March is Women’s History Month and we’ve got a lot to celebrate. We reached out to our clients to send us their amazing stories answering the following questions: 1. Why did you want to become a guide? 2. What’s your favorite part of the job? 3. What’s your least favorite part of the job? 4. What are some hard truths about guiding? 5. How do you see guiding evolving in the future? 6. What’s something about your job most people don’t realize? Maria Tucholke Laurie Watt Heidi Wirtz Meg Nickman Morgan McIntire Juliana Garcia Faith Dickey Anna Rollins "Gus" Klein ..read more

You’re probably reading this because you have an automated booking confirmation process, right? You take trip reservations over the phone. You write your client’s contact information and credit card details on a random piece of paper. Then you draft an email with the trip date, time, meeting location, and whatever they need to bring with them. We’ve heard this story hundreds of times. In fact, one of our clients, Ryan, at Atlantic Climbing School, realized he was working hours before and after business hours doing menial and mundane tasks like sending confirmation emails to clients. All the ex ..read more

Automating post-trip review requests doesn’t have to sound as impersonal as you think. In fact, using a system that automates the review collection process frees up your time so you can offer a personalized experience to your clients. Many tour operators don’t like the idea of asking for a client to leave a public-facing review for them, which is why most of them fall short on their sheer number of reviews. If you’re one of those tour operators who shudders at the idea of asking a client to leave you a review, consider this: 65% of people left reviews because a business asked them to. It’s tha ..read more

When you automate your content creation, you set your tour company apart from the others. In the fast-paced realm of the travel industry, where captivating an audience and maintaining a vibrant online presence is key, tour operators find themselves navigating a delicate balance between showcasing their unique offerings, offering amazing customer support, and efficiently managing their digital content.  Enter the era of automation – a game-changer for tour operators seeking to streamline their content creation processes. In this blog, we’re going to explore the power of automating content ..read more

In this technology era, you have to find as many ways to automate tour reservations as possible—not just for tech-savvy clients, but for your overall time management. There’s no reason to continue booking trips manually (or using outdated software) when so many apps, booking software (like Origin), and tools exist to make your life easier. When you automate tour reservations, you save your and your clients’ time. You’re not wasting it by the endless back and forth confirming details, answering questions that should be obvious, or asking for signed waivers when the trip’s supposed to start. You ..read more

As a tour operator, you’re busy. And that’s probably an understatement. You don’t have time to work on those annoying and repetitive tasks, but you also don’t have the extra funds to hire someone else to do it for you. Instead, save your money and your time by using these different automation tools that will help overwhelmed tour operators like yourself. As we all know, tour guides and operators manage a million tasks to run their business successfully, and some of these tasks can become repetitive and annoying. Coordinating with clients, confirming reservations, and making last-minute adjustm ..read more

Tour operators can automate their sales process without a salesperson by using technology to their advantage and implementing different strategies. This leads to more tour bookings and spending less time selling them. This frees up your time, so you can get back to doing what you love (which is probably not taking customer service calls). Before we start, ask yourself these four questions. After reading through the different ways to sell more tours automatically, you can use your answers to develop an automated sales strategy: Why are your customers interested in your tours? How can you get t ..read more

As a booking and scheduling platform for the tours and activities industry, we’ve seen our fair share of tourism websites. A lot are still stuck in their original form, from when they were designed in the late 90’s or early 2000’s. Which is fine if that works for them, but it likely isn’t—and they might not realize that.  How To Make A Good Website Design A good website is one that effectively meets its goals and provides a positive experience for visitors. All the best tourist guide websites have elements that we think make them stand out from the rest. While the specifics vary depending ..read more

Automating social media strategy, creation, and posting is a surefire way to get more time back in your time while also creating a solid community of adventure-lovers around your company. Tour operators are already pressed for time and finding time for social media usually ends up last on the list—even though it’s a great way to get more bookings. We’ll cover apps to automate strategizing your social media. And yes, you need to come up with a plan for it. We’ll quickly cover SMART goals, Google Analytics, and Google Alerts. Next, we’re going to go over what apps you can use to automate social ..read more

With the signing of the Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA) by the President, August 4th will be a day remembered by conservationists for the next 50 years. This is arguably the most important conservationist legislation since the original funding of the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) in 1964. Amy Roberts, Senior Director at The North Face, said, “Local park districts are [now] in a position to put LWCF dollars to work immediately. The full funding of LWCF is a key part of ensuring that the $887 billion recreation economy is a bright spot in our nation’s economic recovery strategy.” Ph ..read more