Join me as I speak with Arival’s Douglas Quinby for some insights into the tours and activity sector, plus some practical advice for tour businesses in 2018.
If you enjoyed this conversation and would like more like it, Douglas and I are extending an official invitation to join us at this year’s Arival Conference AND offering you a 10% discount off your registration.
Here are the details:
When? September 24 – 27, 2018
Where? Hard Rock Hotel, Las Vegas
How? You can get registered right here and Apply your Be a Better Guide 10% discount with the coupon code: INKT18
Now is a great time to get registered, because you also save $300 if you register before the end of July 2018.
Now, that sounds like a pretty good deal to me! Not to mention we can connect up in Vegas and put some names to faces, talk shop and get to know one another.
Why attend?
To me, these are the most compelling reasons to view Arival as one of the biggest investment opportunities in your tour or activity business this year:
1) Education that matters to your business.
Hands-on workshops on all things digital, marketing, distribution, operations and growth.
2) Connect with the latest tech.
Meet and experience the most innovative technology systems, services and tools to help you advance your business. Attend one of 25 demo labs from leading tech and distribution companies and get up to date on all of the latest and greatest.
3) Network with the best and brightest in our industry.
Learn from peers, build new partnerships, get new clients in the Tours, Activities & Attractions sector.
Last year the conference had amazing speakers and innovative companies big and small.
…not to mention some pretty fun nights socializing and making new friends.
You can learn more on this page, but be sure to get registered before July 31st with your special Be a Better Guide discount code.
Great to have you here,
Kelsey T
Transcript:
Kelsey: Hi there everyone. I’d like to welcome you to this video interview. And today we’re speaking with a very interesting young fellow named Douglas who is one of the co-founders of the Arival conference in-destination event. So first and foremost Douglas, thank you so much for making the time today.
Douglas: Hey Kelsey. Thanks so much for having me. It’s a pleasure.
Kelsey: Okay, so why don’t you haven’t heard of Arival or maybe haven’t come across some of your work with Phocuswright before, could you tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to be putting on a conference for torn activity companies?
Douglas: Yeah sure happy to so I’ve spent I think almost 20 years now in. in travel and tourism in a variety of capacities and about the last 10 years or so at a leading travel industry research firm called Phocuswright and did a lot of different things there but one of the areas of study that I initiated boy going back almost 10 years was this whole sector of tours and activities and events and attractions.
I mean, I think even before there was a proper name for tourists and I could activities, you know, we really began to look at it and it was really spurred by the Advent of mobile and how that was changing travel and tourism and, I had this idea that this was really going to change how people find and discover and book and experience the destination and all the things that we do.
So we did a lot of research in one of the things that we found was. Well, one is no one had done research on the sector. So it wasn’t even really a sector and no one really knew what it was.
Kelsey: That’s right. A lot of this, I imagine the Phocus, early on would be with the big players, flights, hotels. We see certainly, huge Industries with a lot of money and interest in that kind of job. Is that is that how Phocuswright evolved?
Douglas: Yeah, so I mean Phocuswright and I think in general for most travel and tourism kind of research and media coverage. The focus is on, you know, Air Travel and Hotels right? The transportation, accommodation globally, you know, what accounts for about 80% of Industry Revenue.
So like if you guys you know, whoever’s listening if you get any industry newsletter, there’s like, you know, if you get Skift or Travel Weekly or Phocuswright or any of these things, you’ll mostly see hotels or it’s on accommodation or it’s on flights, but we actually found through our work at Phocuswright that this sector is the third largest if something that every traveler does. I mean who takes a trip like a Leisure trip and doesn’t do something?
Yeah a lot of cases. That’s why people travel right? Like we don’t take a trip to you know watch cable TV and a hotel room, right? We take a trip because we want to experience the city. We want to see something we wouldn’t see at home. We want to eat food that we’ve never eaten before, you know meet incredible people.
Kelsey: And even you think of you know resorts and hotels, I mean that’s top of the list of, you know, things to do. When you get there, even if you are an accommodation provider, you better be pretty clear on what sort of things you can do when you’re not just hanging out even places like all inclusive resorts.
I mean, you have to have a sense of your activities experiences, things that you can do when in destination.
Douglas: Yeah. Yeah. We and our tagline for the event a little bit, we call it the best part of travel because it really is. It’s why people travel. It’s what they think about. I bet if anyone were to look at all the photos right that they take from their last vacation, there would be almost no photos of the hotel or the car or they rented or the flight.
The photos that they took are going to be about the sites. What they saw during the tour, the food, what they ate, the things they did, right?
Kelsey: Yeah, maybe the towel. If they do that fancy towel thing. Yeah, if there’s some impressive ones out there. So let’s get back to as your journey. So you took some first steps in your team when you’re researching what were some of those initial topics you mentioned the rise of mobile and mobile bookings. Is that your first kind of forays into researching tour in activities?
Douglas: Well, well actually for our first foray was, we just tried to get a sense of how big the market was right? So how many suppliers are there? How many companies are there in the space? How much do Travelers spend on what are the different types of things that they do right? Do they do tours, do they do attractions.
They do amusement parks today and how are the products changed and how their expectations changing? So a lot of it was really big picture like what’s happening in the space. How are they booking to and how do they make a decision? Like if you’re going to go to New York, there’s lots of great tour companies in New York. Which tour are you going to do? How are you going to find it? What motivates the traveler to choose and how can the tour companies get in front of that traveler and convince them to book with them.
So that was really the motivation and we just did more and more of it and came to realize that boy there’s you know, there’s like a million events for hotels and for Airlines like if you work at a hotel you could spend basically every working day going to a different conference, but, there’s almost nothing for tour and activity and attraction
Kelsey: I can imagine you just listening those questions that you had. You know, how. Useful. That information be to tour activity company even no matter your size, you know having those questions answered about. Okay, how were people traveling? How are they looking?
