March is Women’s History Month and we’ve got a lot to celebrate. We reached out to our clients to send us their amazing stories answering the following questions: 1. Why did you want to become a guide? 2. What's your favorite part of the job? 3. What's your least favorite part of the job? 4. What are some hard truths about guiding? 5. How do you see guiding evolving in the future? 6. What's something about your job most people don't realize? Maria Tucholke Laurie Watt Heidi Wirtz Meg Nickman Morgan McIntire Juliana Garcia Faith Dickey Anna Rollins "Gus" Klein...
How To Create The Best Damn Automated Booking Confirmation Communication System
You’re probably reading this because you have an automated booking confirmation process, right? You take trip reservations over the phone. You write your client’s contact information and credit card details on a random piece of paper. Then you draft an email with the trip date, time, meeting location, and whatever they need to bring with them. We’ve heard this story hundreds of times. In fact, one of our clients, Ryan, at Atlantic Climbing School, realized he was working hours before and after business hours doing menial and mundane tasks like sending confirmation emails to clients. All the extra time spent...
Mastering Post-Trip Automated Review Requests: A Guide For Tour Operators
Automating post-trip review requests doesn’t have to sound as impersonal as you think. In fact, using a system that automates the review collection process frees up your time so you can offer a personalized experience to your clients. Many tour operators don’t like the idea of asking for a client to leave a public-facing review for them, which is why most of them fall short on their sheer number of reviews. If you’re one of those tour operators who shudders at the idea of asking a client to leave you a review, consider this: 65% of people left reviews because...
When you automate your content creation, you set your tour company apart from the others. In the fast-paced realm of the travel industry, where captivating an audience and maintaining a vibrant online presence is key, tour operators find themselves navigating a delicate balance between showcasing their unique offerings, offering amazing customer support, and efficiently managing their digital content. Enter the era of automation – a game-changer for tour operators seeking to streamline their content creation processes. In this blog, we’re going to explore the power of automating content creation across various facets of a tour operator's digital landscape, from social...
Automating internal communications becomes really important for tour operators because so many serious (and potentially fatal) things can go wrong that you need to be able to get the word out ASAP. Alternatively, internal communications is wrought with endless back-and-forth, countless steps, and never-ending to-dos. It kind of feels like once you get one thing done, another thing pops up. Forever. In this post, we’re going to cover what internal communication is, why you should automate internal communications, and how you can streamline those tasks. Table of Contents What Is Internal Communications For Tour Operators? Why Should You Automate Internal...
In this technology era, you have to find as many ways to automate tour reservations as possible—not just for tech-savvy clients, but for your overall time management. There’s no reason to continue booking trips manually (or using outdated software) when so many apps, booking software (like Origin), and tools exist to make your life easier. When you automate tour reservations, you save your and your clients’ time. You’re not wasting it by the endless back and forth confirming details, answering questions that should be obvious, or asking for signed waivers when the trip’s supposed to start. You eliminate the risk...
As a tour operator, you’re busy. And that’s probably an understatement. You don’t have time to work on those annoying and repetitive tasks, but you also don’t have the extra funds to hire someone else to do it for you. Instead, save your money and your time by using these different automation tools that will help overwhelmed tour operators like yourself. As we all know, tour guides and operators manage a million tasks to run their business successfully, and some of these tasks can become repetitive and annoying. Coordinating with clients, confirming reservations, and making last-minute adjustments takes a lot...
Tour operators can automate their sales process without a salesperson by using technology to their advantage and implementing different strategies. This leads to more tour bookings and spending less time selling them. This frees up your time, so you can get back to doing what you love (which is probably not taking customer service calls). Before we start, ask yourself these four questions. After reading through the different ways to sell more tours automatically, you can use your answers to develop an automated sales strategy: Why are your customers interested in your tours? How can you get them excited about...
As a booking and scheduling platform for the tours and activities industry, we’ve seen our fair share of tourism websites. A lot are still stuck in their original form, from when they were designed in the late 90’s or early 2000’s. Which is fine if that works for them, but it likely isn’t—and they might not realize that. How To Make A Good Website Design A good website is one that effectively meets its goals and provides a positive experience for visitors. All the best tourist guide websites have elements that we think make them stand out from the rest....
Automating social media strategy, creation, and posting is a surefire way to get more time back in your time while also creating a solid community of adventure-lovers around your company. Tour operators are already pressed for time and finding time for social media usually ends up last on the list—even though it’s a great way to get more bookings. We’ll cover apps to automate strategizing your social media. And yes, you need to come up with a plan for it. We’ll quickly cover SMART goals, Google Analytics, and Google Alerts. Next, we’re going to go over what apps you can...
The Great American Outdoors Act provides up to $9.5 billion in non-taxpayer funds toward national parks and other public lands repairs and permanently funds $900 million a year to the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF).
Colorado, aspens, and Fall go together like "pumpkin," "spice," and "latte." When we think of Fall, we imagine golden leaves shining in the sun against a bright blue sky. Colorado is known for its beautiful fall colors. Anyone seeking to snap photos can go anywhere in the high country in mid-September. In addition to the beautiful Colorado fall colors, there is a myriad of fall adventures in Colorado. Here is a list of ten Colorado Fall activities you may not have thought of and should try: Hike A Fourteener Fall is a perfect time to hike Colorado fourteeners because fewer...
Climbing a fourteener in Colorado is a very popular outdoor activity to do for both locals and tourists. With 58 mountain peaks above 14,000 feet, ranging from “easy” to challenging, there is no shortage of hikes. Here is our list of ten 14ers for beginners in the Colorado mountains:
From Views to Bookings: How To Optimize Tour Sales with CRM Automation
In today's fast-paced and hyper-competitive tour guiding world, you need to stay ahead of the curve by automating as many tasks as you can. One area where tour businesses can get more time back in their day is by automating their customer relationship management (CRM) system. By leveraging cutting-edge automation technology, tour operators can streamline their operations, enhance efficiency, and increase customer satisfaction. Automating your CRM lets you eliminate manual tasks and repetitive processes, which frees up your and your team’s time to focus on strategic initiatives. It helps you centralize and organize customer data, gives you a full view...
Standard operating procedures. “SOPs” for short. Not a sexy topic, but an important one for adventure tour operators, especially when it comes to finding ways to automate them. SOPs are critical for maintaining consistency, safety, and quality in adventure tourism operations. While the title does say “standard,” SOPs may vary depending on the specific activities you offer, where you’re located, and your company's policies. So, we’re going to put the “standard” in Standard Operating Procedures by giving a general overview of what they are and how to automate them for your adventure tour guiding business. What Are Adventure Tour Guide...