Why is Agritourism Becoming Increasingly Popular?

Simple Steps to Increase Bookings 233% - 500% With a Tourism Website That Sells

Tourism Tim Warren is no stranger to helping tourism businesses succeed. The founder of Adventure Business Consultants and host of top industry podcast Travel Business Success, Tim and his team have helped thousands of private and public sector tourism & hospitality businesses start, grow, scale and exit profitably. In this post, he lets us in on a few key tips to help capture the attention of your website visitors - and give your sales a boost in the process.“If only I had a better search ranking, or more traffic to my website, I would surely be booking more trips.”If you’re a tour or activity operator, I’m guessing this thought has crossed your mind on more than one occasion. It’s natural to think that if your website is more visible, your traffic will increase, and your bookings will rise.The problem? This is a mostly false perception. It’s not to say that these things can’t ever give your business a boost. The issue is, things can get real expensive real fast when dealing with search engine optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing. And the worst part? Many operators are not earning many leads and those all-important conversions from this form of investment. Okay, so where’s the good news? What should you be doing instead? Well, since it often seems like only the great Google Gods know what’s next in terms of changes to their search engine algorithms, here’s my recommendation:Focus on learning about the Profitable Powers of Conversion.In this post, I’ll be laying out some core tourism marketing principles that will help you more than triple your leads and bookings. All without ANY increase in ranking or traffic. By understanding and applying the following ideas, your tourism marketing efforts will yield a better return on investment -- one that you are in control of.

The Profitable Powers of Sales Conversion

Here’s a sad tourism website marketing fact.You’re probably missing out on 97% or more of potential leads that visit your tour or activity website. A huge percentage of operators websites worldwide, including many I have consulted with, suffer from this problem.Not sure if this is true for you?Check out your website visitor stats with Google Analytics. Take a look at your “Bounce Rate”. This is the percentage of people who visited your site, and left in less than 10 seconds. If over 60% or higher of your web visitors are leaving in less than 10 seconds, how can you possibly convince them to book with you?So, you need more time to show your customers how great your experiences are. But you also need to make sure you’re making those first 5-10 seconds count when someone enters your website. Before we talk about how to do that, let’s take a look at the possible results from making small, simple changes to your bounce and conversion rates. These three realistic examples show what it can do to your bookings - and profits:Graphic #1 represents a tour operator with 1,000 monthly website visitors and $500 revenue per booking. Just by lowering the bounce rate from 70% to 50% and increasing sales conversions from a conservative 1% to 2%, increases bookings and revenues 333%. These small improvements that I am going to show you - that you can do too - are worth an extra US$42,000 a year in this example.

Let’s look at two more scenarios to show you how you can increase bookings up to 500%.Graphic #2 represents an average Peek tour operator or attraction with 5,000 monthly website visitors and $85 revenue per booking. Again, by lowering the bounce rate from 70% to 50% and increasing sales conversions from 1% to 2%, bookings increase 333% with $35,700 in additional revenues. Pretty nice!

Graphic #3 represents the same Peek tour operator or attraction with 5,000 website visitors monthly, $85 revenue per booking. Again, we lowered the website bounce rate from 70% to 50%. But in example #3, we increased sales conversions from 1% to a still pretty conservative 3%. This same operator now sees bookings increase by 500% and a revenue boost of $61,200. Sweet!

These examples show that lowering your bounce rate and increasing your sales conversions means more profits for you. And best of all, this can actually be done while lowering your marketing costs.All this could mean a 233% - 500% increase in your revenues with 2 simple website improvements.