What processing websites are they using? All that is incredibly, useful and beneficial and so if people have one access to those studies and those research that research that was done. Is that still through Phocuswright or is Arival have sort of research to it. How’s that Evolution happened?
Douglas: Yeah. So a lot of that work was done through Phocuswright and a lot of it is, and so you can go to Phocuswright certainly and access that. And we also done a number of posts of some of the Top Line in sites that are free. And now with Arival, we are expanding the things that we do to introduce some research and insights that’s really specifically geared towards the tour and activity and attraction operate.
In fact, we just published our first. I think of it as a mini report as pretty small but it gives them in size to the to the types of activities and things that travelers are doing this summer. So if activity providers want to get a sense of. You know what’s happening this summer and the things that travelers want to do. They can go to our site and have access that…
Kelsey: Link to that little mini report to I must confess. I haven’t looked too closely at myself. So, we’ll figure out what people are doing this summer. Okay, so great. So we saw this, giant void Douglas shaped void in this, space in terms of creating and launching a conference. You did that last year.
What was that experience like? I mean you going from 0 to you know, praying that people are gonna show up? And what was that?
Douglas: I have to confess Kelsey. I’m still trying to get the image of a Douglas shaped void out of my head. So I have to imagine what my wife thinks that would look like. So yeah, you know, I just thought boy, there’s nothing. There’s no event that really brings this community together, but also provides content inside says directly relevant to them.
So one of the things that I saw quite a bit when I did go to travel industry conferences and if they did have a session on tours and activities or attractions. It would really frankly, you know, they were kind of left with table scraps. So the tour and activity folks would be sent to the windowless conference room at the end of the hall. Yeah, and they get some predigested Hotel marketing thing.
But the fact is that how travelers think about tours and activities and attractions. It’s very different like the hotel and the air it’s a big revenue or it’s a big piece of the total spend for a trip. And you Travelers tend to book that far out in advance. Whereas some tours and activities are booked in advance. Some are really decided in destination.
Some Travelers don’t even know or aren’t even aware of until they get there. So the whole approach to engaging with the traveler and serving them. You know corralling them within the path to purchase is very different. And so we just you know, we just felt that this category needed something different. So we started this thing.
Honestly, we thought it would work. We thought we knew there was a need. Honestly, we didn’t know if people would come because there really hadn’t been something for them to come too. And so we planned well if we could. We built out the business plan and we thought if we got about 250 people there we wouldn’t lose too much money and it would be a proof of proof case for us to go forward and we were blown away.
We had more than 550 people attend. We were kind of scrambling at the last minute to kind of move lunches around so that we have enough room and change the layout of the of the conference space so that the workshop spaces will be big enough and we have enough food for everybody but I think everyone ended up having a great time and we got great feedback from attendees and just, you know, what demand for more so that’s their plan in 2018.
We’ve moved to a bigger hotel and the bigger space and we’re expecting to have many more attendees and a bigger program with three days of content and we added an entire new day if I’m not mistaken.
Yeah, that’s correct. So we’ve gone from basically two days to two and half or 3 and yeah, lots of stuff going on and some of the biggest brands but also I think what’s really important to is and what inspires me the most honestly is how many amazing small businesses there are that are doing really creative and unique things and how committed they are to that specific experience, you know, they’re passionate about food in a particular city and the culture and a particular city.
And so they’re going to deliver. They’re just so focused on that. So for example, we have a small food tour, food tour operator who’s giving a talk at Arival Aquila McConnell Atlanta food walks who is basically a sole proprietor and it’s going to talk about kind of what she does and the importance of story in history in orbit her business.
And you know, we also have vice president of brand marketing for SeaWorld, you know, so the totally other end of the spectrum, and he’s going to talk about basically. You know PR crisis and kind of managing your reputation. How does this incredible brand of SeaWorld how have they been navigating this incredible public relations challenge that they’ve had over the past couple of years and but so these are lessons I think that can apply to all sectors of our industry and to all company sizes, you know large or small.
Kelsey: Yeah, I thought that’s what I’d love to kind of transition into. I’ll just echo my experience with the conference last year was wonderful down in Las Vegas. It’s just amazing, that we have lots of online connectivity in the stand age, but just being in the same room with a whole lot of other people many of whom are doing the same sort of things that you are doing and have similar challenges similar, frustration those conversations, the networking and then.
Just incredible workshops and sessions to make for a pretty invaluable experience. So hats off and you know, that’s the plan we’re gonna carry on every single year. But let’s shift the conversation a little bit too, for the folks who were listening the tour and activity operators folks who maybe are sole proprietors and are looking at building up something around there.
Their passion. What were some of the biggest sort of takeaways or insights that you had from, you know, last year’s event. If getting all those people in the room and again a really diverse group of food, if nothing else coming within that converts you realize that an indentation event as you’ve alluded to is a really diverse group. What were some of your biggest, let’s say things that surprised you.
Douglas: Well, I say more than you know more than a surprise. I’d say I was really kind of inspired by the by the intense, you know kind of passion of the of the audience and the so the level of engagement around the topic so that’s kind of interesting.
So at say some bigger, you know industry travel industry conferences where you know, you got all the big companies the big brands and you’ve got to kind of all the senior executives in the audience and, you know, people are cautious about what they say.
Like, they don’t want to ruffle feathers or they, you know, they don’t want if you know, they’re just being correct, right, and want to rock the boat too much right? Whereas I felt like the audience was so engaged in the topics. So for example when we had a speaker from Airbnb talking about their new initiatives with experiences or we have speakers from Expedia and TripAdvisor and we had no end of audience questions.
