance Ingresso was one of them.

Chris Torres
Oh yes.

David Bulloch
Who sold kind of, what do you call it, theater tickets. So it was kind of tying in the idea. So a lot of our travelers are, a lot of travelers are booked through our tour or tools. Certainly on the offline world, our corporate travelers. So we’re doing a lot more of the, I was talking Sunday early, I love that skim over, I hate this phrase, bleasure . So you already have a business traveler going somewhere and yes, they’ll get a nice hotel and the flights will be fine. However, this is the 15th time they’ve been to Denver. What do you offer them this time? People are far more looking for an experience, rather than just, the a to b. yes. So that’s where something like Ingresso being able to sell theater tickets was again a good opportunity. But we could kind of, those are a number of different ones that we’ve gone down the road with as well.

Heathrow Express tickets, it’s all just trying to make this, and it’s a term again i’ve used is a kind of frictionless experience as much as possible. And one of the biggest parts that we’ve been working hard on. I’m not saying we’ve got an answer is at what point you sell as well.

Chris Torres
Well so sort of leads into my next question, because obviously the likes of booking.com et cetera bringing out more tourism activities if that’s even a thing to be part of the buying journey. And are you guys developed from, remember really the EasyJet app is one of your, one of the apps that you actually developed yourselves. So are you looking at those apps you’ve created for these other companies to integrate something along those lines? Do you see that sort of the way the industry developing?

David Bulloch:
Totally. Absolutely. So from our point we’re always working in a B2B model, so we’re always selling to an agent, whether it’s online or offline, sort of front end. In the case of EasyJet, slightly different, I guess with airlines, but no, we’re working with agencies to sell that kind of App. And again, it’s that those, these missed opportunities, the, the travel industry at this point, the margins on air are kind of decreasing and and, and hotels, et cetera. So there’s looking at the opportunities for sale. So the App we see as a really good opportunity to, you know, is it two days out from travel, that some deal thing, Oh what am I going to do there? I’ve got a free night, is it four days out? Is it actually as they arrive and getting that rate point. So we’ve built quite a smart tool in the field. I’m sure marketing just love the fact I called up a smart tool in the background of all of our apps called the Engaged Platform.

And a lot of that is automating those points of contact and those points of sale effectively. Not always sale as well. But it’s that kind of ongoing conversation. So used to be very much from an agency’s point of view, it was the point of booking was the point that you’re involved. However, now and were talking about earlier with the chat bots and Facebook is there’s that point of research where agents and providers can be involved and then you’re a point of booking, but then you’ve got that constant engagement all the way. It’s not just an itinerary handed out so it can have potential to add value all the way around, including when they come back. How was your trip? Do you want to share pictures on here and you can continue that virtuous cycle.

Chris Torres
Excellent.

David Bulloch
One of the ones, sorry.

Chris Torres
No, no, no.

David Bulloch
One of the ones we;ve done again recently was, was with EasyJet was with regards to that kind of research and inspiration. We built a tool with them that integrated with Instagram. So if somebody had seen a picture of our location or something that looked lovely, they could then click on it and it would actually take them to EasyJet site to see or how much it would cost to fly there. So stuff like that. So again, it’s, I think it was the progression that Wes was talking about earlier of, from letters to emails by viewers. There’s always, it’s where, where are your customers at? And if there are in Facebook if they’re in Instagram, that’s the place to have that conversation. It makes it as possible.

Chris Torres
I’m going to work actually off topic here because of what’s happened recently, but do you think that type of technology in the way the industry is going, do think that’s probably why something like Thomas Cooks fell by the wayside? Or did they just not keep up to date?

David Bulloch:
I think Thomas Cook was a lot of different things, but I think that as a point where from a digital transformation point of view, I think Thomas like large company had bursts of kind of development and, and, but I just thought, yes, I think it’s, there’s those new names out there that we haven’t heard of yet. The next year will be our biggest two tour operators and our biggest travel agencies. It’s such an evolving space, travel and it’s one of the things that keeps it fascinating and exciting. Hard to keep up with it.

