Why Most Tours Are Generic and Forgettable [Costly Tour Business Mistakes 3/7]
Welcome to video 3 of 7 in our series on the 7 most common mistakes that keep tour business owners from selling more tours. Book a free 45-minute strategy call with a tour business coach.
In the third installment of our video series, we unveil another costly mistake that tour operators are making: generic tours. Generic tour design and attempting to cater to everyone’s preferences in a tour, rather than catering to your ideal target guest.
We understand how easy it feels to cast a wide net and target as many different people as possible. The more people you cater to, the more profitable you’ll be, right? Wrong. The reality for small to medium-sized tour businesses is quite the opposite.
By designing your tours, activities, and experiences around just ONE ideal target guest, considering their frustrations, challenges, needs, wants and dream scenarios, you can achieve remarkable product-market fit. This ensures your tours precisely meet the needs and desires of a specific market segment, resulting in satisfied customers, increased word-of-mouth referrals and higher demand.
Not only does narrowing your focus allow for more effective selling within a smaller niche, but your marketing campaigns also become more cost-efficient and effective. You gain a deep understanding of the precise audience you’re trying to reach. The true victory, however, lies in designing tours that cater to your ideal target guests at the highest level. It’s about outshining your competition through genuine care and delivering unforgettable experiences.
It’s important to embrace the fact that your tour shouldn’t be for everyone. In this video, we’ll showcase examples of multi-million dollar tour businesses built on small yet powerful niches. We’ll guide you through a step-by-step process, leveraging our Guest Deep Dive™ method, to develop features, benefits, and simple insights for designing best-selling tours. Whether you’re starting from scratch or aiming to improve the product-market fit of your existing tours, our toolkit will support your journey.
Throughout this video series, we’ll demonstrate that your success as a tour operator goes beyond finding the right software or using marketing hacks. Instead, the most effective path to building a thriving, profitable tour business lies in placing the guest experience at the heart of everything you do. From Guest Focused tour design and delivery to Guest Focused sales and marketing.
Want to learn more about the 7 Costly Tour Business Mistakes? Watch the whole series on YouTube today!
In the world of tour businesses, creating unforgettable experiences is the key to standing out from the competition. Yet, many tour operators fall into the trap of offering generic tours that fail to leave a lasting impact.
It’s important to understand your ideal target guests and empathize with their needs, wants, and pain points so you can design a tour that targets exactly what they’re looking for.
Specializing Tours for Ideal Target Guests
Countless opportunities exist to specialize and differentiate your tours from competitors. By choosing an ideal target guest and truly understanding their desires and challenges, you can move away from generic tour design and outshine your competition.
Let’s delve into the success story of Clint and his team at Discover Canada Tours. They recognized that a significant portion of their customers were students from a local ESL school, and they tailored their tours to better suit the needs of these ESL clients. Through adjustments in transportation, departure times, and dedicated representatives, they successfully catered to this niche market and achieved annual sales of over a million dollars.
Guest Deep Dive for Tour Design
Once you’ve identified your ideal target guests, it’s time to dive deep into understanding their preferences. By soliciting feedback from past guests, you can uncover valuable insights and ideas for enhancing your tours.
Let’s explore an example of a tour business looking to improve their bachelorette experiences. By reviewing guest feedback, they discovered desires for all-inclusive pricing with alcohol included, hassle-free transportation, and indulgent experiences like bottomless mimosas. Incorporating these features and benefits into their tours allowed them to create compelling and unforgettable experiences that resonated with their target market.
Iterative Process for Constant Improvement
Guest-focused tour design is an ongoing process of improvement and refinement. Even if you already have existing tours, it’s important to listen to guest feedback and adapt accordingly. One example is the transformation of a trip from being one of the lowest-scoring to one of the top-scoring tours in Europe. By carefully analyzing guest feedback and addressing pain points, the tour design was modified to create a more balanced and enjoyable experience. This shows that even small adjustments can make a significant difference in guest satisfaction and the success of your tour business.
Unleash Your Creativity
Creativity and inspiration play a vital role in tour design. As long as your creative ideas align with guest desires and dreams, they can be integrated into your tours. The key is to ensure that your creativity fulfills guest expectations and addresses their pain points. A brilliant example is Jamie, who designed a rum runners-themed tour in Nassau, Bahamas. By combining the guests’ desire for tasting experiences and learning about the history of running, Jamie created a tour that consistently sells well and leaves guests captivated.
Take Action and Embrace Guest-Focused Design
If you’ve realized the pitfalls of designing generic tours, it’s time to lean into your guest deep dive. Utilize customer research, feedback, and intuition to identify possible features and benefits that align with guest desires and alleviate their pain points. Embrace your creativity to design impactful and laser-focused tours that fulfill your guests’ dream scenarios. If you need guidance or inspiration, our coaching program and resources are available to support you on this exciting journey.
Elevating your tour business through guest-focused tour design is a game-changer. By understanding your ideal target guests, conducting thorough research, and leveraging creative ideas, you can create unforgettable experiences that leave a lasting impression on your guests. It’s time to take action and embark on the path to success.