Successful Tourism Marketing Establishes Trust & Credibility Fast

Ok, so what are some of the ways in which we can lower that bounce rate and increase conversions?Based on a Nielsen study on effective advertising with over 28,000 Internet respondents in 56 countries, the #1 reason why a stranger might stay engaged in your tourism website, and decide you may be a good choice and want to book is – trust.Establishing this trust is called “social proof.”Remember your bounce rate from above? Well, it means you have less than 7 seconds to establish trust and credibility – especially on your tourism website. This is one of the most important lessons I have learned in 25+ years of helping tourism, travel & hospitality companies worldwide increase bookings, profits and business value. When you can communicate trust effectively and quickly, you will generate more leads and sales. Guaranteed.I’ve found that a key part of establishing social proof revolves around what I like to call “Credibility Statements”.Some of the things you need to communicate fast are your:

Years of experience
Number of happy guests
Any special recognition or awards you have received
High social media review ranking and any celebrity endorsements

Let’s take a look at some examples: On this website, Alaska Fishing Lodges, they have managed to convey their depth of experience, satisfied customers and third-party ranking all at the top of their page. This helps to draw the visitor in and immediately gives them credibility.

Why not include some impressive stats too? Customers will feel more at ease - and more confident about booking - if they know that this is an area in which you’re experienced and established.

Don’t forget to also convey this through your Google “snippet” (or meta description), which you can edit through sites like Wordpress.

I have also created a free 25 point tourism website marketing checklist to help you build more social proof, lower bounce rate and increase bookings. This quick and easy self-assessment will show you how your tourism website scores, whether or not you currently have a “tourism website that sells”, and what you can do to improve it.

Tap Into the Psychological Triggers That Create a “Tourism Website That Sells”

To achieve a Tourism Website That Sells you must tap into travel shoppers’ psychological triggers around trust. Remember, a large percentage of your website visitors may be leaving your site fast. That means you need to establish trust and clarity in what you do – FAST.You need to show visitors a few key things within the first 7 seconds of them entering your website. Here are the “Big Three” that you should make clear in this time window:

You are experienced.
You provide quality service.
Their safety is your #1 concern.

Of course, there are a number of ways to boost conversions on your website. A powerful online booking system is also key - particularly one that uses these proven principles within their system.The good news is that these ideas work across all of your tourism marketing - the benefits extending way beyond your website. These are proven, powerful principles and should be used EVERYWHERE.They are guaranteed to help you communicate trust fast and convert more strangers into prospects (and prospects into bookings). The cool thing is, these tips are simple and easy to implement. When you fully understand and apply the power of social proof in your tourism marketing, magic happens.I would love to hear from you and find out how you have or will integrate “Social Proof” into your tourism marketing and how you scored on the marketing assessment. Want to hear more great tips from Tourism Tim? Check out the recording of his most recent webinar with Peek, where he gave even more tips on how to increase your leads and conversions.You can also check out his online course, Tourism Marketing Success, for even more great insight into your tourism business.

How to Create a Profitable, Popular Tour

Erik Hormann is the owner of Vantigo — San Francisco’s #1 rated tour on TripAdvisor. In this post, he shows us how the key to a tour operator’s success lies in the two Ps — profitability and popularity. Take it away Erik!

How to Make a Tour Profitable

“Show me the money!”Every business owner says the same thing to themselves. Okay, maybe they’re not always quoting a ‘90s Tom Cruise film exactly, but the point remains. At the end of the day, if you’re not making money, then what you’re doing is just a hobby.

Maybe you’re a guide who wants to strike out on their own. Maybe you have a tour company that has grown to 20 buses, but you still feel like you made more money when it was just you and one bus.After five years of scaling a business to become the top tour in San Francisco, I’ve gone through this same cycle every year. Here are some key things to consider when thinking about the real profitability of your tour:

Is your product right for the market?

First, let’s talk about your tour or rental itself. Is it in the right place? Does it have the right market? I once had a tour where we would take participants up the California coast to shuck oysters, taste cheese and drink mead. Sounds amazing, right? But while blog articles may make this seem like the most glorious tour ever, the audience was just not there. As much as I loved doing this tour, it was so much work and could not be priced high enough to make it viable. Maybe if I had amped up the marketing and found all the best Instagram-famous “influencers” and bloggers to promote it, I could have found my audience. But at the end of the day, I knew I could do two city tours in the time it would take for me to pull this tour off — and triple my profit in the process.