Chris Torres
So you also, do destination marketing is always part of Travelport, I believe you did it for the likes of, was it Visit Britain, was that right?

David Bulloch
So we’ve done Visit Britain and one of the ones I actually had taken notes on was with regards to Chinese travel. So this was actually for Western Europe as a whole. So as we say, or as I said, we’ve got 68000 agencies and 235 kind of desktops sitting in front of people. And it’s using that to kind of help kind of, you know, a sale, maybe destinations or expand on destinations that maybe people weren’t thinking of. And I think one of the interesting ones and why I picked that area as an example was it wasn’t just somebody saying, Oh, we want people to come to London for this show London for or whatever for that, this was, I kind of work between, so the UNESCO were involved, National Geographic and EU Rail.

So it was a kind of coming together of different partners. So all I was trying to do was try to affect a slight market change. So looking obviously China seems like a vast opportunity. It’s much smaller than you think. And then also people who know where they’re going and, but it’s trying to give them the opportunities as well while they’re over that made that kind of larger journey. So I know that that one, I think it was, I didn’t write this number down. I think was something like we saw a 23% increase in hotel bookings from that particular one, but it’s destination marketing. It’s one of these, as a historical GDS, we’ve taken our team over the last period to change that travel commerce platform, which I’m glad we’re not shortening to 3 letters cause TCP just seems strange. But it’s because we realized that kind of real estate that we’ve got and what we’ve got in front of people.

And so it’s opening up those different opportunities for people to use that on top of what we already sell. So that’s, I think it’s one of these places that we’re working on and we’re growing. So again, it’s one of the opportunities that are there to look for new ideas.

Chris Torres
Excellent. So, obviously for what I’ve been looking at your website and stuff like that, it’s not just the distribution side of things that you guys deal with. You actually do all the merchant side of it as well stuff as you go from begining to end of the whole journey?

David Bulloch
Absolutely. I think it’s like, as I said, every day in travel at the moment. It’s fairly much looking at where are your opportunities. So it used to be a lot of our, when I look back, so I’ve been 15 years with the various iterations of Travelport and I look back and I remember trying to talk to travel management companies into booking hotels because quite often it was like, Oh they wanted the fleet.

But then there was a hotel setting there, some there were staying somewhere while they would wait three nights. And now that kind of what other opportunities, and again, we had billions of dollars worth of transactions going through our systems. We understand travel really well. At least we like to think so. So it was an opportunity for us to see how that would work for us. So eNett, which is our kind of a joint venture payments tool has been a huge success. One of the fastest growing parts of the business. I think one of the, the opportunities again that we saw at the time when we started eNett was I think banks et cetera, struggled with travel. And I’m not saying look recent news may affect that again, but we could use our scale as I can have to help people get the best value and, and make money from where they weren’t making money before.

Chris Torres
So did you actually see Travelport do more than the tourism activities sector? Cause obviously if you pick people like booking.com TripAdvisor, all that side of things buying up these different booking platforms to integrate more of that sort of stuff into it. Do you think Travelport’s going to end going down that route as it is a vastly growing part of the industry.

David Bulloch
I think the one thing that hasn’t changed in all the years that I’ve worked for Travelport is the content is King. And whether that comes to we need to have low cost carriers or we need to have the hotels and then only to have the Airbnb stay content getting on board. It’s going to be the next, the next stage in it. And I think once a lot of the technologies move forward, and I think that’s one of the things that’s revolutionized travel from my point of view in the space we work in, is the kind of move to APIs.

It’s gone from the legacy. You need a room full of programmers to board X, Y, and Z you’ve now got somebody in a bedroom building the next app or the next technology that can then just link, whether it’s onto Facebook or the next social media APP down the road. So yes, I can absolutely see that being something that we would need to kind of include and as something that we have talked to and in different markets. So for instance, in Germany there’s a very strong history of tour operator marketplace. So we own a tour operator and marketplace tool over there and over in the US we’ve got a crews and stay product as well. So it’s something that’s always been quite regional. Sometimes it’s based on that need, but I think longterm again as I see the API economy just opens up all of these opportunities to make it so much easier.

