In this post, digital marketing expert Chris Torres - director of the Tourism Marketing Agency - offers some key insights into TripAdvisor’s complex ranking system. He’ll run through some key factors that determine your ranking - and how to make sure it’s as high as possible! You may already know that TripAdvisor influences over 10% of all tourism spending. Every month, 455 million people use the site to find and book hotels, restaurants, experiences, and tour services. If your company ranks higher on TripAdvisor, you are guaranteed to receive more business. It’s one of the best ways to make your business more visible than your competitors. It can get confusing out there. SEO, social media, online reviews: it seems like everywhere you look there’s a another “guide” you just can’t get your head around. But this information is key if you want to market your company in the best way possible online.That’s why I’ve created this clear and simple rundown of how your TripAdvisor ratings work. Plus, you’ll find a few tips on what to look out for to make sure your rankings aren’t slipping.

The system is smart - don’t try to manipulate it

You know user reviews are the biggest ranking factor on TripAdvisor. The whole platform works on the premise that good services inspire good reviews from customers. The 600+ million reviews are the biggest determining factors when TripAdvisor’s algorithm ranks your tour, activity, or rental service. However, there are more ranking factors beyond reviews.In the past, new businesses used to jump to the top of the rankings when they received an influx of reviews. Other businesses saw this and tried to rig their reviews to shoot themselves to the top of the rankings. TripAdvisor noticed this, and knew that if the rankings could be manipulated, their platform couldn’t be trusted. They have since changed their algorithm to prevent ranking manipulation. What should you take away from this?It’s getting gradually harder to unfairly manipulate TripAdvisor’s rankings. So don’t even try it. You may even get a $3 million fine if your activity is seen as inherently misleading! Don’t waste time trying to trick TripAdvisor; put your efforts into earning your good ranking.

How does the TripAdvisor algorithm work?

TripAdvisor won’t let us fully understand how its algorithm works. But, we do know that it ranks your business based on three things: the quality, recency, and quantity of your reviews. Let’s look at each aspect in turn, and see why your reviews might be doing better or worse than you expected.

Quality

It sounds obvious: the more 4- and 5-star reviews you have, the better your ranking will be. However, the quality of your reviews is also based on word counts. A longer review is viewed as more beneficial than a shorter review. This is because a longer review provides more detail on the experience. If your guests are taking the time to write reviews longer than one word, it shows they have meaning - and TripAdvisor will deem them of higher quality.

Recency

How recently a review was posted is also important. New businesses can’t jump to the top of the rankings with new reviews anymore. But it makes sense that recent reviews tell TripAdvisor that your service is good right now. Not good two years ago. Only having old reviews may make it seem like your business has reduced in quality. It’s vital you’re getting up-to-date reviews to let TripAdvisor know you’re still doing a good job!

Quantity

Yes, the quantity of your reviews is still taken into account - just not to the extent that it once was. As I said before, this change has been made to prevent new businesses from shooting ahead of old, established businesses. It’s still a case of the “the more the merrier”, but you should never sacrifice quality for quantity.

There are no cheap and dirty TripAdvisor tricks

It used to be easier to get to the top of TripAdvisor’s rankings by using cheap and dirty tactics. This won’t work anymore. It may be tempting, but the risks simply aren’t worth it. Instead, make earning good reviews a constant goal for your business. Make sure your staff know how important reviews are to you. Why not empower them to offer free bonuses and discounts as olive branches to disgruntled customers? If you handle it right, it’s totally possible to transform a customer’s negative experience into a positive review!Check out this example below from San Francisco tour operator Vantigo:

Even though the customer didn’t actually get to go on the tour, they still ended up giving a 5-star review because of how the company handled the situation. Awesome! It’s also important to keep a constant eye on your TripAdvisor reviews. If you spot a bad review, it’s good to either reply or get in touch with the user to ask if you can make amends. Sometimes the user won’t be interested - but they often are, and your bad review could be turned into a good one.The upshot of all this: TripAdvisor is fair - and trying to be even fairer. It’s also providing constant updates to its algorithm over time. Knowing this, the best thing you can do is focus on the quality of your product or service. It’s the only surefire way to get those 5-star reviews rolling in and see your ranking soar!Want more tips from Chris? Keen to learn more about digital marketing relevant to the tourism industry? Why not sign up for his FREE 12 part marketing guide here!