I loved doing this tour! But in the end, it just wasn’t profitable enough for my business

The price is right… or is it?

How much is your tour really worth? I had a good friend put it in a great frame of reference: When you are a solo operator, how much are you worth? How much do you need to make an hour? This is the question I asked myself when I started, when I hired my first guide and each time I decided to scale. It’s also something to consider when you make the leap from working as a tour guide, to managing your own company. How many guides do you need working full-time to pay for you in a management role? I’ll be the first to admit I should have really dove into the numbers in the beginning to understand this better. Ultimately, it all rolls up into how you price your tour or rental. When I started out, I also did a comparison of all nearby tour companies that were similar to me. I broke down what they charged by looking at their capacity and tour pricing, converting it into an hourly rate. What do I mean by that? Let’s say Ted’s Most Excellent Adventures tour company has a tour that costs $45 per person. And on average it has 10 people for a six-hour tour. His per hour amount would break down to $45 x 10 / 6 = $75/hour. This has nothing to do with how much it costs him to run his tour; it’s simply the hourly amount he receives. I used this calculation with similar tours and figured out that my per hour charge was below the average. Therefore, in order to be competitive in the market, I raised the price.

The cost of making money: is it raining dollars or overdraft fees?

Once I had fixed my pricing based on that of my competitors’, I then had to look at what it cost me to run a business. And there are a lot of factors that need to be considered. The easiest thing to calculate is fixed costs.Or is it? Rent, insurance, loan payments, vehicle leases — all these factors can easily be put together. The real trick is splitting them up between tours. If one of your tours accounts for 70% of your business, and two others account for just 30%, then the fixed costs should be split accordingly. You’ll be able to see pretty quickly which tours are worth putting more energy into. On top of that, you’ll then have to split out the individual fixed costs per tour itself — the rest will follow from there.To help you out with some basic costing, I’ve created a tour profitability calculator which you can download here. This should help to get you on the right track in terms of being profitable.

To employ or not to employ?

Hiring may seem like a perfectly logical idea if demand is high — but you should always consider the cost of your time and any insurance involved. In most cases — especially in the U.S. — you’ll need workers’ compensation insurance. Some companies like to treat guides as contractors to get around this. My advice — and the advice of any smart lawyer — don’t do it. If you end up in court for whatever reason, they’ll almost always find a way to be defined as an employee. There are other options out there. One of the best I have seen is offering employee ownership. Be sure to reach out to a lawyer to fully understand how this works, but in some cases it can save operators a lot of money.

Here’s our dream team — make sure you build one that’s viable for your business

Remember, when considering any part of your tour’s profitability, you should be thinking about your end game. Do you have an expansion plan for your company? Do you want to sell it? Is it worth anything? It’s important to understand that what you charge now is directly related to your prospective plans — so always keep one eye on the future.

How to Make a Tour Popular

So you’ve run the numbers, and you’re sure you’ve got a viable tour on your hands. Now the question you need to ask yourself is: what makes a good tour great?