Kelsey: And I remember that session too. Then heated questions too asking questions of you know, hey, I run a fantastic food tour in San Francisco, Toronto, Vancouver, wherever. Can I use your platform? Are you going to be opening this up wider? or you having your forcing recruitment of entirely brand new tour leaders essentially who can play is a big question.
Douglas: Yeah. And I think operators today, they’re struggling with so many questions, you know, some of the policy changes of TripAdvisor, right? Like they’ve gone into a 24-hour cancellation window for most of their operators, right? There has been different changes to their algorithm.
They’ve removed the URL website for a lot of the company listings because they want to drive more bookings. So, and these things have a real impact on all of you. I mean in all of the companies that attend and they want to know like what’s going on. Why are you doing this? What are my options?
What does this mean for me? Strategically right like I do I still send my customers to post reviews on TripAdvisor? Maybe I should send them some. So those are all of the things that we’re gonna know we’re going to discuss. I mean, we’re not there to just kind of play around and have people. You know we want to talk about the sector and what it means to all of the companies that are creating experiences.
Kelsey: Yeah, and then force the companies like TripAdvisor who is obviously with the monetization strategy who is essentially by removing those URLs. It’s really creating a scenario that this really isn’t to the advantage of a lot of people who are going to be in the room.
We kind of have to come with terms of that. I mean not like TripAdvisor owes you a free lunch. They obviously put a lot of effort into building just an enormous site that people use and trust. Yeah, but at the same token, that’ll be an interesting topic. I think this year I experienced no end of communications of frustrated people.
With that being removed from TripAdvisor and, your experience in that hotel sector to this is a move that they had done in that space as well and sort of became normal, but I think this is the first time it really impacted a lot of smaller players with these tours and activities that well. This is the thing that you could suddenly do that main driver of traffic to your booking or to your website aside gun. That’s a really frustrating experience and the questions thereafter aren’t so much.
You know, they’re going to be doing what they’re doing. But yeah the questions that you’re asking. How can this new environment, the same way that you know, Facebook changes or algorithm.
So it’s essentially, you know pay to play. It’s like yeah, you can reach people on Facebook, but now you’re gonna more less pay for the privilege as a business you just have to adapt and grow but I’d love to hear your thoughts on the online booking software as well as somebody who’s you know, you do have this great vision of the field. We saw a lot of well, here’s my two cents.
We’ve got lots of really great companies who are working in this space. It seems to be what is clearly growing. Maybe you should share if you have it offhand, but the percentage of torn activity operators that are using booking software still remains shockingly low. I mean, I think this is you. Remember what it is offhand or ballpark, but it’s local.
Douglas: Yeah, so well, so it’s actually grown quite a bit. So we did two big supplier surveys over when I was a Phocuswright. One and 2011 and then one in 2016 and the growth it had gone from about one in five to almost two and three which is really really great to see it’s been has grown. Yeah. So but now I would say though, just as a caution that are.
Our sample size tends to skew towards larger, tour companies. So probably if we had, I think there’s a long tail of smaller operators and especially if you’re if you’re really an individual tour guide and you’re kind of doing this, you know various kind of small business or even as a kind of a part-time kind of side, you know side occupation.
You might not be using one. So probably the 60% number is a little bit overstated. I actually think you know, while all of the attention in our industry has been around like the growth of TripAdvisor and then and kind of the online travel agency, you know companies that are selling tours and activities and some companies that have raised. Tons of you know money from Venture capitalists.
I actually think the most important trend in this sector is what I kind of call the plumbing effect which is the introduction of very affordable very accessible web-based software. So companies really have any size now they can. They can manage their tours, their schedules.
They can understand customer reservations and bookings. All of those processes are automated. So it’s your kind of moving off of email and Excel and into, you know, a system that can manage everything and keep a full chart of all those just basic small business tools and then also facilitate online booking and distribution as is really important and these are things that happen like in Airlines 50 years ago and hotels 30 to 40 years ago. And then in other like in vacation rentals with the likes of HomeAway and AirBnB 10 years ago. So now it’s happening to our sector and it’s driving a lot of the future a lot of the growth. So I think it’s huge
Kelsey: And I imagine that it’s gonna change quickly too because what happens is when you’ve experienced a booking platform like HomeAway and something like Google Flights or Expedia.
That you almost have a demand for it, you know, especially as I don’t know a younger person will say navigating in the world. If I’m going to book a tour activity business you almost shop. Sometimes you go to a website and you have to phone somebody I mean, what do you mean you want to have real time availability? I can’t see. I can’t right there, and then.
I think the expectation is going to be really high and I think you hit it on the head that there are tons of affordable options in our Online Tourism Academy and the programs. I absolutely encourage the use of online booking software distribution. It’s one thing which we can talk about here in a moment, but the other big thing is just that amount of time that it can really save you like you mentioned the day-to-day and then three which the customer experience which is what I’m all about and celebrate and sing all day.
Yeah, I sleep in a little bit. But from the start of the day till the end of the day is you can use an online booking software to automate really wonderful customer experiences you can have.
There are touch points with any booking experience where they come to your website when maybe with a booking software. Of course, they do bookings. You’re going to send them a confirmation email receipt then you’ve got maybe a reminder then you’ve got a follow.
Those become automated with your booking software and you can tweak and optimize them to provide sort of wow and delight them along the way and we spend a lot of time talking about how you can create little PDFs or like a little map of , you know, your favorite coffee shops in town or something to do with your gateway city or a great little hike or walks that you could experience in air and you could put that into a booking software.
So every one of your customers is getting it. Without you having to do anything. It’s just there and that’s pretty powerful when you start thinking about scaling any time. You can leverage it’s almost yeah.