Chris Torres
Or is Wes says you’ll probably find some 15 year old boy creating something and getting 100 million for example.

David Bulloch
Exactly.

Chris Torres
I want to open it up to the audience. So does anyone have any questions for David? Yes, the one from Jessica. All right.

Jessica
Obviously we are quite a small kind of community so from your perspective what can small providers do with say for example, either a platform like yours or similar technology to really kind of push themselves to the next level, especially say keeping it regional to Scotland.

David Bulloch
Yes, I think probably one of the, there’s kind of two sides. I mean when we were talking, I was talking to Chris earlier, one of the things historically we are really good at sort of still our biggest bit is providing content. So I’d say probably from your point of view is you may have one piece of the puzzle already that you do really, really well, but where is the rest of that business? So how are the flights getting in? Now that may not be, you can do it on your own, but there may be already agents within Scotland and there’s quite a thriving kind of independent agencies kind of community within Scotland. So working with them and getting that kind of content. So you’re starting to tie up and that kind of stuff. Longterm probably we are maybe a little bit too big to kind of start distributing your stuff.

However that said if Visit Scotland or et cetera, start to do something. Then certainly conversations that we can have, I think at this point for where we are at in that development journey we’re probably open to anything. So if somebody came to us with a good story or something that we can help with, and I think as Wes said as well, it comes down to what the objectives are, as long as you have a clear objective of what you’re going for, then I think that’s something that we can definitely work with. But yes, realistically I think it’s a kind of a bigger project probably just from the size we are.

Chris Torres
Any other questions? Yes.

Rilan
What type of percentage of accommodation and tour and activities and have you got integrated or connected with?

David Bulloch
That’s a really good question I’m really glad to answer. From a tools and activities that would be low to almost zero from a hotel’s point of view. We probably certainly in the major chains have been easy to, to kind of mop up. I wish I could actually give you a quick answer on that, but I’d know they’d have one a while ago cause I, I wanted to prove it to myself. How many hotels that we as Travelport, make happen in Scotland. It’s a very high number, if that helps. But not all of them… apologies.

Chris Torres
Any further questions?

Jessica
I was wondering, so you guys have obviously amassed a mass amount of data over the years. You are a private company so therefore there’s no incentive necessarily to share that data with anyone, but do you work with public sector or other providers to make some of your findings or like parts of your findings available to general, general providers?

David Bulloch
We do actually share our data now that again, that’s one of the things, thanks that we have evolved. We’ve realized that we have a lot of data showing where people are traveling, where people are booking as well. So as something that we’ve built our, it’s called, I’m trying to remember Travelport seeing TCI can remember what it stands from though. Competitive insights, competitive insights. But the idea of being with that product is that you can see what travel patterns are happening out there and you know, for instance we would sell that and it’s something that there’s a local trade body in Scotland, the SPAA Scottish Passenger Agents Association, which we work with quite closely and we’re in discussion with them to be able to kind of share that kind of information with them so they can look at traveler patterns. Because sometimes it can help preempt what way things are going et cetera.

I know there’s obvious times a year when you know travel’s going to come in, but you can actually start to see where it’s headed kind of further out. So yes, absolutely.

Chris Torres
I imagine that would help massively for sustainable tourism and things like as we’ll find out where the pockets are busy that sort of stuff.

David Bulloch
Yes, I mean from our point of view, and I’ll be honest because we’re also seeing it from the point of view of where there’s everybody going. Does that particular airline have the rate cost or the right price? Why are they not selling when they can see everybody else’s selling and that direction? But no, absolutely. I mean from a sustainability point of view, that’s a so huge question and it’s something that we’ve worked on various products throughout the year, especially from airlines. We’ve had different carbon calculators and probably like you guys have seen as well, it comes and goes and fashion and as soon as to those in the new it happens and suddenly nobody is interested, it was all about what was cheapest and they were starting to see that increase again, it starts in kind of like the public body sector first and then you start seeing the private sector they want to be able to report on it at the very least. And so as something that we do kind of see that kind of stuff.

