We scoured the internet for online booking stats that our clients will care about. While researching, we saw the shift to online booking has seen significant changes from pre-pandemic levels. While many guiding companies are making the move to online booking, there are still too many putting it off and gripping too tightly to the pen and paper. Those who don’t jump on board now will be left behind and lose out to their competitors. Here are 25 online booking statistics showing the shift to online booking, travelers’ habits and interests, and how important it is to adopt reservation technology...
Marketing for guiding companies doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, you can keep it super basic if you want. We’ve previously written about all the aspects of digital marketing in our Journal, but it helps to put it together in a digestible way. So, that’s what we’re going to do here. Here’s a simple strategy for marketing that should help you get started marketing for your guiding company. In other words, to spread the word about what you do and who you can guide. 1. Determine Your Target Audience Figuring out who your ideal customers are will help you...
The guiding season is non-stop. There’s always an adventure to go on with an expert guide, but some guiding companies only operate during a specific season or two. For those preparing for their upcoming season, here are eight tech aspects to have dialed before you take clients on their next adventure. Review Or Update Your Liability Waivers Have liability waivers for your guided trips? It’s a good idea to review your liability waiver text and make sure they’re up-to-date. If you have a new trip that requires an additional waiver, it’s important to upload that before the season. Origin users...
Have you ever wondered what your booking process says about your business? Imagine this: You’re seeing a return of travel, but your bookings are lackluster. You’re open for business. You get a decent amount of interest from travelers, especially after COVID, but you’re ready for more bookings. In fact, you need more bookings. There’s one thing: You haven’t touched your booking process in ages. You may not even realize that’s likely the problem for the small number of tour reservations filtering through. Maybe you’re still blaming COVID (which is fair). But the fact is, if you’ve been struggling to increase...
Tour deposit functionality, especially those that are higher-priced, makes it more appealing to customers when they can book now and pay later. With the uncertainty of travel currently, especially with airlines, deposits give travelers peace of mind —knowing that they don’t have to pay in full right now in case a trip is canceled outside of their control. The Problem - Without Deposit Functionality When you don’t have automatic deposit functionality, you can take the initial deposit, but collecting the rest is a pain. It becomes a manual and insecure process of charging a credit card. For tour operators who...
Why You Need Outdoor Adventure Guide Scheduling Within Your Booking Platform
Outdoor adventure guide scheduling can be a total headache when you’re forced to do it manually. Operators we’ve spoken to lost faith in their online book system. They’d request features from their previous reservation platforms to no avail. Most admins use one system to book reservations and schedule their guides separately. Operators want one system they can log into for outdoor adventure guide scheduling. They don’t want multiple logins. They don’t want to share passwords with their guides. You should be able to reserve trips and schedule your guides on one platform. It’s common sense. What Is Outdoor Adventure Guide...
Affiliate Marketing And Adventure Tours — Here’s How The Two Work Together
Affiliate marketing is great for outdoor adventure guides looking to increase their website traffic, boost brand awareness, and expand their reach. You’ve probably seen affiliate marketing at work. Namely through blogs or social media posts. If you clicked on their link and bought the product or service, then that affiliate marketer was paid a commission based on your purchase. From finding an affiliate network to deciding on how much you’ll pay for a booking, there is a lot to consider when starting an affiliate program. Keep reading to see how affiliate marketing and adventure tour providers work together. Table...
Email marketing, especially for the travel industry, is still the best marketing tool and reigns supreme over social media and SEO. If you’re still wondering whether or not email marketing is for you, keep reading. By the end of this post, you’ll understand what email marketing is, how it helps guiding businesses, and how to start. Table of Contents What's Email Marketing? How Can Email Marketing Help Your Business? Email Marketing Strategy What's email marketing? Email marketing is a digital marketing strategy of sending marketing messages to your prospects and customers in order to achieve a certain goal. This goal...
Can Social Media Marketing Help Grow Your Adventure Guiding Business?
Social media marketing for adventure guides is imperative if you want to grow your business and book more trips. The good thing about being an outdoor guide is that there isn’t a shortage of amazing content. Social media users want to see what you’re doing as a guide. And through videos and photos, they can live vicariously through you until they book an adventure themselves. What Is Social Media Marketing For Adventure Guides? Social media marketing is using social media platforms to connect with your (potential) customers in the right place at the right time to encourage them to take...
Content marketing may be the secret sauce to booking more adventure tours. You’ve probably heard the expression, “Content is king.” Bill Gates once said that in a post published on Microsoft’s website back in 1996. In his micro-essay, Bill describes that information can be posted online anywhere at any time, usually for free, which makes it such a great tool to use in growing your business. Surely, no one would have been able to predict how we’d consume content in 2021, but here we are. We may not have completely written off traditional marketing, but digital marketing for professional adventure...
Is Display Advertising Useful For Your Adventure Guiding Company?
Display advertising is yet another component of digital marketing. It’s one of those things that we see wherever we go online but rarely think about it from the digital marketing perspective. There are a lot of benefits to display advertising but knowing if it’s right for your guiding company really comes down to your goals, budget, and the time you have to dedicate to running a smooth display ad campaign. Table Of Contents What Is Display Advertising Types Of Display Advertising Display Advertising Formats Which Is Best For Your Business? Display Advertising Best Practices Display Advertising Courses Online In this...
Paid Search is as complex and convoluted as you can imagine. We’re only only going to give you an overview of what paid search is and whether or not it’s worth it as an adventure tourism operator. We’ve also included additional resources where you can learn more about paid search and how to incorporate it into your marketing strategy. Table of Contents What Is A Paid Search? How Paid Search Works Paid Search Vs Organic Search Is Paid Search Worth It? Additional Resources For Paid Search Marketing What Is A Paid Search? Paid search is what it sounds like. It’s...
SEO is important for tour operators in the adventure travel industry because it’s another way to get more visitors to your site and, ultimately, more clients. Adventure travel starts with a Google search. Our clients search for outdoor activities they want to do when visiting a place. Table of Contents What is Tourism SEO? Why SEO Is Important For Outdoor Guiding Businesses How Tourism SEO Works - The Basics Quick Tourism SEO Tips For Guiding Businesses Key Takeaways Further Reading With a solid (and long-term) SEO strategy for your guiding website, you can build your site’s authority and end up...
Why The Stages Of The Buyer’s Journey Matter For Adventure Tourism
While adventure tourism takes place in the real world, sharing, discovering, and digitally marketing adventures happens online — which is where you want to be. For instance, did you know #Travel is one of the most popular hashtags on Instagram? According to Think With Google, “The average traveler spends 13% of their time online conducting travel-related activities.” You don’t have to be a digital marketing expert but you should understand how to use the stages of the buyer’s journey in adventure tourism to sell more experiences. To successfully sell your outdoor adventure experience, it helps to know at what stage...
Digital marketing takes advantage of our increased screen time (nearly 7 hours on average per day) for most of us. Most of us subsist through digital channels. Our phone alarm wakes us up in the morning. We read the news from an app. We connect with our friends through social media. Order groceries, food, and snacks online. Reserve and pay for outdoor adventures through a website. Our smartphones are our maps, compasses, navigators, and means of communication. So are you meeting your clients where they are through the varying stages of the Buyer's Journey? What Is Digital Marketing? Digital...