Douglas: It’s almost like a price of Entry. I think if you’re not doing it, you know today or don’t have, you know, near-term plans to do it, your competitor, you know down the street, is going to do it and you’re going to be at a material disadvantage if you desire. In fact, one of the key inspirations for Arival, as with your tourism academy is, you know, there’s no place for or had been no place for all of the operators to come together and just meet all the companies check out the software. And so we set up this one aspect of the event which we call Demo Labs which allows where you can go in and you can see okay. Here’s what it’s like to set up a product in Peak. Here’s what it’s like to set up a product in Fare Harbor.
You know, we’re not going to get in the business of saying use this one or that one. I mean, that’s all for likewise. You know, I’m sure you as well, but it’s where you can go and see everything and get a feel because every business is different, you know, have you ever own needs and the software systems are different and some are better for certain things and for others so really important for you to go and get feel for what it’s like
Kelsey: It’s awesome and those demo labs are great. And I think the companies are sophisticated enough that these aren’t you know, high pressure situations. I mean, you can’t have a high-pressure situation at a conference. Let’s just turn around and walk over to right here so that it is a really wonderful experience quickly. What are your thoughts here?
We obviously had some movements and acquisitions by TripAdvisor, acquisition of Fare Harbor. How do you see that shifting? Those offerings and do you see them? Well, we’ll just leave it at that.
Douglas: Yeah, so we actually put a post out about this on our site. So if anyone wants to go to the Arival site and our insights blogged, and you can look at a couple of posts there on the topic. So honestly, I don’t think it really is that big of a deal for you know, the end user it’s you know, now that you know booking is through Fare Harbor. It’s not like Fare Harbor is going to, you know switch off connectivity to TripAdvisor or to Expedia.
I mean I think it’s about that does them no good. It does their customers no good. So I there’s some concern about things like that. But I just I don’t think that’s you know, for the end user. I don’t really think it’s a big deal it certainly it puts pressure on some of their competitors because now there’s. You know, there’s bigger pocketbooks, you know behind those your thing
Kelsey: Like with encrypted basically just operating at a loss in order to try and you know, ultimately encourage more customers.
Douglas: Yeah. So in a way, I think it’s good, you know because it only heats up competition, but at the same time, not too long after Peak announced that they’ve raised another significant round of funding so there clearly. You know far from throwing in the towel, they’re doubling down and there’s a lot of confidence in the market that a lot of these companies there’s because you know, what’s just to keep this in mind, right?
So there are at least and I say at least 126,000 tour and activity companies around the world and I believe this is based on our projection from the Phocuswright study that we did but I believe it’s understated because, again, it’s really hard in research to capture that long tail of really small operators, especially in emerging Markets. So I’m sure at least yeah and a lot of companies.
We’re talking about private guys to, you know, that are essentially running a private small enterprise exactly. And when you think about things like Airbnb experiences with individuals kind of becoming, you know guides and we’re, then it’s so I think it’s probably a multiple of that number so it’s a huge Market.
We’re really at the beginning so there’s lots of opportunity for lots of different, you know, lots of different tax. So I I think it’s good and it’s just going to make things more interesting more interesting.
Kelsey: I I think that these large tech companies have gotten a real free ride in terms of public opinion here. I’m grouping in their Facebook and Google and the don’t be evil crowd and the large players travel Expedia’s in the booking. You gotta not like they are free ride in Arival.
Okay. So let’s say I sign up with FareHarbor, you know, who’s data is it now? Right because all of a sudden, booking has a lot more information about travelers and they can be targeting people and doing it and really sophisticated advanced ways with machine learning and we’re just going to see a brave new world of I think personalization going forward that, those behemoths suddenly going to make that distinction between your customers and again, you could just be talking about in a very local environment.
You’re using an online booking software to get people in your local area. You’re not even using their distribution like by tour or Expedia local. They can still use that information to potentially Target them resell them.
So I think one of the things we talk about is, we can transition to this topic because I think you’ve got some great insights here too, but distribution and so, even if right now the online distribution through places like via tour and Expedia and others depending on the country, you know, there’s these massive players.
It seems playing where your customers are coming from. I just see that number going up and up and up especially as big data suddenly gets their hands into it. So let’s talk a little bit about distribution. Let’s start because we came this route, talking about the OTAs and obviously booking software is how you can easily sync your product, your availabilit, your times into these larger distribution platforms. Again, I would say one of the surprises that I got out of conference last year and here in some of the people is again that number still pretty small in terms of overall bookings as I just mentioned. I think that’s going off, but what’s your take on? Where it is now and how you see the next two or three years and what should be the takeaways for a small track to the operator or of any size.
Douglas: Yeah. I think that this is really important that you know, there’s a lot more to this Market than just TripAdvisor and Expedia and if your business is if you’ve got a lot of business coming from just a few OTAs then you’re probably missing out on a much bigger pie.
So just to give like a little perspective, online travel agencies and so by that we’re talking specifically about those brands that sell tours and activities online like Expedia, TripAdvisor, Get Your Guide in Europe.
Kelsey: There’s a number of others that are kind of smaller than medium-sized across around the world many nieces too like Amusement for the more actual attraction side.
Douglas: Yeah. There’s seatrip is huge in China. There’s you know, owed like clear trip in India for companies that serve the Indian market. Beltran out of Japan, there’s Shiva in Spain.
Kelsey: so there’s I mean if you’re listening and you’re wondering where some victims markets or I think we could maybe get into this you want to reverse engineer the question not necessary that you want to go and bring Chinese people to your small town and you know rural Nebraska if they’re not coming but, you really have to, I think, explore, you know, hey, are these travelers coming here?
And if you want to reach them? Feel free to pause this video go back look into those distribution platforms because these are not small organizations.
