Tourpreneur Tour Business Podcast

When Christian Wolters rejoined Intrepid Travel, his goal wasn’t to reinvent the brand—it was to reconnect it to its core. As President for Canada and GM of Marketing for North America, Christian brought a global perspective to a local challenge: how to ensure that Intrepid’s messaging reflected its values, operations, and guest experience. At the time, Intrepid already had strong credentials as t...

When Kirstin Reeder’s first-ever bookkeeping client turned out to be a tour operator, she didn’t expect it to change the course of her business. But that relationship revealed how often tour operators are misunderstood by traditional accountants. Today, Kirstin and her teammate Amber Call run Purple Sapphire Business Solutions, a firm focused entirely on the unique financial needs of the tour and...

As part of our Growth series, recorded live in Berlin at GetYourGuide 's 2025 Unlocked Summit, we now turn to Naples, Italy. Tourpreneur host Mitch Bach talks with Jasmine Palmieri , Commercial & Product Director for World Tours Italy . World Tours has scaled by keeping everything in-house—from their fleet of vehicles to employed tour guides—allowing them to maintain strict quality control as...

Welcome to the Growth Series! Tourpreneur hosts Peter Syme and Mitch Bach attended GetYourGuide 's Unlocked event in Berlin in September, and recorded several conversations with tour operators who have scaled their businesses to tens and hundreds of thousands of travelers. They share their insights and secrets in this series. In this conversation, Peter talks with Arzu Tutuk , Founder and Managing...

Today Tourpreneur host Mitch Bach goes to Budapest! When a video game designer accidentally lands on MasterChef thanks to his partner’s prank, he doesn’t expect it to change his life. But that twist launched Joseph Szakács into founding Foodapest , one of Budapest’s most unique food experiences. In this episode, Joseph shares how he turned a surprise phone call into a purpose-driven business built...

Good tour design doesn't just help create memorable experiences, it's also a way to build a defensive moat around your business that protects against competitors, copycats, and even AI disruption. In today's episode, TP hosts Mitch Bach and Peter Syme dismantle the traditional information-based approach to tour guiding and argue for a shift in thinking towards emotional design. They explore how cu...

Tourpreneur hosts Mitch Bach and Peter Syme come to you live from Berlin! They attended GetYourGuide's Unlocked conference, where over 300 of their tour, activity, and attraction partners gathered from around the world to have a day-long discussion that will shape the future of the platform, and our industry in part. (Last year's supplier discussions focused on the need for curation, leading direc...

If there's one thing we at Tourpreneur have learned about running an online community, it's how important it is to have in-person gatherings to anchor the online conversations in the friendships that develop in-person. So far this year we've welcomed nearly 1,000 people to our small group "Shindigs" (meetups) held all around the world. And we're planning on more, plus launching a brand new style o...

How do we design experiences that use photography to enhance the guided experience, and not detract from feeling engaged and immersed? That's the question Mitch Bach posed in this Tourpreneur episode. Mikaela Toczek is the perfect person to answer that questions. She's the founder of More to Explore in Slovenia, which combines her background as a documentary photographer and photojournalism educat...

**Don't forget to register for our upcoming conference: TourWeek , Nov 10-13!** The whole TP gang of Mitch, Peter, Chris and Kyle were in London together recently for a Tourpreneur party. And our friends at GetYourGuide emailed and said—hey, while you're in London, do you want to take a tour? We said, sure! When we asked what it was, they said: trust us, this is a good one. They weren't kidding. I...

There's no explaining this episode. It's rambling and angry and raw and weird, but probably a very useful episode to listen to. Mr. AI-is-the-future Peter Syme and Mr. Human-Connection-is-Everything Mitch Bach are joined by two brilliant guys who have made their living creating travel content. Stuart McDonald founded Travelfish to offer true expert insights into Southeast Asian travel destinations...

What does it take to grow a food tour company without losing what made it special in the first place? Mitch Bach talks with Lauren Aloise , co-founder of Devour Tours and now VP of Marketing and Guest Experience at Walks-Devour Tours, joins us to unpack the hard-earned lessons of scaling with soul. From cooking classes in her Madrid apartment to managing operations across continents, Lauren shares...