In recent years it’s become pretty clear that more and more consumers are choosing experiences over ‘stuff’. In fact, one study showed that 78% of Millennials would rather spend money on an experience over material goods. Why? Partly because 4/5 of them say that attending events makes them feel more connected to other people.That's why our friends at Groupon have invested in a full price marketplace for the millions of people coming to Groupon's website, looking for inspiration. This new marketplace has had great success so far and Peek is excited to partner with Groupon to give you access to these adventure seekers. We want as many people as possible to access your great experiences and create amazing memories. We'll be going live with this partnership at the beginning of next year.Why is this great news?This is great for our partners because it means the chance to showcase awesome tours and activities on a huge distribution platform. That means more online traffic, more bookings, and more revenue for tour operators. And the best part - you don’t have to do a thing! We will do all the hard work for you once you’re live on the Peek.com marketplace.Will it mean offering my tour or activity at a discounted rate? No. Groupon has traditionally been known for its deals and discounts, but this part of their online marketplace is different. All of our partners’ tours and activities will be listed at their full price to consumers.What does it mean for customers? More convenience, more delight, more memories! It’s now even easier for customers to find awesome tours and activities online. Groupon has millions of customers - they’ll now be able to discover the incredible experiences that partners offer even more easily.What is the commission structure associated with listing activities on Groupon?The activity price and your revenue is exactly the same whether an activity is sold on Groupon, Peek.com or Yelp. Only your standard Peek.com commission rate applies.What do I need to do? If you’re a partner, you don’t need to do a thing! We’ll keep you updated on what’s happening. All partners will be contacted as the partnership goes live with the next steps. Note: This is a completely voluntary integration! Just like our partnership with Google & Yelp, this is yet another option that Peek is providing to our partners to drive more bookings. You will have the ability to opt out of the integration if you would like. We will also send an email reminder before it goes live. In the meantime, you can simply contact our Partner Support team if you want to opt out.Not a Peek Partner yet? Want to find out more? Schedule your free demo here!

This is a guest post from online marketing expert Milan Stojković. With a focus on the tourism sector, Milan’s business MS Travel Marketing is dedicated to helping bring tour operators more customers. In this post, he shares some insider tips you can apply to your business today - and watch your online bookings skyrocket! Take it away, Milan!Are you looking for more ways to get direct bookings through your website? It seems like there are a million ways to do this: Facebook ads, banners, link building. And yet, nothing changes. No matter how many people you attract to your website, those conversion rates remain stale. How can you change this? First, you need to understand the concept of warming up your website traffic. This is the cornerstone of online marketing, and vital if you want to see those bookings soar.Let’s run through the three types of website visits you can get: cold, warm and hot traffic: Cold Traffic - These are the guys who somehow stumbled upon your website. They’re not actually planning to buy your tours or even travel to your destination.Warm Traffic - These people are definitely interested in your destination and what you have to offer. But, they’re gonna need more info and a little more convincing before they choose you over the competition. Hot Traffic - These visitors know everything about your tours and are ready to hit that book now button. So what do you want? You guessed it. You want your traffic hot. Like, fresh out the oven hot. These customers know what they want and are just looking for your book now button to get the deal done. But what about warm traffic? How do you convince visitors to book from you now that they’ve decided on their destination? And the cold traffic? How can you spark their interest and create that desire to learn more about your tours? The first step is simple: Don’t assume that the majority of your website audience is hot traffic. You could fall into a trap if you expect most of your visitors to be extremely interested in buying your tours. The assumption that all your traffic is hot may cause confusion when you see your conversion rate is still low. It might even lead you to start making unnecessary changes to your website.I get it: you heard from some online marketing specialist that if you change the color of your booking button you can increase conversion rates by 300%, and you want a piece of that action! The problem is that in reality, you might have less than 2% hot traffic visitors on your website. By trying to optimize the website just for them, you’re forgetting about the other 98% of visitors.The booking button color is not the problem. I promise. What you need to do is to warm up the audience. When hot traffic visitors hit 20%, then we can start thinking about the booking process.

Warming up the traffic

So how can you warm up your traffic and convert 1000 cold visitors into something a little… hotter?Here are a few simple ways:

1. Get Featured.

One way to heat up your hits is to be featured in a respectable magazine or news portal. Pay them to write a story about your tours and include a link to your website. Why not go one step further and ask them to include your Facebook pixel as well.Examples of post titles could be:“A quick reminder that [destination] is the stuff dreams are made of - let this tour operator show you why”“Why this tour company’s [destination] honeymoon experience is something every couple should consider”“This tour operator has everyone talking with their innovative way to experience [destination]”It’s vital you get your article posted on a dependable website that people are going to believe. It may be pricey, but it’s worth it. Now comes the important part:Instead of buying Facebook ads and clicks that lead to your website, pay to promote the article from this magazine.“What?!” I hear you cry. “So we're paying to send the traffic to another website, not our own? Isn’t that illogical?” The answer is no. This can be extremely effective. It will warm our customers up. When an article from a reliable news source pops up on their Facebook feed, they won’t perceive it as an ad... It's news! An interesting read with useful information. Customers will feel more comfortable clicking. They’ll also believe this article way more than they would believe you telling them your tours are awesome. "If these guys are saying it, it must be true."Now, people who come to your website will be much more familiar with your services and definitely more willing to buy. Take one of our clients - New City Hotel and Restaurant - as an example. We wanted to market the hotel as the ideal venue for conferences and other business events. But as a new hotel, it was hard to get the word out about its quality and service. We decided to publish articles in a few respectable online magazines with links to the hotel website and Facebook pixel. Then we paid to promote those articles on Facebook. After a couple months, events started rolling in to the hotel. We seized the momentum and published more articles. Fast forward one year and every conference hall is booked at least 5 months in advance.By changing the route your visitors take to get to your website - otherwise known as your ‘funnel’, you’re engaging their interest on a deeper level.But hold on a second. The work doesn’t end here. Since your products do not fall under the customers’ essential needs, they probably won’t buy immediately. This is where your remarketing campaigns come in. After a visitor leaves your website, you can use targeted ads to reach them as they browse elsewhere on the internet. Set these up to remind visitors about your awesome tour a day or two later.So before your funnel looked like this:Facebook Ad ---> Website offerAnd now it looks like this:Facebook Ad ---> Magazine post ---> Website offer ---> (remarketing) ---> Website offerYep, you’ve extended the funnel a fair bit, and it’s gonna cost money. But now your website visitors are much more interested in your services. Plus, they have more confidence in your offerings because a respected magazine wrote about you.By changing your visitor’s journey, you’re sparking their interest before they’ve even clicked on your website.

2. It’s in the vid.

Another effective way to get your traffic heating up is a Facebook video. Why not create a short inspirational video, in square format with catchy titles? Upload this video to your page or use our previous tactic and pay a magazine to post it on their page. The video will warm up your audience because it gives them an initial spark, a way to imagine your tour as their next adventure. This is exactly what we did with another of our clients - Walk91 Tours.They had a Facebook campaign that led people to their website. Conversions were good, but not great. We convinced them to shoot a video for social networks and told them how it should look. Then we promoted that video to a wide audience who could potentially be interested in their tours.

We created a custom audience of people who watched at least 75% of the video and served them with other campaigns that promoted Walk91’s tours.So this time the funnel looked like this:Facebook Ad ---> Website offerAnd now it looks like this:Facebook Ad ---> Facebook Video ---> Facebook Ad ---> Website offerThe results were much better.The Facebook video method may not be as efficient as a magazine post, but it is simpler to implement because you own all the channels.And there you have it. Simple and effective ways to get those conversions rolling in. Don’t forget, implementing these steps could require some technical skills such as:

• Setting up the Facebook pixel and understanding how it works.
• How to create a custom audience and remarketing campaigns.
• How to set up a funnel.
• Proper conversion tracking.

But don’t panic! You can learn all this and much more with my new online course Etourism Master Training. Good luck and happy traffic-warming!Milan StojkovićFounder, MS Travel Marketing

This is the first in a series of posts from Erik Hormann, owner of successful San Francisco tour operator Vantigo. Here, he shares some of his best tips on how to tactfully utter those words that no operator wants to say: “You’re fired!”You did it! You created an amazing tour company, and you grew fast. You built a solid team around you and spent time making them great.But... then came the slow seasons, the economic downturn, the unpredictable weather. Now, you’re facing the prospect of letting some of your staff go. Sound familiar?I started my company five years ago, and in that time I’ve seen my fair share of tour guides come and go. As the man in charge, firing staff is a tough but necessary part of the job. The perfect guide shows up to work 30 minutes early, covers for other employees, gets five-star reviews and donates all his tips to Save the Whales. But we’re not talking about that guide. We’re talking about the guide you spent two months training. The guide who started out great, but then started showing up later and later for their tours - and sometimes not at all. The guide who, on more than one occasion, came into work smelling like the bar from the night before. Unexpected changes like these are a reality for any tour operator. Sometimes the guide doesn’t perform as expected, or slow season hits and you need to shrink your team.Whatever the reasons for firing your guide, here are some of my best tips for making the process as smooth as possible:

1. Run the numbers

Sometimes the financial realities speak for themselves. Can you really afford to keep a guide that isn’t booked out all the time? Slow seasons and slow profits often require reductions in staff. If this is the case, it could also be a chance to “clean house” and get rid of anybody not pulling their weight. After all, it’s hard to argue with the numbers. If the machine isn’t making money, your guides can’t rage against it.