Douglas: Yeah. No, no, they’re not. So but I think it’s really important to keep in mind that in aggregate all of the OTAs account for less than 5% of total sales in this market now, that’s gonna change. Yeah, it’s gonna change. I mean they’re there. It’s the fastest growing Channel and they’re you know, they’ve got the kind of power and technical capability especially the big ones like booking and TripAdvisor and Expedia and Airbnb so it’s definitely going to change as changing already, but I think it’s really important to keep in mind.
If you look at still by our calculations of Phocuswright. There’s still more souls who Hotel Concierge is and there are three OTS now that’s probably going to change if it hasn’t already within the next kind of year or two, but it’s a pretty amazing pretty amazing number.
So I think when you think of that distribution, the most important thing for any tour and activity and attraction operators to really understand, you know their destination, so how many people come to my destination. How do they get there? Where do they come from? What markets? How do they book it? When do they plan? and, so if you know, for example, you say in a market like in LA for example where you’ve got or California, we’ve got a lot of inbound travelers from Asia and from China.
Then and you’re not getting a big piece of that inbound Market. Well, maybe you should think about how do I partner with a company like sea trip in China or how do I or some of the traditional tour operators? I think that’s also really important you have companies like JTB in Japan or Hannah Tours in Korea.
Traditional kind of large-scale tour operators that send tens of millions of travelers around the world every year. So how do you connect to that marketplace? And and so that’s one of our missions. That Arival, we’ve got actually a series of talks that are devoted to this. We have a talk by Dan Christian from the Travel Corporation one of the largest tour companies to talk about. Hey, you know.
Don’t forget there’s more to your Market than just Expedia and TripAdvisor. Here’s this whole world of travel agencies and tour operators. Where do you start? Right? Another really important thing I think for tour and activities and attraction operators to keep in mind too is, you know, if you’re not working with your local destination marketing organization or DMO.
Then you’re probably you know, you’re missing something because they’re the ones who are responsible for marketing your destination and they should know
Kelsey: They should have the innovation. Yeah, one of the biggest questions is how they can effectively do that would be finding out. The questions you just asked. Who’s actually coming here? How are they coming? Where are they coming from? How are they booking it? And then the goal is to really promote the area.
How do you see one of the things? I think the first time I went to the World Travel Market in was certain it’s really starting to appreciate that.
You can have many layers of these, you know, even a place like Vancouver that might have you know, the downtown core has a sort of a promotional organization than the city itself and then British Columbia and then Canada. So how would you recommend a small operator to sort of engage with those different levels? Is it just as relevant to go and work with, you know, visit your state level or provincial level? and the national level?
Douglas: So I think it really depends if you’re a small local operator, you should start local and you should start small and learn and it really you could write typically a city or will have an entity might be a county that will have an entity and then they’ll be kind of a national or provincial organization. As well and yes, you’re right there.
There are our layers. I would certainly start kind of local and see what kind of information you can get. How do they work with kind of inbound providers of Taurus? And where do you start?
Kelsey: Yeah, and speaking to your point there, you can even get inspiration from who else is in the room, you know, who is maybe they’re coming to those meetups or coming to conferences or even just membership online. The fees are often fairly nominal for the return that you can get from knowing that.
I just speak to an example that I know well of Backroads tours is an active, you know, Bike and Hike trip operator. They’re running week-long tours over the world and my wife Sarah and I when we got into trip development and really designing these experiences, there are people out there and we did this job who are looking for unique interesting, authentic experiences that will fit into longer itineraries and I had this experience in France where I was looking at gosh, there’s a lot of people to talk about wine in France, but I’m looking for somebody who’s doing a little bit differently.
That’s maybe got a little more personality that likes to you know, use their hands wave the bed around as got a unique perspective or angle. And again, that’s an example of an individual. So when I found that person went on the tour got to know them, I was able to book them solid.
With you know, probably 30, 35 dates over the course of the summer groups. That was it. That was just from conversation by being focused on quality, which is of course the back to that message and if you’re here tuning into this call and talking this is the type of reward that you can read by really getting serious about creating a memorable and unique experience is that there are mid-level, you know, operators and like the Thomas Cook’s and the to ease that.
You can connect up with them think there are people out in your region right now trying to create great itineraries and you can be part of those itineraries and, they could be really lucrative long-term contracts. I’m pretty sure that we’re still using, and it’s five or six years later, we’re still using that particular one tour company in France and that just comes from goes to show that the networking there can be really invaluable.
Douglas: Yeah, a lot of the destination marketing organizations will provide basically kind of buyer-seller exchanges. So these are basically meet up some places where some of these, we call them inbound operators, can meet the ground tour, attraction companies and in the sense, you know kind of contract and build Partnerships together as so at the can the largest-scale you’ve got.
Obviously you’ve got entities or events like ITB and Brawl in, there’s IPW in the United States which is another really, you know, big one but, you know, lots of kind of regional and smaller City level. DMOS also provide networking events and meetups where you can connect. So if there’s a small inbound operator that might sell lots of tours to a big tour operator like Thomas Cook, but you could be a supplier to that inbound operator.
I mean, there’s lots of different layers, I guess as you said, and lots of opportunities but I think it’s really important for any kind of ground operator in a destination to really networking with your local destination marketing organization and the other suppliers in the room.
It’s invaluable because you also learn what they’re doing, right and what they’ve learned and they can give you guidance and tips and things while you know, don’t waste your time with this group, but work with these guys, no really like that and I I see it, you know in the Facebook group Kelsey that you and Matt Newton you guys moderate we see these questions come up all the time, you know.