Chris Torres
That’s interesting. We got a question. Yes.

Speaker 6
And this for careers one [inaudible 00:20:00] to the GDS. So one of the things, when you were talking now I was just thinking over the years there’s been a lot written about the challenge that GDSs will have, you know, that was just wondering that over a period of time if you had to adapt your cost modules quite a lot to be competitive with your ideas.

David Bulloch
Yes. So I mean just a lot about the economics behind what we do. So every time somebody books a flight on our system, so an agent books the airline will pay us some money and we tend to pay a part of that to the agent as well as an incentive. Unfortunately, something that happened decades ago, which is now as the competitive model across us and our competitors, but we’re now in a place where things are starting to change those historic model of how airline content was distributed. So it goes through a complex, it goes through a hosting system to a kind of system that sorts out the information to enter the GDSs ourselves and each part of that has a cost. And again, going back to the API economy, airlines want to own a lot more of that themselves.

Part of that’s a cost reduction. Part of it’s also allows them to be speedier to market, which a lot of the low cost carriers have, they can quickly change a fare when they see it starting to get busier. Whereas the old system doesn’t really allow for that speed, can take a few days for it to work its way through and by that point back in a competitive edge could be lost. So a lot of them are starting to look at this kind of more direct model. So because they’ve done a lot more of the work and we are doing a lot less, we charge a lot less, but it costs us a lot less as well. So it’s changing the model from our point of view, personal point of view because a part of my background is technology is always been a strange model to say we’ve got the best system with all the content that you need and here’s money every time you use it.

It is a strange way to sell. Whereas in the future I’ll get to say, here’s our tool, it’s the best one out there and here’s why. Which will be a far more clear cut model from my point of view. The hard thing is that the current system is kind of like the analogy somebody used was the pipes under Rome that carry all the sewage. They’d been there for 3000 years. They work, there’s no problem with how they work and that’s kind of the current system of distribution. But what they don’t allow for is all the kind of rich content. Being able to see the pictures of the seats and being able to bundle things in different ways, which is what the airlines want to do. And we totally want to work with them in doing it. So it’s a kind of slow process.

But from our point of view, commercially, yes, it’s a change, but it’s one we’ve seen coming for quite a while. So we’ve had it on the back burner to be ready for it.

Chris Torres
Good. Well thank you for your time.

David Bulloch
No thank you.

Chris Torres
I appreciate you coming along and then talking to talk about Travelport. I think it’s certainly our, it’s one of these ones that you’ve obviously developed so many apps and these apps we all use every day in terms of, you’re sort of hiding under the radar. Nobody seems to know who you are and stuff, but it’s like EasyJet. Was that one of the ones you have?

David Bulloch
EasyJet, Singapore, Etihad. We’ve built some for big agencies, BCD travel and stuff like that.

Chris Torres
So busy.

David Bulloch
Yes.

Chris Torres
Well, thank you again and please give a massive thank you to David.

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Chris and his team will send you a weekly email offering high-value insight and advice about a variety of marketing and business development topics related to the tourism industry. We address specific destinations, tours and activities, and the hotel industry. We also provide important travel industry news and updates.

The post Connecting and Promoting your Products Through Global Travel Agencies appeared first on Tourism Marketing Agency.

Wes is the co-founder of Total Chatbots Ltd, a technology company based in Glasgow. Total Chatbots uses its proprietary technology to help tour businesses generate and nurture leads using chatbot technology that can function across both a website and Facebook.

We will be discussing how Chatbots can help grow your business through active learning and debunking some myths and concerns along the way.

Need more free advice?