It’s the little things

We’ve all been on good tours and bad tours. But what makes a tour so great that you not only want to buy a t-shirt, you want to straight up invest your kids’ college fund into it?All I can say is: details. While on vacation, I’m always looking at how other people do tours to see if there is anything I’m missing. And the one thing that always sticks? The details. Take the Brewseum in Hawaii. A family-run museum and brewery — how could this place not be perfect? It takes you on a journey, starting with the museum and ending up in the brewery. This could probably succeed based on the idea alone, right? But, what made this experience truly unforgettable were the details that operator Duke and his father Glenn added:The museum told a story. From the very beginning, you’re immersed in 1930s Hawaii, before the Pearl Harbor bombing. As you weave along the path, you follow all the action until you end up at a door. That door leads to a military-themed speakeasy, where Glenn, dressed in military uniform, plays the part of bartender. The bar is full of touchable relics from the era. Once we were done in the speakeasy, we moved along to the brewery. It was so well done that I had to write a review right afterwards. This is why they hit a home run. There are so many well-placed details that I didn’t have time to think or pick it apart. It’s the same reason why adults love to go to Disneyland! They’re too busy living in this new, created world, to think about anything else.So. Let’s say you’re operating a walking tour that goes down the same street every day. Along the way, you call on a shopkeeper who has a sample goodie for your folks to try. There’s a detail: a way to make people feel like this is a one-of-a-kind experience — that they are a VIP.Do you have an epic, relevant soundtrack for your tour? Maybe some antiques that are part of the local history? Maps, newspaper clippings, local delicacies — all of this adds to the magic of your tour. Be on constant lookout for details like these, and review their success on a regular basis.

Let’s talk about content

Even when I first started touring, I was encyclopedic in my knowledge of San Francisco. So much so, that people walked away from my first couple of beta tours looking like they had been in class for eight hours. The content of your tour needs to be catered to your audience. Ask questions, find out what they like, then provide information that they can connect with. A great example is when I have someone from NYC on a tour. I love to explain that the person who built Central Park is the same person who inspired and helped with the design of Golden Gate Park. This connects them with something they are familiar with and may know something about. One of my best guides told me once that people will remember 10% of what you tell them, but at the end of the day they will always remember how you made them feel. How can you make them feel great? The best thing you can do is connect with people on your tour in some way. Ask them where they are from, understand what their itinerary looks like. People always love to talk a little about themselves. If people let you know that they are a local or an expert in the field of your tour, use them. When I give beer tours and find out that someone is a homebrewer, boom — they just became a second staff member. I’ll ask them questions about how they brew at home or what type of ingredients they like to use. Honestly, the self-proclaimed expert is probably already thinking about poking holes in your tour. This is your chance to flip it on its head and have them add more flavor and dialogue to the experience!

Guests can make a great contribution to your tour — even the beer nerds! ;)

The big thing to remember when creating a great tour is that you want it to have an echo. It should leave an impression on someone: whether they walk away with a map, recommendations on where to eat, or just a song that gets stuck in their head. Make them feel special, and involve them in the experience. This will replace any negative thoughts or reflections they may have had.So as you prepare to start, scale or breathe new life into your tour or activity operation, remember the two pillars of your success — profitability and popularity.Make sure to download's Erik's tour profitability calculator by filling out the form below!

Strategy

Growvember Roundup: What We Learned

Growvember is officially over, and the whole Peek team is excited to see how you take the learnings and apply them to your business. It’s time to put these tips into action! We hope you enjoyed the content from all eight of our incredible speakers - don’t forget, if you missed any of the sessions, or just want to rewatch, you can find links to all of the recordings right here. Don’t know what Growvember is? Where have you been?! Growvember brought some of the top minds in the tour and activity industry together to deliver some top-notch workshops to operators like you. All for free! Pretty amazing, right? We highly recommend you watch all of the sessions in full to get the most out of this awesome free content. But for those of you in a hurry, here are eight of our favorite learnings from across the two days. Enjoy!

Collaborate with your competitors!

In Douglas Quinby’s session, Top Travel Trends for 2019 andBeyond, he goes over why activities are the fastest-growing sector in the industry right now. So why are they?Activities are the why of travel. Travellers may be booking flights and reserving hotels like never before, but tours and activities are the things that really make a trip special. The research that Douglas and his team at Arival has done backs this up. From a survey of over 4000 travellers from the U.S., U.K., France and Germany they found that on average, travellers will engage in around 7activities while on their trip!Let’s take a look at the breakdown of that:

Source: Arival, 2018

So why is this important, and how can you use this information to your advantage? One word: collaboration.Why see other operators in your area as your competition? With so many different types of activities on offer, this is a great opportunity for you to partner up with some other local attractions and cross-sell their experiences. Is there a hop-on, hop-off bus tour in your area that could promote your tour to guests? Could you partner with a fellow operator and offer mutual discounts to encourage higher bookings? Douglas says that more and more travellers are making purchasing decisions in-destination - so make sure you’re creating a strong on-the-ground presence for yourself and have a plan to sell people while they’re in the area. Why not explore the options in your area, talk to local attractions and other activity providers and see if you can find a mutually beneficial partnership! This is an easy and immediately effective to spread the word even more about your tour or activity to travellers who are already in the area. Want to learn more from Douglas? Watch his full session here.

Protect yourself from the dreaded cancellation

Next up we heard from Delamon Rego, COO of tour operator marketing/software heavyweight TOMIS. During his session on how to boost your 2019 revenue, here’s something that caught our eye…Cancellation insurance.Do you have it? If not, Delamon tells us why it’s something worth considering: Cancellation policies are often tricky waters to navigate for many tour operators. When guests cancel their tour after the allowed time, you don’t want to be losing money or ending up with empty seats that you don’t have time to fill. On the other hand, when you enforce your policy, you worry about seeming like the bad guy and damaging your reputation - even if the policy is clear as day. Delamon suggests that cancellation insurance could be the answer to your troubles.Giving customers the option to purchase this insurance during the checkout process means that those customers who were going to cancel anyway are likely to purchase it. It also helps you to enforce your cancellation policy without seeming like the bad guy. It seems way more reasonable when you say you tried to run their refund, but the system says no cancellation insurance was purchased - your hands are tied.The other great bonus to this feature is it can actually start to make you money, with any unused cancellation insurance going right into your bottom line.As a general rule, Delamon recommends charging 12-15% of your ticket price for cancellation insurance, which you can adjust if you have particularly low or high ticket prices. Want to find out other ways to boost that revenue in 2019? Check out Delamon’s session here!

Post that job - even when you’re not hiring

Kelsey Tonner is your one-stop-shop for everything tour guide education. A former guide himself, he now provides amazing training for tour guides and leaders across the world, helping you to create incredible experiences. In his session, How to Recruit and Train Extraordinary Leaders, he gives some awesome tips for those who have to hire tour guides for their business. We think this little nugget is worth doing right now!Create a permanent job profile on your website.You may only hire a few times a year, but you could be getting hits on your website from potential candidates every day! Why not wet their appetite and let them register their interest by creating a job profile page for them to check out! Why is this such a great idea? For one thing, when the time to hire comes around, this page will already be indexed by Google, hopefully giving your chances of finding someone great a boost! Not only that, but by allowing interested candidates to enter their email in a form on this page throughout the year, you start to build a relationship before your search has even begun. They can get to know you and hear about what you’re up to, and this will hopefully make them even more passionate about working for you! Be sure to include a detailed job description, include responsibilities, and highlight any awesome perks that come with the job! Why not also build up an FAQ section, adding questions as they come in from potential hires? By allowing your website visitors to register their interest in working for you all through the year, what happens when it comes to hiring season? Boom. Your life just got a whole lot easier. Need some more hiring tips? Check out Kelsey’s full session!

Make friends with your local hotel concierge

Former tour operator and founder of The Sunshine Tribe, Josh Oakes, had some truly awesome advice for us on the important of selling through offline channels. Here’s our favorite tip of his from that session - get ready to use this one right away! As Josh was starting out with his tour company, he needed to find some channels that were going to start boosting his revenue right away.What was the solution? Hotel concierges.Josh took the time to “pound the pavement”, hitting up local hotels in the area and building some great relationships with local concierge desks. He then made sure he was revisiting them, following up with phone calls, and keeping himself front of mind. This way, Josh was able to work his way up to the top of many concierge’s lists, and started to see those phone calls rolling in. The best part about this tactic? It doesn’t cost anything but your time.Most hotels take very low or even zero commissions; so by taking a little time to build some solid relationships, you can open up a whole new market and become the go-to operator for hotels in your area! This one sounds like a winner to us. Hear about more ways to sell through offline channels by watching Josh’s talk here.