2. Stay calm and take your time

I once had a guide who was due to co-lead a tour with me. The only problem: they didn’t show up until 30 minutes after it ended. At the time I wanted to explode - but instead, I told the guide to go home and take the rest of the weekend off. By the time Monday came around, I was calm and collected. I met up with the employee, gave them their last paycheck, and we parted ways with no hard feelings. Protecting your reputation as a boss as well as a tour operator is vital if you want to hire and retain the best guides.

3. Use the hard facts

Does this guide have a ton of bad reviews? Are there a bunch of emails from unhappy clients with their name mentioned? How much in refunds or canceled tours have they cost you? I like to make my staff imagine themselves in the shoes of the father-of-four who only had one day to explore the city with his family. How would they feel if their experience wasn’t top-notch?

4. Put yourself in their shoes

How loyal has your guide been? Did they see you through some hard times? If an employee was really there for you or even helped you grow your company, letting them go can be super tough. If this is the case, let them know how much you valued them and thank them for their help. Breakups are never easy, but sometimes they’re necessary. If you handle the situation well, your guide will understand.

5. Leave the door open (or open another door for them)

As a boss, one of my personal goals is to have every person that leaves my company be headed towards another great opportunity. Like I said, sometimes it’s nothing your guide did, and you want them to succeed. I found myself in this situation recently: one of my team members was burnt out in his role but didn’t have the network to find a new path. Using my connections, I reached out to several industry contacts to see if they had any positions available. Fast forward two years, and that team member is thriving with a nearby brewery —and even comes back to guide a tour with us from time to time.

5. If all else fails, keep it simple

I truly believe in meeting face-to-face when letting staff go. But occasionally, employees won’t want to face reality in person. If you’ve tried your best to get in touch with no response, send them a text thanking them for their service and mail them their last paycheck. After all - you have a business you need to focus on.

Here’s a simple fact: More Positive Reviews = More SalesTo gain an understanding of what makes guests write reviews, we analyzed over 4,000 reviews from Peek.com. We looked for the most commonly used words in both positive and negative reviews.Words like “experience”, “knowledgeable”, and “nice” are among the top 25 commonly used words in positive reviews. On the other hand, words like “disappointed”, “time”, and “guide” are among the top 25 commonly used words in negative reviews. What the data above means is that a customer is more inclined to write a positive review if their experience matched their expectations, and less inclined if their experience fell short of expectations. Alternatively, a customer’s overall impression is influenced by - and this is key - how they felt while interacting with members of your staff. Here are some tips to get more online reviews:

1. Create realistic expectations for your activities.

Get your guests excited about their upcoming experience with you, but be realistic about what they should expect.When describing your tours, we recommend writing with the senses. What will people see, hear, feel, taste and touch? Are there any highlights worth mentioning? Recreating the experience will make it easier for customers to imagine themselves on your tour, and will also give them a sense of what to expect.

2. Train your staff in excellent customer service practices.

This is especially important if you rely on tour guides. Take advantage of free online resources, like Be a Better Guide, which offers short tutorials on best practices for tour guides.

3. Leave a lasting impression on your customers.

Make a good impression by introducing customers by name to key staff members or by giving a tour of the premises. At the end of your tour, you can also gift customers with a token of your appreciation. This can be a thank-you card, gift bag or any other tangible souvenir.

4. Optimize Smart Reviews in Peek Pro.

We can’t talk about getting more online reviews without mentioning Peek’s Smart Reviews. This feature can automatically send email follow-ups to customers based on the reviews they gave to Peek. For example, customers who gave high ratings can be sent an email directing them to share their experience on other public review sites. Alternatively, guests who gave lower ratings can be sent a follow-up email to help remedy their potentially negative experience.Peek’s review system can also generate reports to analyze performance based on specific dimensions, so you can see what’s working and what needs improvement moving forward.