Hey, if you heard of this new website that they’re trying to, you know, because they’re constantly getting inbound calls. Hey, they want me to list my tours. Have you heard of these guys? Have you heard of this guy? So that’s important. You know, it’s who pays their bills right? who’s going to represent the product?
Well, who’s going to deliver the kinds of customers that are really right for my product? I think all of those things are really important.
Kelsey: Yeah, and I think as the long tail as we’ve been saying but if you are that small turning to the operator, it can be a bit of a shock sometimes. When you start encountering the commission or essential slice of your business that goes to inbound operators that goes to online travel.
Yeah, and I think it needs to be a little bit of a shift in thinking of just how valuable what they are providing is or the notion that people who say, you know, 20% guys.
That’s a huge cut. I think it just to be a shift in thinking even if right now it’s most of your business isn’t coming through those channels. You want to set yourself up to be. Little to price or towards such a way that you’ve got 20% plus, you know some space for, make sure you’ve got your cut for yourself and pricing in such a way that you can take advantage of those channels or again an operator that can come to
Douglas: This whole issue with, you know, OTAs and commissions and so forth the issues that I think torn activity operators are really beginning to struggle with just so they know and you all know like this is not new. You’re not going through this for the first time.
This has been an issue that has dogged the rest of the travel industry, especially hotels for many years. There have been lawsuits and all sorts of things going on. So one is you know, you’re not alone, but I think there are a lot of smart people who are looking at some of these early developments in this market and saying hey, let’s not take the same approach that the hotels have done which, and it’s happened in the hotel industry where it’s really become adversarial. Like how can this Marketplace, you know work together.
Look, I mean, I think on the one hand, and I also want to as we talked about kind of TripAdvisor an example earlier in the call to you know, when we talked about some of the changes and how we’re going to ask the tough questions that Arival like I also want to be clear like we’re not.
You know, we’re not out to place odds or to you know, it’s not about putting somebody on the spot or but it but it is about addressing the big issues that affect everybody and look without a doubt, you know commissions are important and as these online travel agencies get bigger. You know, they’re gonna have more leverage to call the shots of the negotiating table.
That’s going to happen. So it’s but at the same time.
Kelsey: It comes as sophistication and levels of marketing and machine learning and personalization that are going to make for incredible customer experiences, and they’ll be York.
Douglas: And how does a small look if you’re a small tour operator? How can you find that inbound couple from Germany? That would love to do your tour? How would they ever find you? Well, they’re gonna look on those marketplaces where you know, they can see all of these options and make the decision.
That’s right for them the cost for you as an individual tour company to find that that traveler can be quite hot so that’s the balance. And a big part of it actually is making sure that your operational house is in order, right? So you have to know your cost and your costing inside and out. We’re thrilled to have Ingrid from polymath who’s going to do a whole session on actually cost accounting for tour operators at Arival.
We’re going to have sessions on pricing to like you got to know your cost inside and out. So then you can figure out okay. I can accept this type of commission level on this tour maybe so maybe I list this Tour on an OT, but maybe these tours, maybe I don’t, maybe I save these for other other channels. So there’s lots of different lots of different ways to approach this and to use the different channels.
Kelsey: Yeah, and I think it can be deceiving when you say, you know, the overall number is very, small, but I know many small torn activities. Operators where the percentage they get through Viator can be as high as 35% of of their booking in case is higher.
Well, yeah, and so if you can develop that into a channel of it’s working for you and that’s great and of course wisdom in that diversification if that’s just your main traffic sources from TripAdvisor and they turn off the tops like they did recently, you know, you need to have a some stability built into your system, the other lumbering kind of giant here, and I know you’ll be.
Hopefully trying to get Google to the conference. But how do you see Google’s role in all this because I know in the whisperings certainly been that they want to well…
Douglas: I wouldn’t I wouldn’t call them lumbering.
Kelsey: Yeah. Yes. I’m not the most PC. It’s good that you’re hosting stage.
Douglas: Well, they move pretty fast. I think it’s you know is pretty amazing. I mean, honestly, you know, it’s just. I mean Google is like the ultimate kind of good-guy-bad-guy like on the one hand, everybody loves to hate them because they’re so big and they’ve become so successful.
They’re the 800-pound gorilla across multiple Industries, right when you search mobile your phones. I mean maps, I mean, you know all of this stuff. It’s huge at the same time. You have to you have to take your hat off and just acknowledge how a company can continue to innovate and grow and create all these new products and…
Kelsey: To see what they Google flights too for me just over a very short period of time quickly becoming not only convenient. The fact that it pops up and it’s there they get a lot obviously of traffic and use from that but just in terms of user experience how many times.
You know going through various sites and they’ve all been innovating and iterating. But when Google really throws its weight at something you’re looking at something that is often times focused on the user in a way that is can often blow other people out of the water so you can I can quickly imagine is through like I said it there, their empire is not exclusively search, right?
It does hit Maps. It does hit other things but these little knowledge graphs the whole the whole notion that Google is going to be showing you information. So you don’t have to leave Google or don’t see a or whatever you can get the information you need and maybe even do a booking rate from that screen.
It seems like especially I’m hearing all kinds of deals that they’re announcing with distribution partners with booking software to get. All right tours and activities in there. What have you heard?
Douglas: Yeah. Well, there’s so there has been some reporting actually, so on Phocuswright, and but they’ve broken a story about a start-up within kind of experimental what kind of incubator within Google called area 120 which is a which is an interesting, like a focus on tours and activities.