**Use video to sell yourself - and your destination**

Digital marketing expert and director of Tourism Marketing Agency Chris Torres kicked off day 2 of Growvember this year. He gave us an info-filled session on using video to market your tours - and how to do it on any budget. Here’s just one of his tips that you should bear in mind if (or better yet, when!) you create your next marketing video…Don’t forget to showcase your destination - not just your tour or activity. Chris gave us some pretty mind-boggling stats on video - like how an average user watches 32 videos a month (!), and how 79% of travellers will search Youtube for ideas before they book their trip. But that’s not all. Of those travellers, a huge 67% still haven’t decided on a destination for their trip. So you shouldn’t only be selling yourself; why not include some beauty spots, local businesses and people from your area in the video? Make your video about the magic of where you’re located, with your tour or activity at the heart of it. That way, you might just persuade those indecisive viewers to choose your destination over their other options -- and book your experience in the process!Get some great tips on how to achieve great videos on all types of budgets from Chris here.

Use Facebook to target in-destination travelers in the best way

Tourism marketing extraordinaire and founder of Blend Marketing Jeremiah Calvino brought us an incredible talk on the importance of “At Home vs In Destination Marketing”. These tips are so important for operators who need to focus their ad spends and target customers as wisely as possible. Here’s one of our favorite tips from Jeremiah’s session that is SO easy to implement…Facebook lets you target those who are already traveling in your area. Sounds obvious, right? Well, think about it. Almost every marketing platform out there lets you target specific locations for advertising. But what about all of those people who live in your destination? If you’re a tourist attraction or you primarily serve travelers from outside the region, your ad spend may be wasted on those people who live in your town or city. Thankfully, Facebook has broken down their users in a way that lets you filter your audience but are currently there.Take a look:

This is an awesome tool to use when running a Facebook ad campaign. Make sure you’re targeting the right kind of people and seeing some great returns on whatever your marketing budget is! To hear more on this and a bunch of other awesome location-based marketing tips, check out Jeremiah’s presentation here!

Make a clear CTA your top website priority

Andy Mott knows what he’s talking about when it comes to websites for tour and activity operators. As Head of TigerCare at TourismTiger, a top industry website provider, his session was full of tips and tricks to supercharge your website. Here is one of our favourites…Make sure a clear call to action is the main focus of your website.Will your visitors know what they need to do when they arrive at your site? Don’t underestimate the power of simple, clear messaging. Not only this, but make a strong call to action your best friend. Not sure what a call to action is? It’s essentially a button - a button which shows the user what they need to do and takes them where they need to be. Let’s see one of Andy’s examples in action. Before TourismTiger gave their website an overhaul, this operator’s homepage looked like this:

Attractive? Sure! But imagine a visitor had no idea what this company does before they visited the website. Where is the instruction to show them what to do next? Take a look at the after result:

Okay, now we can see exactly what our options are. These buttons, or CTAs, guide the user to make a choice and hit that button. So - don’t assume your visitors will know that they need to book, or how to do it. Let a CTA guide them to where they need to be - your booking page! Get some more great website tips from Andy by checking out his presentation right here.

