Tourpreneur Tour Business Podcast

Tourpreneur believes our industry needs more diverse voices so welcome to the first of our Women in Travel series.   In this episode, the first 4 four recordings with Amanda Walkins, Zakia Moulaoui Guery, Caroline Conner and Carol El Hawary, they discuss how women can be represented in travel, from top level C-Suite positions to speaking at events.   As always, we are looking for more women to sha...

The Experience Economy in Tours and Activities with Joe Pine In this episode, Chris Torres, Mitch Bach and Pete Syme talk with author Joe Pine to discuss The Experience Economy and how this can help deliver transformational experiences in tours and activities. We discuss... - What the Experience Economy is - How to design an experience - How to deliver an experience at every stage - Delivering tra...

At Tourpreneur, it is our mission to make sure every tour operator who is a member of our Facebook group or a listener to the podcast achieves one thing, and that is to grow their profit margins. Our aim is to build upon the incredible foundation and values that were created by Shane, while adding more ways for you to learn and grow your business. The core of Tourpreneur will never change. We will...

'How lucky i am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.' After three years, Tourpreneur's Shane Whaley announces why he is leaving the show and revealed why he is thrilled to hand over the reins of the podcast and community to three industry veterans. Tourpreneur, the leading educational podcast and online community for tour operators around the world, will be under new ownership as o...

Today, Sita Sargeant rejoins us  to share some of the major changes that are currently happening at She Shapes History. Sita explains  what it’s been like to transition from working as a duo-team tour operation to becoming a ‘team of one.’ We discuss the benefits of stepping back and taking breaks from your tour business and how it can leave you feeling recharged, renergized, and remotiv...

In this episode, we throw the spotlight on TourOpp in a brand new series where we learn more about tech, tools and apps for tour operators. Tourpreneur is a no sales pitch podcast so we invited a customer of TourOpp to join us and share why they chose TourOpp and how it is increasing their cross-selling, upselling, number of reviews and saving customer service hours. We are joined by TourOpp found...

Today, we share tips and advice on staffing up your tour business and explain how to identify the right time to add employees to your tour company. Our guests, tour business owners Brian Cain ( CRAWL New Orleans ) and Jarrod Riddle ( Spirit of Arizona Tours ) share lessons from the trenches in this episode. Brian reveals how he staffed up his tour company from just himself to nine tour guides. We...

Angee Johnson joins us today to share how she built and grew Taste of SLO Walking Food Tour . She discusses how she researched the San Luis Obispo tourism market before starting her business and outlines how she networked and collaborated with bars and restaurants. She talks about the point in the journey she started investing in paid advertising and reveals her secret sauce to maximizing Facebook...

Liselot Caura reveals how she took her brewery tour business BeerSecret from a side hustle to a full-time business and outlines some of the challenges she faced. Liselot joins us today to share the story behind BeerSecret. She describes her beginnings in the brewery industry and reveals what led her to switch from sales and promotion in breweries to leading beer tastings and tours. She discusses h...

The Tour Operator Start Up series is back, Simon Burke joins Nikki Padilla Rivera today to discuss starting a tour business, in fact, a sidecar motorcycle tour company during the COVID-19 pandemic. He explains the hoops, logistics, and licenses when starting a tour vehicle business in Paris. He describes how Brexit and the pandemic impacted his start-up and explains how he came up with the concept...

Ryan O'Grady, the founder of Fotaflo joins us today to share how we can increase tour bookings and reviews with guest photos, which he calls 'memory marketing.' Ryan explains how tour businesses can leverage photo memories to market and create advocates for their business. He outlines the benefits of offering photo memories of the tour as a free value-add rather than a paid service. Ryan also unde...

Today's guest shares with us some of her lessons from 30 years of running a tour business. We cover a lot of ground including marketing tours, dealing with journalists, websites, hiring and managing tour guides and chatbots!  Lauren Hefferon joins us to discuss how she started, developed, and expanded the bike tour business Ciclismo Classico . She explains the significance of Ciclismo Classic...