Madison Rifkin leads Mount , a platform that partners with short-term rental hosts to help them feature and promote local tours and activities to their guests. But how do you actually get those guests to book? A static landing page doesn’t cut it. That’s where Madison’s “Creator Army” comes in—a vetted network of content creators trained specifically to craft high-performing short-form videos desi...

All we hear about is AI this, AI that. And yet trying to keep up with all the changes can be overwhelming. Many operators are simply rejecting it outright, or knowingly keeping their heads buried in the sand. So Mitch Bach sat down with Janette Roush, the "Chief AI Officer" for Brand USA, to ask a fundamental question: what are some practical ways a tour operator can get started using AI effective...

In this episode of the Tourpreneur podcast, Chris speaks with Jonathan Coleman from the Untours Foundation and Zakia Moulaoui Guery from Invisible Cities. They discuss the transformative power of tourism and how both organizations are making a significant impact in their communities. The Untours Foundation focuses on impact investing in social enterprises, while Invisible Cities trains individuals...

Mitch Bach is joined by ToursByLocals CEO Lisa Chen and Sherif Abiza, Chief Community Officer of Withlocals . Together they discuss a recent incident of guide poaching amongst tour platforms, and talk about what trust and fairness looks like in our industry. Guide platforms operate differently than other OTAs like GetYourGuide, Viator or Klook, since they deal primarily in solo entrepreneurs who t...

Nicole Mahoney runs Travel Alliance Partnership , a small group of tour operators banding together to create more buying power with suppliers, resell each others' tours, and much much more. In this Tourpreneur episode Nicole talks with Mitch Bach about how powerful these kinds of B2B partnership models can be when it comes to growing your tour business. Watch the video, show notes, and more at tou...

Benjamin Sann is the CEO of Tour Optima , a communications platform and white-labeled app solution that offers streamlined messaging between your business and your guests, guides, and internal team. Communication is everything. How are your guests receiving the itinerary and important updates? How are they being prompted to review and tip the guide at the end of the tour? How do you handle group c...

Katalina Mayorga is the powerhouse founder of El Camino Travel , a multi-day tour company reimagining the group trip experience for a new generation. But she's also much more than a tour operator. To sell her trips she's leaned heavily into community, creating a membership that serves not only as a customer base, but a space for likeminded 'bold women' to share recommendations and advice. And to p...

We all know good reviews are important, but what deeper insights can reviews give us about our tour businesses, and our industry? To answer that, Anna Cashman, Head of B2B Brand & Insights for GetYourGuide, led an effort to analyze 3.1 million reviews with comments. Her team parsed the data to understand trends and takeaways for tour operators. She joins Peter, Chris and Mitch on the podcast t...

Well, the new Airbnb 2025 Summer Release is upon us. The just hosted a big, splashy launch event for its reboot of Experiences, and also introduced Airbnb Services, featuring dozens of categories of new bookable offerings, from nail care to personal chefs. What does this mean for the future of Airbnb, for the tours & activities sector, and for Experience Hosts? Let's dive in! Mitch Bach and Pe...

Mitch Bach sat down with João Perre Viana, the founder of Walking Mentorship , to talk one thing we tour operators are all familiar with: walking. But not many of us design week-long trips where all you do is walk. Sometimes alone. Sometimes in a group. That's it. Beyond some shared meals and moments, there isn't much of a plan. Each group takes on a different spirit, but it's all guided by a ment...

Kelly Tompkins is the Founder & CPO of ReserveX, building software infrastructure that connects the components of our whole industry: Multi-Day tours, Day tours, Travel Advisors, OTAs, Meta-Search, and more. He's also been in the industry for a long, long time. Together with Tourpreneur host Peter Syme, Kelly talks about where the industry has been, and where it's going. He specifically looks...

TP team members Mitch Bach and Peter Syme talk to Chris Mark, Head of Connectivity for GetYourGuide. As we continue our Connectivity Series, we're looking at the people building the plumbing that make our industry work. When you list your tour on GetYourGuide, you might not understand the way in which it gets shared on other platforms, and how it integrates with your booking software, to bring you...

In this episode, Mitch Bach and Pete Syme interview fellow Tourpreneur partner Chris Torres, a seasoned marketing expert, who shares insights from his extensive career in the industry. Chris announces the sale of his business, discusses the evolving landscape of marketing, and emphasises the importance of storytelling and innovation in attracting customers. The conversation covers the differences...