Chris and his team will send you a weekly email offering high-value insight and advice about a variety of marketing and business development topics related to the tourism industry. We address specific destinations, tours and activities, and the hotel industry. We also provide important travel industry news and updates.

The post Debunking Myths About Chatbots and How It Can Help Grow Your Tour Business appeared first on Tourism Marketing Agency.

Google is making big strides into the tours and activity space, testing the water with Touring Bird, which has now been closed and ‘folded’ into their travel team, making tours and activities bookable within Google search and maps, bypassing the OTAs – well the ones not also directly integrated… which I am still against, by the way. Everyone wants a piece of the tours and activity pie. No wonder, as it has a reported worth of $180 billion and it will only continue to grow.

However, this article is not intended to discuss who purchased who as with this article, I want to highlight a major and, in my honest opinion, dangerous situation many OTAs are giving tour and activity providers with in regards to competing for direct bookings. It may even have a detrimental effect on Google’s business.

Direct bookings matter… a lot!

I have said it before and I will say it again: if, rather than focusing on your own marketing efforts and channels you rely heavily on OTAs and other platforms to send you bookings and generate most of your revenue, then you do not have a business. You are nothing more than a commodity to them. Now, this may be no issue for you and if it’s not, power to you, however most businesses I speak too want to grow a brand and their business, not be under the rule of another. This is why most of us become business owners in the first place.

The issue I have is the ‘battle’ for our industry means that it is becoming harder for any tour or activity business who wants to grow direct bookings through Google – whether through search or Google Ads – because the large OTAs like TripAdvisor and Booking Holdings are spending the obscene amounts of the revenue they generate from the commission they charge you to compete against you. These organisations are competing against the very suppliers and businesses that grew their brands in the first place. Why? Because they want more of your hard-earned profit margins than people booking direct with you. Most of the time, the OTAs are making a loss in doing so, just to capture your customers for future bookings on their platform.

Here is an example for the search term ‘Barcelona Bike Tour’. We found ads from TripAdvisor, Viator (owned by TripAdvisor), and Get Your Guide. You will also see that an ad appeared for TripAdvisor next to one of their suppliers…

Clicking on the TripAdvisor listing, we see Fat Tire Tours at the top of the list and that other  tours in the listing are also available direct from the following operators:

• Barcelona ebikes
• We Barcelona

Let’s take Fat Tire Tours’ product as an example, as they appear at the top of TripAdvisor’s listing. Fat Tire Tours’ ‘Half Day Barcelona Bike Tour’ comes in at a cost of £28 per person, with an average cost per click (CPC) for the key phrase ‘Barcelona Bike Tour’ at £1.01.

The operator will also pay TripAdvisor in the region of 30% commission (which will increase in time) so they are potentially losing £9.41 per booking (£28 – 30% – £1.01 CPC). Multiply that by the capacity for each tour, which is 15, and this operator is losing between £65.87 (if people are booking in pairs) and £141.15 in revenue and profit per tour to OTAs, making, at best, £278.85 per tour, if at full capacity. Add to that their staffing and operating costs and the numbers simply do not add-up. In other words…

Google Ads + Other Marketing + OTAs + Commission + Operating costs = Unsustainability. 

I know this is only focusing on one tour and most businesses will take revenue as a whole from all tours, but I hope you get the point. OTAs are helping to drive up the cost of Google Ads, making the cost per acquisition (CPA) higher for many operators.

If you take into account the average CPA of £48 (for every 48 clicks, you get, on average, one booking), then it is even more eye watering. Let’s say most of these bookings are for at least two people at a time, the £56 in revenue generated is cut to just £8! £28 x 2 people – £48 CPA = £8 profit before operating costs. This does not even include the Facebook Ad that appeared once I visited their site!

This is simply not sustainable for tour and activity suppliers.