So there’s been some rumors about that. I think they’re working with some of the OTAs like it looks like you can see if you do a search, touring bird then you’ll get a link to book something on Get Your Guide or one of the other one of the other OTAs. So certainly, I mean, that’s kind of experimental and we don’t know how serious it’s going to be but, you know, certainly the industry pays very close attention because look at what they’ve done in flight like you just said look at what they’ve done in hotels and just the power that they have. I mean, you know Google sits at the top of the funnel for many many travelers for many many trips, and that’s a very very powerful position to be and I have no doubt. Look, we just talked about the data. This is a big market. This is a market that’s growing. By the way. It’s growing faster than any other segment of travel people want more and more experience and they want different types of stuff. You know, like we’re talking about this millennial generation.
That is, you know their parents, have already bought them everything. So they’re going to spend their money on experiences and things to do. We see it very clearly and all of their parents write all the Baby Boomers. They’ve also bought everything. I mean who’s going to go out and buy more flat screen TVs? No. No, they want to go have a fabulous.
Kelsey: How many or how many times do you have you go to Provence into Italy these hot spots? Yeah, you know, there’s a real expansion to, I think, Opera are looking for different experiences too.
Douglas: And then kind of like well just so that I I have no doubt that Google is going to be very very engaged in this sector. We haven’t confirmed a speaker yet, for Arival, but you know, we had Rob Torres who last year at Arival who is a one of the most senior people in the Google travel organization, and we certainly expect to have some speakers there and expect to have some presents there because they play a very big role certainly in just in general search and we have workshops specifically on search how tour and activity and traction companies can manage their search campaigns both for organic and certainly for paid but their Maps is very important.
A lot of Travelers, I mean who travels somewhere and doesn’t use a map right? Figure out where to go and look at recommendations, right? So that’s also very important and then clearly, you know, even if we don’t have a clear Google travel product for tours and activities today like we do for flights do, they have a lot of smart people.
They follow the market closely. They’re going to be they’re going to be involved if there’s money to be made in online advertising and connecting travelers to supply they’re going to go after a piece of it and they’re going to do probably a pretty good job like they’ve done in every other sector. Yeah, so definitely keep an eye on it for sure.
Kelsey: Yeah, be nice to see you know, TripAdvisor and having to pay Google, you know, maybe you’ll get some satisfaction to watching them. Well, thanks enough.
Douglas: They already pay. I already pay a pretty penny too to Google . Everybody does.
Kelsey: Yeah. The other big one we’re actually together hosting a workshop on online reviews, Google reviews. We’re going to talk about it because that is a space where they’ve I felt that. I’ve done this name.
Job in mobilizing people who ever sat designed. I don’t know how much you’ve looked into that but the local guides and how you get rewards for commenting. They’ve really found a way to essentially mobilize an army of volunteers that are actually doing this for free and I tell you that last trip that I did to New Zealand we came back from working.
I was using Google Map. To get information on places. I didn’t go to TripAdvisor when I needed to get a little bit of information on a tour activity or an attraction or something because there are now sort of enough volume to show. Okay, that information is showing up on maps, of course the business loads in but underneath are the reviews of when was this a busy time to go? Oh do they have washrooms? How it even for things like hiking trails and all these in destination things and it’s a shift that’s happening that I think as it turned activity operator.
You need to be aware of or you can leverage it. I mean, I see little sneaky moves like people who are taking their Airbnb listings. Hey, I just happen to have an Airbnb listing. I’m gonna plunk it. Will maps and the amount of traffic that you can get from that by having beautiful pictures of your you know, Lakefront little cabin or what have you can be doing the same thing with your torn activity business. Plus
Douglas: There’s lots, of opportunities and free tools and ways for companies to leverage Google Beyond simply paying the money for keyword advertising and even potentially to consider becoming a local guide, right if you are a small business or local tour guide or a provider, you know, consider it. Look into it because that’s an opportunity to get your name and your service out in front and to become a to become a resource and there are other marketplaces as well. Where tour companies can do that.
Kelsey: So, yeah, that’s pretty neat too because when we go to Rome, one of the places we went there’s hot springs and I heard tell that you know, there’s the ones you pay for right? There’s a big attractions that you get a pay 30 bucks and you get to sit in the hot springs and it’s a wonderful experience, but then there’s the sort of off-the-grid sort of stuff and sure enough. There was this is kerosene.
Was it kerstin, kerosene River? Kerosene Springs their group of people describe. Here’s the trail. It’s hard to find and you walk down and you sit in this like bubbling perfectly warm stream all courtesy of these local guides of people who are leaving reviews. So, huge opportunity there and also, be mindful that if you’re not doing your competition could and they could be could be showing up there.
As we wrap this up we’ve been so generous with your time the buzzword that we kind of hear a lot. Is this notion of authenticity? Something different, you know off the beaten path my gosh this the beaten path is beaten in travel, but that phrase is beaten right everybody in there dog.
What do you think is happening there in terms of that shift? Is it is it real? Is it just sort of marketing? I have some sense of it, but I’d love to get your thought is that an actual desire from travelers that we should be thinking?
Douglas: Yeah, so I think it’s something my sense is it’s something that’s really been, you know brought to the fore by the growth of Airbnb as something that they’ve really kind of leveraged as a point of differentiation for the Airbnb brand and the Airbnb experience and I fact I remember, when I think it was maybe two years ago when they, we started to see rumors coming out about the launch of their experiences business and this is maybe in the summer of 2016 and they started to promote these videos.
I don’t know if you ever saw it there was the commercial they did of could of people doing Segway Tours through Paris the traditional tours yes of that kind of yeah math travel sort of Tours, right?
Exactly. So if you look up that commercial you could probably find that on YouTube and. And they’re kind of making fun of Segway Tours and they have this little line that says, you know, don’t do Paris, live in Paris or something like as about experiencing it like a local and I remember I was at a conference and we and I was moderating a session on the sector and we showed the commercial to the audience and we had Johannes, one of the co-founders and the CEO Get Your Guide.