Don’t be afraid to ask for phone reservations

Rounding off our Growvember event was the great Dustin Hoyman of Outdoor Adventure Marketing. Dustin gave us insights into a topic that is still so important in the tour and activity industry: phone calls. While online booking is certainly gaining more importance as we change the way we book, plenty of tour operators still take many of their bookings over the phone.In his workshop, Dustin gives a few great tips on how to make the most of those incoming calls. But here is our personal favorite - it’s so simple, and yet could have a major impact on your business.Don’t be afraid to ask for a reservation on every phone call.Remember, a lot of people call because they want more information - but ultimately, their goal is to book your experience! If they’ve taken the time to pick up the phone, you know they’re interested. Instead of treating the call as a simple question and answer session, why not add those magic words to the end of your call: “Are you ready to book?”If they say yes, that’s a sale made! If they say no, now you have an opportunity to find out why. Ask them if there’s anything they’re looking for that you may not have mentioned. If they talk about cost, weigh up whether it’s worth negotiating to make that sale. Whatever their answer, you are now armed with as much information as possible to try and make that sale. So make sure you’re including this question in every phone call that comes in. We told you it was simple, right?! Check out more of Dustin’s tricks to winning over those phone customers here!There you have it. Just a tiny amount of the wealth of knowledge we gained from all of our incredible Growvember speakers. Be sure to check out all of the full sessions to really get the most out of this amazing, free event! We’re pumped for next year!

Strategy

Growvember: All You Need To Know

Welcome to Growvember!

What a couple of days we’ve had! Thank you to everyone who participated - we think we can all agree that our eight incredible speakers provided us with some awesome insights. In case you missed any of the sessions, this is your one stop shop for all the resources you need to catch up and start applying the information to your business!

Recordings

Below you’ll find links to all 8 recordings for you to watch at your convenience: The Essential Tour and Activity Trends for 2019 and Beyond - Douglas Quinby 7 Easy Steps to an Extra $54,737 in Revenue in 2019 - Delamon Rego Recruit and Train Extraordinary Leaders - Kelsey Tonner 4 Ways to Sell More Experiences Through Offline Channels - Josh Oakes How Video Boosts Your Sales - On Any Budget - Chris TorresNote: Here are the links to the videos shown in Chris' presentation:1. Gray Line Iceland, 2. Background video example, 3. Rough test advert using stock footage, 4. GoPro footage, 5. Professional video, 6. Itinerary videoAt Home vs In Destination Marketing - Jeremiah Calvino How to Futureproof Your Website - Andy Mott Increase Your Bookings Without Spending a Dime (With This Efficient Phone Script Outline) - Dustin Hoyman

Presentation Slide Decks

Below you can find all presentation slides from each speaker, for you to follow along with recordings, download and review!

Douglas Quinby - The Top Tour and Activity Trends for 2019 and Beyond

Delamon Rego - 7 Easy Steps to an Extra $54,787 in 2019 revenue

Kelsey Tonner - How to Recruit and Train Extraordinary Guides

Josh Oakes - 4 Ways to Sell More Experiences Through Offline Channels

Chris Torres - How Video Boosts Your Brand on Any Budget

Jeremiah Calvino - At Home vs in Destination Marketing

Andy Mott - How to Futureproof Your Website

Dustin Hoyman - Increase Your Revenue Without Spending a Dime (With This Efficient Phone Script Outline)

How Gift Cards Can Give Your Slow Season a Boost

Did you know that people are now favoring experiences over ‘stuff’ more and more? That’s why your tour or activity is the perfect gift!It’s now time to get selling because now’s the peak time for gift card sales!

Why Selling Gift Cards Will Beat Your Low Season Blues

Here are a few more key reasons why you should be utilizing gift cards to boost your sales this season:

Supercharge Your Sales During Slow Season

Holiday season is coming up, and you know that the best gift of them all is the chance to experience your awesome tour or activity. The only problem? The holidays often coincide with an operator’s low season, with fewer or no activities offered. Enter gift cards! By offering the chance to gift your experience, you can take advantage of Black Friday madness, holiday generosity, and those last minute Christmas shoppers.Figures from Peek Pro show that last year 51% of gift card sales occurred between Black Friday and Christmas. What does that mean? On an average day during the holiday season, our partners generated 10.5x the amount of gift card sales compared to their daily average the rest of the year!Take a look at this graph showing last year’s gift card sales trends:

You can see that Black Friday is when gift card sales begin to spike, with December 22nd showing as the biggest day for gift card sales in 2017. So make sure that you kick off your big gift card push in time for Black Friday, and continue it all through December!What if you offer winter activities? Maybe the holidays overlap with your peak season? In that case, this is your opportunity to double down and maximize your sales through all possible channels. Take advantage and make December a bumper month for your business!