Jamie Robinson joins us today, he divulges his tactics to effective, authentic marketing on a budget. He describes his journey to being a tourpreneur and explains how an episode of the show, Top Gear, inspired him to start his experiences business based around two iconic cars, a London Cab and an Indian Taxi. He explains how to engage with a community without sounding like a pushy salesperson and...

From Navy cryptographer to successful tour business owner.  Renee Ventrice of Cork and Keg Tours joins us today to discuss how she built a luxury winery and brewery tours business.  She walks us through how she created local partnerships with breweries and wineries and outlines how she designed her tour business from the ground up. Renee also discusses why evaluating and reevaluating fri...

Today we hear from 3 tour operators who attended the in-person Arival San Diego event, they share what they learned and experienced. I was keen to hear what first-time attendees of Arival thought of the event, so today we are joined by Brian Cain of Crawl New Orleans and Jarrod Riddle of Sprit of Arizona Tours .  We also invited Heather Fortes of Sactown Bites to our tour business round table disc...

We are receiving more and more questions from tour operators who want to learn Instagram Reels but are unsure where to start. These questions have inspired Shane to dig into Instagram Reels for Tour Operators starting next week where he will try an experiment at Arival San Diego to see if he can learn Instagram Reels (and overcome his camera nerves!) Shane's plan is to record a quick Instagram Ree...

It's January, a time for new years resolutions and goal setting. In today's episode, Tourpreneur Host Shane Whaley asked 11 activity and tour operators what one skill or competency they are focusing on to grow their business in 2022. If you are able to help our guests with advice on where they can master that skill or competency please share your thoughts with them and others in our online communi...

Should we be using AI Chatbots for our tour business? Listen to an extract of an interview with Evan Tipton of TOMIS who explains how Billy of Arkansas River Tours is taking advantage of AI Chatbots to generate over $60k in bookings. Billy also shares with us how AI Chatbot is helping his tour business to become more efficient.

Our guests discuss how tour operators can facilitate conversations toward understanding diverse history. They also explore how tour operators can discuss historical issues on tours effectively and safely. They consider engaging travelers who discover an unpleasant aspect of their ancestors’ history while on a historical tour. Or podcast guests also highlight why running tours is a distinct art for...

Today on Tourpreneur we hear from three listeners who attended the TIS Seville. What did they learn? And what are they going to do differently in their businesses as a result of attending? TIS is a new one for me so here is the official blurb. 'Tourism Innovation Summit is aimed to help tourism and travel industry to face all those short and long-term challenges. Seville will host again three days...

Evan, Billy, and Amada discuss digital marketing tips for tour operators, SEO best practices, Google Ads, and customer communications. They explore how by integrating AI chatbots, SMS chat, and live chat systems tour operators can enhance the customer communication experience. They share their advice for collaborating with marketing agencies and highlight why making your website mobile user-friend...

Social media expert, Social Tonic's Shawn Teasley is joined by tourism  marketing expert Chris Torres along with tour operators Alan, and Amber to discuss the fine details of Facebook marketing for tour operators. They discuss the top three things tour operators should know before working with marketing agencies and demystify the secrets behind making impactful Facebook ads for tour operators...

In this episode of the Tour Operator Start-Up Series, Sita, Ripley, and Danielle Desir discuss how to build a podcast to expand your brand. They break down the basics of creating a podcast and how Tour Operators can use it to generate passive income. They brainstorm how Sita and Ripley can go back to their brand’s roots to develop podcast content aligned with their company’s mission and values. Th...

In part 5 of our blogging for tour operators guide, tourism marketing expert Dorene Wharton joins us to share her secrets to writing successful SEO-friendly blog posts. She explains why Google keeps changing its algorithms. She discusses how tour operators can successfully navigate Google’s E-A-T guidelines and shares her best practices for keyword researching. She offers advice for writing the be...

Trish Higgins bought Cap’n Fish’s cruises in idyllic Boothbay Harbor, Maine: known for its puffins, whale-watching, and picturesque lighthouses. So what could go wrong? For starters, she signed the docs for her new tour business just days before the COVID-19 epidemic shut down most of the country, adding a totally new and unforeseen obstacle to tour operations, planning, and staff communication. B...