In any type of business transaction, there’s going to be risk associated with making a purchase. In our context, prospective guests wonder, “What if something happens and I have to change my plans, cancel my booking or reschedule?” “What if the tour doesn’t live up to expectations?” “What if I’m disappointed?” “What if things go really wrong on the tour?”
These are all risks associated with booking on your tours. And what we want to avoid is asking our potential guests to absorb all of that risk on their end.
In this blog post and video, we’ll give you risk-reversal strategies for increasing the conversion rate of your tour sales pages. And for examples of tour businesses who are using risk reversal strategies effectively on their tour sales pages, watch the video below.
Reversing the Pre-Booking Risk
Any type of transaction is ultimately about a relationship, isn’t it? It’s about trust, it’s about expectations, it’s about the belief that the tour operator is going to deliver the tour as promised.
Fortunately there are lots of tools for you, as a tour or activity business owner, to help reverse some of this risk and give those guests peace of mind.
Let’s take a look at some of the ways we can do this.
Satisfaction Guarantees
One of the most powerful tools in your disposal is the guarantee.
A satisfaction guaranteed, as the name implies, guarantees that your guests will be satisfied on your tour. If they don’t have a great time on one of your tours, then you promise to make it right by either providing a refund or some other form of compensation.
Think about what this does to the psychology of the prospective guest. Not only are they protected if something goes wrong, but it’s also a powerful indicator that you’re 100% behind your tours.
So should you consider implementing some type of satisfaction guarantee? Short answer, yes. That is our recommendation.
Now, there might be important reasons why you can’t offer a satisfaction guarantee for your particular tour or activity. But let’s make something super clear – most tour business owners choose not to offer a guarantee because they don’t get the math right.
You see, if 1% to 2% of your guests invoke your 100% satisfaction money-back guarantee, but 10% more prospective guests actually book your tours as a result of promoting the guarantee, then you’re ahead.
If you want to test out a money-back guarantee in your tour business, you can very easily track these numbers. But here’s the bottom line – if you’re offering great tours and you have great staff and you do a good job of setting expectations and then exceeding them when guests come on tour, the amount you’ll lose to refunds is going to be negligible when compared to how much you’re going to gain in increased sales.
Lowest Price Guarantees
A lowest price guarantee eliminates the nervousness or anxiety that many prospective guests feel pre-purchase when they’re unsure if this is the best deal available to them. A lowest price guarantee reduces their desire to shop around before booking.
The wording of a lowest price guarantee says something like, ‘If you find a better price than booking directly with us, we’ll refund the difference.’ By stating this guarantee, your guests can’t lose by booking directly through you.
Why not call that out explicitly? Because 9 times out of 10 booking directly through your website will be the cheapest way for a guest to book your tours. And it’s the most profitable for you, so why not back that up with a robust guarantee?
Cancellation Policies
Make sure your cancellation and refund policy is simple. Make sure it is clear, and make sure it is highly visible on each of your tour sales pages.
We recommend against linking out to another page that lays out your full and potentially very complex policy. Now, if there’s a lot of nuance, if you’re in multi-day tours or a particularly complex situation, you might link out to another page, but you need to have a great summary and synopsis right on the page where you want to convert prospects.
Plus, you want to frame the cancellation policy or the refund policy in positive terms instead of negative terms. For example, ‘Cancel up to 40 hours in advance for a full refund’.
Now, what is the right cancellation policy? That’s ultimately for you to decide, but we encourage you to go with the most generous cancellation policy possible.
And here’s the thing, most of your resellers like Viators and Get Your Guide, would have required you to sign a contract saying that you abide by their 24 hour cancellation policy. So we don’t want to incentivize people to book with our resellers.
If I’m looking at your website and you have a more punitive cancellation policy than the same tour over here on Get Your Guide, you’re incentivizing the guest to book through Get Your Guide. We don’t want to do that! If you’re using resellers, no matter what your cancellation policy, we urge you to be as generous as possible. And free cancellation up to 24 hours really is the industry standard that’s being set by these online travel agents (OTAs).
Straight Talk Sets Clear Expectations
One final piece of advice when it comes to risk reversal – think about your tour description page as a way to pre-qualify guests for whether they’re a good fit for your tour or activity.
You can do this through something that our coaching team calls ‘Straight Talk’, where we’re being explicit about some of the requirements or conditions your tours might have.
For example, if you’re operating tours in Iceland, there’s a good chance it’s going to be rainy on tour. So include that ‘straight talk’ by explicitly calling out the fact that your guests should feel comfortable walking 9 or 10 miles during this tour and it’s likely to be raining, then prospects can make their own decision ahead of time.
That’s a good thing. It will mean fewer frustrated and upset guests, fewer headaches for you and your staff, less refunds issued, and less negative reviews affecting your online reputation.
Think of your tour description as an agreement or a contract between you and your ideal target guest. Don’t make promises you can’t keep and don’t set expectations so high that you can’t meet them when it comes to delivering your tour, activity or experience.
Risk-Reversal Best Practices
Here’s a summary of risk-reversal best practices for you:
If you would like some extra help setting up risk-reversals, coming up with the wording, figuring out where to implement it on your tour description pages, you should reach out to us at [email protected].
