Humans crave emotional connection. Giving it to them pays off, with 70% of emotionally engaged consumers spending almost twice as much on brands they are loyal to, while a further 80% will promote them to their family and friends.
But with the rise of digital communications, face-to-face experiences are dying out.
Tour guides are often the first—and only—human voice guests hear throughout their adventure with a tour operator. This interaction can be the cornerstone to building a relationship with guests, and is a chance to leave a lasting and positive impression.
However, the relationship between the guide and guest usually ends when the adventure ends, with all post-trip communications handled by nameless marketers. This is a mistake.
Here’s why tour guides are key to supporting digital marketing strategies and building guest relationships well beyond the actual adventure.
Eternalizing the human bond in video content
There are multiple ways marketers can involve tour guides in digital communications. One of the most powerful methods is a 15 to 30-second thank you video.
Guides that take the time to record personal messages help guests feel special, make emails more authentic, and allow marketers to expand on guests’ existing relationships with your brand. At Fotaflo, we found that thanking your guests with a video can increase your online reviews by as much as 20%.
The best way to do this is with a simple script that can be repeated as follows:
1. Say thank you.
2. Mention one thing that’s unique to your guest, so they know the video was created especially for them.
3. Include your guide’s name.
4. Kindly ask for a review.
For example, imagine this: Rachel participates in a scuba diving class, gets home, and receives a recording from the instructor, “Hi Rachel, it’s Jeff here! Thanks so much for joining us today, and how cool was that octopus? What a great diving spot! We hope you had fun. If you have time to leave us a review on Tripadvisor, that would mean a lot for our business. Hope to see you again!”
Thanking guests, mentioning something about the experience, and kindly asking them to provide feedback on a review website through a personalized video maximizes response rates. Rather than feeling bombarded with marketing emails and review requests, Rachel is taken back to the moment she saw an octopus with her own eyes. She feels proud and is even reminded of small details to add to her Tripadvisor review.
Such personal anecdotes found in thank you videos can become valuable tools for tour operators to connect effectively with past guests later down the line.
Tour guides transform guests to advocates
Guests with an emotional connection to a business have a 306% higher lifetime value than the average consumer. However, this is about more than gaining repeat bookings. It’s about creating advocacy for your tour business—although past guests might not always be looking for a tour or activity, their friends and family certainly might.
If tour operators want advocates, they need to consider triggering positive memories for past guests, with the help of their guides. For this, they need a new tool—this is where the guide’s photography skills come in.
Whether it’s been exactly one year since a guest’s last visit, their birthday, or a special occasion at your company, try communicating this message to past guests with a photo of them enjoying your tour or activity. This helps to bring back happy memories, and builds an emotional connection with your brand, especially when their guide signs off on the email.
For us at Fotaflo, the power of brand advocacy means guests recommending your tour or activity multiple times throughout their lifetime. That’s why we include an option for guests to share photos from their experience, or provide an online review of your business, each time you contact them by email. Here’s how you can use photo albums to enhance recommendations:
1. Public online reviews: 78% of people trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations, with nearly all consumers (97%) reading reviews before making a purchase. When a review lists a guide’s name and special moments shared during the activity, potential new guests can begin to feel connected to the brand and visualize the adventure. And a photo will enhance those visuals instantly and more powerfully. Google, Tripadvisor, and social media reviews all have a space to add photos, so link your guests directly to these sites for the best results.
2. Direct email and messenger sharing: Email guests their photo albums and ask things like: “Who would enjoy this experience as much as you? Share it with them!” This is a great way to grab the attention of potential new guests. Even though these people may have not been looking for a tour, if it is recommended by someone they know, it will more likely be an experience they will consider. You can also go one step further and include a link to check out your latest packages online, taking these possible new guests to the next stage of the purchase journey.
In short, tour guides that are trained to take photographs at exciting, memorable, or eye-catching locations during a tour or activity provide tour business owners with powerful communication assets they can use for years to come.
Optimizing tour guide media tools with a digital platform
In a cookieless world, organizations are looking to integrate physical and digital experiences to engage with customers and capture data directly. How can they achieve these hybrid experiences? The secret is an app.
Intelligent platforms that integrate booking forms, cameras, and marketing tools allow brands to take a modern approach. While booking software can request guest information such as name, age (or birthday), time of visit, and number of guests, marketing tools can pull together personalized communication timelines. In addition, during the tour, the guide can capture quality photo and video content.
Let’s say Rory took his family rock climbing. Along the way, the tour guide takes some amazing photos of Rory’s family, records a very nice thank you video, which is captured and stored all on one app. Once the tour is complete, the guide simply ticks a box, and all the content is packaged up into a neat photo album that’s sent to Rory right away.
When guests receive their photo albums right after the trip, memories are consolidated in their minds. Perhaps they are even enjoying a snack in an airport cafe before their journey home. Receiving an email with personalized adventure photos, accompanied by a video with a sincere call to action, can mean some pretty glowing online reviews.
Tour operators have so much to gain by maximizing the time tour guides spend with guests. Tour-focused marketing platforms can alert guides to take photos, record thank-you videos, and suggest questions and phrases to help them collect vital information about guests—all while providing a first-class experience. That way, at the end of each tour, operators are instantly equipped to deliver customized communications to guests.
Guest expectations and data regulations are changing, and tour operators are having to rethink everything from information gathering to pre- and post-community engagement. Integrating the guide into communications with personalized, multimedia content is a powerful guest-centric strategy. Tour companies that master a human-digital approach are the ones that will strengthen their guest relationships and spur business growth.