He said, you know, it’s a great commercial but just so you guys all know Segway Tours, one of our biggest sellers. Right. So I think it’s a really interesting thing. I do think it speaks to a really fundamental trend among consumers which is today’s traveler.
It’s not like 30 years ago more people than ever have already gone to Europe. Right? We’ve already we’ve seen the Eiffel Tower we’ve seen we’ve gone to the top of the Empire State Building. We’ve done a lot of these…
Kelsey: Those that do travel in this segment of the market.
Douglas: Yeah, so this population of Travelers is more educated more sophisticated than ever. And so when they go back a second or third time, they do want to do something a little bit different. They want to excel there are certainly big segment of the market that is looking for something. You know for lack of a better word, authentic, but what I would like to say is it’s something different, right?
So you might be interested in seeing local food or maybe local wine or maybe, you know music or if it’s something that’s of Interest. So I think actually personal is more important than authentic because if you don’t care about, you know, if you’re not a Wine Drinker, it doesn’t matter how authentic the wine is.
You’re not going to want to do it. Right? So it’s yeah.
Kelsey: It’s just like it’s so hard to define what it is. I mean, there obviously refers to a sort of a lack of superficiality or this ingenuine, but it’d be very it’s a bit to try and you know build around it.
Douglas: But I think there’s also a mark, there’s something real to it, but there’s also a marketing spin to it as well and I could see and I could certainly see you know, the tour if you know the small tour company or a large company for that matter that has been running tours in a city and has been investing in building a great tour experience and connecting travelers with local shops or local experiences.
And then to have a big brand like Airbnb to come along and say, oh that’s not authentic where, you know, we only want authentic experiences. I could you know, I could I think that’s a little bit, you know disingenuous to I think there’s and that’s one of the things that amazes me.
There’s just so many incredible companies that are offering great experiences and travelers want both and we, in fact in this summer Paul’s study that we just released, you know, we could see people want to see this big sites. Yeah. Yeah. They want to go to Paris. They want to see the Eiffel Tower. They’re going to eat a. Croissant in the cafe, and they may want to go have that really interesting off-the-beaten path. I know you can do it all in the same trip.
Kelsey: Yeah. Yeah, and I think that’s the takeaway that the whole notion it was like marketing speak to talk about the um USP or a unique value proposition. But what that boils down to is exactly what we’re talking about and we can kind of, and with this thigh of Gray Line International Des or seeing tour companies and they have franchises around the world. Um, they brought me in as a speaker to their conference last year in Miami. And one of the things that person shared was that in New York. This was essentially a Potential Threat or a competitor that was coming. Have you heard of the ride? Sure. So in terms of something that’s unique or different the way that this coach.
Toward we all saw hop-on hop-off or traditional sightseeing tours. This is one where all the seats. Face the side of the bus. Yeah, full glass windows so you can see, you have some type of narration. I don’t know enough about it in terms of its an individual or person but the real thing is that it’s something unique and as you go through the city this case New York, but I think. Looking to expand may have already there, you’ve got people who are acting out scenes, you know think of actors and plants and sort of thing who are just embedded into the City and you’ve got a very unique way of doing a bus tour. That authentic.
Well, this is it. It’s authentic may not be the right word. But this notion of something that you were going to remember we speak eyes because a lot in the term something that’s memorable something that is an experience and that you know, it is Miriam ditching all coach doors because there’s always going to be a place for a sightseeing tour but you can innovate on that to where you can find unique angles you can have themes you can, anyway go on and on about.
That sort of thing but I think that hunger is there and especially as we have the Baby Boomers transitioning out of that travel Market. This is you’ve got a new and younger generation that I think is much more embracing of places that you can find that in peer-to-peer marketplaces that eat with which we have mentioned, you know the notion that you can go and like eat and somebody’s home stay in somebody’s home hang out with a different local.
I mean if that’s your thing, there’s a lot of opportunity too. Okay, let’s wrap things up. What are you most excited about at this year’s Arival? And then at the end of this conversation, of course, we’ll put a link down that you can check out we’ve even arranged a special discount if you sign up through the Be a Better Guide Community a percentage off of the conference, so, it’ll be a great chance to come to hang out with Douglas. If you enjoy this type of conversation these types of things then, it’s the place to be and, I gotta say, Las Vegas isn’t a place I wouldn’t go but because Douglas, you and your co-founders are down there. I might be making an annual trip. Yeah, well,
Douglas: It is a fun set. It is a fun set.
Kelsey: Many Canadians go down there. You know we go visit Celine Dion, there are things to do. We should have her as part of the activities.
Douglas: I’m sure and by the way, you know, don’t forget Kelsey, you know, you are giving you’re doing a workshop on recruiting and training which is really important. Especially that’s really hard. Every company has to deal with it and certainly, you know for tour companies.
How do you find and recruit amazing inspirational tour leaders? And so I really appreciate you coming and doing that workshop and you’re also going to give a talk in the theater on creating those Unforgettable experiences. How do you create tours and memories that the last so I would say that would be definitely on my top. You know, my top 10 the problem is we’ve got like a top 30 or 40 at Arival.
Yeah, honestly for me the most. My favorite experience was last year. It was just meeting all of the different types of companies and especially small to our companies and hearing about the things that are on their mind.
I mean for me it was a huge learning experience and if the conversations that I have with the industry, you know over a beer at one of the parties or over coffee at one of our working breaks that I mean, I love, I work hard to build a great conference and great content, but it’s making the connections and the learning from them that inspires me the most and gives me ideas for you know our next insights report for our next conference.
Kelsey: Yeah. Thank you so much for taking the time and sharing the insights that how you have with all the folks here. We’ll put links down below for, any of the information that we’ve mentioned, take care and we’ll talk again soon.
Douglas: All right. Thank you