Rake in That Instant Cash Flow

We can probably all think of a gift card we received last Christmas (or was it two Christmases ago?) that’s tucked away in a drawer somewhere, waiting to be used. In fact, almost $1 billion worth of gift cards go unused in the U.S. each year.The good news is, when someone purchases a gift card through your website, you receive that revenue right away — not when the card is redeemed. That means you don’t need to wait for Uncle Bob to clear out his desk and book his activity before you start seeing that extra revenue. As soon as your gift card is purchased, boom💥. Instant bottom line boost!

The Perfect Present

We all want to avoid seeing that “I wonder if they kept the receipt” look wash over our loved one’s face as they open our gift. That’s why experience gifts save the panic of finding the best-smelling bath set that we definitely didn’t buy last year — right?The trouble with gifting some experiences, like concerts or events with a fixed date, is we have to cross our fingers and hope the recipient is free that day. Either that, or we ruin the surprise with scheduling questions. With your gift cards, that’s not an issue. Your customers can choose the activity, rental or cash amount they want to gift, and the recipient can book for whenever suits them! Win-win!

How to Sell Gift Cards

So you decided to get in on gift card capabilities. You’re in the game. But how can you drive those sales and really take advantage? Here are a couple of key ways:

Push the (Gift Card) Button

Just like with your online bookings, your website is going to be a key player in driving your gift card sales. So slap that gift card button on your homepage right next to your Book Now button and make it clear from the get-go that your tour, activity or rental is giftable.With gift cards available in the same style booking flow you have for your online bookings, you can make it easy for your customers to choose the activity, rental or cash amount they want, and purchase their gift card in no time.Check out how Peek Partner Sunset Ranch Hollywood is promoting their gift cards:

They have dedicated a whole chunk of their homepage to promoting gift cards and making it easy for customers to purchase them. They've also added different gift options, including specific activities or a custom cash amount, giving customers more choice. Win!

Let Your Customers Bring You New Customers

Your customers came on your tour or activity, and they had an awesome time, right? Of course they did! So why not make it easy for them to share that experience with a friend or loved one? Happy customers who had a great time with you are the perfect audience to sell gift cards to. After all, they’re the ones who know for sure what a fun time your tour or activity is!Plus, by offering guests the chance to purchase a gift card for the activity they’ve just been on, you’re giving them a ready-made gift idea. And the best part is, it doesn’t involve too much extra effort on your part! Your guests are ready and waiting for gift card marketing. So why not let them be part of bringing in more guests!The point of all this is: if you want to improve your bottom line — especially this holiday season — you need to be using gift cards. They are an easy and super successful way to give your sales a boost, and showcase your awesome tours to an even wider audience.Not using gift cards on your website? Take a look at Peek Pro’s new and improved gift cards feature and see what you’re missing out on!

Strategy

Welcome to Growvember: Register for Your Workshops

Growth, growth and more growth! For many tour operators, it’s the number one priority. Been looking online for ways to grow your business, but finding it hard to dissect all the information out there? Struggling to find real, applicable tips that are relevant to your business? Struggle no more — Growvember is here!

What is Growvember?

For the entire month of November, we’re focusing all our content on exclusive tips to grow your business!We’ll end Growvember with an online event on November 27th & 28th. It will feature workshops with some of the leading experts in the tours and activities industry. Peek has brought together a host of the industry’s biggest names to help you get the tools you need to see the growth you’ve been working for.Simply register for your free ticket, and you’ll get direct access to every workshop across the two days. Be part of the virtual summit by watching live, and get the chance to ask questions and hear from fellow operators. Afterwards, enjoy all of the event’s content delivered right to your inbox.

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