This post was written by Josh Oakes. Josh grew his local tour company to millions of dollars in annual revenue and sold it for $1m+ in June 2017. He has now founded the The Sunshine Tribe, where he helps tour and activity operators across the globe build amazing businesses and create awesome lives.In 2007 my wife and I started a Day Tour company in Melbourne, Australia. We had no experience in tourism, no experience in business, no networks, no support, and no cash.After two years of 60-hour weeks, we were taking home $20,000 a year and had nearly thrown in the towel more times than I could count. Fast forward 7 years and we had grown that business to more than $2 million in revenue annually, before selling in 2017 for 7 figures.This was achieved without working ourselves into an early grave. With a great lifestyle where we worked remotely, travelled regularly, enjoyed all the things that we love about life, and empowered others to run our business as it grew.We were able to only work on the parts of our business that we loved.Now we help tour and activity operators, travel professionals and small tourism businesses across the globe build amazing businesses AND create awesome lives, through our new venture: www.thesunshinetribe.com.As a Tour Operator, we never worked with Viator, Expedia, or any other of the big Online Travel Agents. We built our business to more than $2million in revenue annually without generating a single dollar in revenue from these guys.I’m not trashing them, and I’m aware that they are hugely important for many tour operators, it’s just that I’m a bit old school.I’m a big believer in building a great business by building awesome relationships with partners that really get to know you, your business, your people and your products intimately.And vice versa.You can’t build that kind of a relationship with a large OTA. It’s almost impossible for them to get to know you. They know little, if anything, about your company, or your team, your tour guides, or your vehicles. They haven’t experienced your tours and they don’t know really what their customers are saying about you.Anyway... the purchase of Viator by Trip Advisor got me thinking:In the ‘travel world’ this has obviously been a big topic of discussion and most tour and activity operators are pretty miffed about it (understandably so). Tour operators are feeling the effects.The general consensus is that it will have a negative impact on their business. They are now forced to change their pricing structure to include a commission. Some have even described handing over a 20-30% commission to TA as potentially being the ‘death’ of their business.Now, for a business like ours that never generated a single dollar in revenue from Viator in over a decade, I get it that many people may have a different perspective to mine (it’s impossible for me to understand everybody’s individual business model).However, could the purchase of Viator by Trip Advisor be a great opportunity for many tour and activity operators?I say yes.Sometimes every small business needs a ‘jolt’ and this could be it.

Every small business needs a "jolt", and Trip Advisor buying Viator could be yours.

You may be working your tail off - but it’s still very easy to become complacent and neglect many areas of your business. Maybe this is the ‘jolt’ that forces you to take a step back, think outside the box, and put a magnifying glass on every part of your business.Think deeply about how you could improve your business and about the directions you could take it.Are the sales that you generate via Trip Advisor an important source of revenue for you, and you are now worried that these sales will start to cost you 20-30% in commission? Here are a few questions that you could ask yourself to see if you can flip this around. Maybe it is a great opportunity to make yours a better business long term.

Can you re-examine the pricing and the inclusions in your tours?

Whether you are at the high-end or at the low-end of tours, I’ve always believed that if you are ‘the best’ and/or ‘the only’ at what you offer, then price becomes a whole lot less important.Is it so bad to be more expensive than others? Maybe, rather than ‘raising your prices’, it could be seen as a great opportunity to tweak and improve what you offer.Yes, some international and domestic tourism markets are price sensitive - but many more are focused on value and finding out from you how you justify your prices - how you’re different and what they are getting for their money. Rather than a price increase, perhaps an improved and more unique product at a slightly different price point is the answer.

Can you explore new revenue streams?

Can you put an end to what is possibly an unhealthy reliance on one OTA and spread your eggs across a number of baskets? Explore different revenue streams? Identify specific international markets and target them? Find new partners? Create different divisions to your business? Create a range of upsells and make more off each tour?

Can you increase capacity?

Can you scale up? Can you put the systems in place to ensure you can deliver your tours in greater numbers and ensure you maintain quality and consistency? Can you improve your recruiting and training process? Your operations processes? Can you source a bigger and better supply of quality touring vehicles for those peak times?

Can you dig into your numbers and reduce expenses?

There’s so much to do as a small tour operator. Sometimes the one thing that’s most important to your bottom line is the thing that gets neglected because you’re too busy ‘running your business’.

Sometimes the one thing that’s most important to your bottom line is the thing that gets neglected because you’re too busy ‘running your business’.

Get forensic on your fixed costs and cost of sale. Put a microscope to everything in your financials line by line. Examine every expense that runs through your business. Examine your suppliers. Are you getting the best deals? Are they the right supplier? Examine everything. Utilities, SEO, tech support, motor vehicle expenses, business banking fees, insurance, phones...everything. If you don’t ask, you don’t get.We did this in 2016 and we were able to reduce expenses across our business by 13%. It made a massive difference to our bottom line.

Summing up

I’m sure that there are plenty of frustrations out there, but perhaps this could be a blessing in disguise for you and the catalyst for great things for your business.If you enjoyed this article and found it really helpful, please take a moment to download our 'Idea' to '7 Figure' Blueprint HERE.It's a look 'behind the curtain' at the step by step process we took to turn a vague idea into a multi 7 figure tour business.Enjoy!Josh OakesFounder of The Sunshine Tribe