Speaking with the equally outspoken Peter Syme, owner of Splash and 1000 mile journeys, he too has abandoned Google Ads as a marketing channel, in favour of Facebook. Here is what Peter had to say:

“After over 15 years of using Google Ads, I have stopped. The OTAs are just better at it than me and have deeper pockets. They even use our brand name in their ads. I just made the decision to let them win the PPC battle and I have focused my marketing on social channels and niche SEO, where I can still win… for now! Social is an underpriced market just now; it is where Google PPC was around 2003-06. Operators can do well with social and have direct relationships with their guests which is their only strategic advantage in the digital era.”

Looking at the stats taken from SEMrush, TripAdvisor are generating 3 million clicks from paid ads, spending close to $4.6 million… in just one month!

And in terms of paid search volume, they are way above their competitors…

Is this bad news for Google too?

So far, you may feel I have completely abandoned Google Ads as a method to generate revenue. Far from it, but you do need to pick your battles and make sure you have the budget to compete. This is one of the reasons why we advise that you do not put your full product range on an OTA, but to add those tours you wish to test or the products you find harder to sell directly.

For Google, this is potentially bad news as, from our own findings and from speaking with others in the industry, more and more operators are abandoning Google Ads in favour of Facebook Ads. The issue with this is that most operators simply advertise products directly on Facebook, just like they would on Google – except Facebook is a completely different beast. You can find out more about my views in my upcoming Facebook Ad Funnel Workshop.

While Google is generating a lot of cash from OTAs who run Google Ads, they are equally losing out on those businesses who wish to market directly. OTAs only cover around 10% of the market share, so for now it may not seem like a big deal, but as they grow their influence this is going to hit Google hard in the future. We may even start to see the emergence of another search platform taking precedence. Probably not, but it’s not an impossibility.

Of course, Google is making its own plays in the tours and activities sector and will no doubt create something that will eat into the profits of the OTAs, but to me this could be a good thing if it means putting the control back into the hands of the operator. Some of the big OTAs have complained that Google is getting too big for its boots and posted a drop-in profits, wiping out a combined market value of more than $13 billion from the three big online travel agents, making a severe dent in their shares, and making their investors nervous.

On the other hand, in a recent interview for Phocuswright, Glenn Fogel, CEO of Booking Holdings – another major player in this space – did not seem too concerned with Google and is focusing his own business on direct bookings, wishing to bypass Google and other OTAs altogether:

“For our company we absolutely believe the best way to make sure we have a strong future is to have people come direct.”

Can anyone see the irony here?

This is affecting other industries too

As the owner of a tourism marketing agency, we are also seeing the effect of the OTA dominance in this industry, with companies looking at alternative ways to market their business. Now, we can adapt and use platforms like Facebook extensively, but marketing agencies, consultants, and freelancers may find they need to refocus their skill sets.

Change is urgently needed

With the growth of OTAs within our industry, I feel change is needed and needed as a matter of urgency. If they continue on this current trend, one of becoming the dominant, customer-facing brand, effectively making you, the tour and activity provider nothing more than an Uber driver – an ‘employee’ of the OTA, with no control over your sales channels and no ‘right’ to your customers’ data, it will kill the very heart of our industry.

Operators pride themselves on the customer relationships they build and nurture and this will be lost behind a brand that they do not control. I believe rules must be set to protect the operators, like a non-compete clause, stopping OTAs from competing against the very suppliers they are meant to ‘support’. This would be a start, at least.

TripAdvisor, Booking Holdings, Get Your Guide, and the many OTAs can all play an important part in helping to build operators’ businesses, but when does it become detrimental to these businesses and the industry as a whole? Unfortunately, I believe we may be there already.

The time is now for the industry to decide… allow OTAs to dominate our market or take back control, grow direct bookings, and become a successful brand in our own right. If we decide the former, I fear the industry will lose its soul. 

Need more free advice?

Chris and his team will send you a weekly email offering high-value insight and advice about a variety of marketing and business development topics related to the tourism industry. We address specific destinations, tours and activities, and the hotel industry. We also provide important travel industry news and updates.

The post The Digital Battle for Tours and Activities – Part 2 appeared first on Tourism Marketing Agency.