A little luxury: What travellers want post-COVID & how to prepare your tour business

When travel & tour­ism inev­it­ably opens up again in your part of the world (if it has­n’t already) for domest­ic and/or inter­na­tion­al trav­el­lers, are you pre­pared to give them what they want? Aus­trali­an tour oper­at­or entre­pren­eur Grant Char­les­worth shares his “Good Tour­ism” Insight into how he’s pre­par­ing his Aus­trali­an Lux­ury Escapes.

A lot has changed in the world in past 12 months and people’s travel and tour expect­a­tions will be dif­fer­ent both domest­ic­ally and inter­na­tion­ally. Accord­ing to Tech­na­vio, a UK-based tour­ism con­sult­ing firm, pro­spect­ive trav­el­lers are look­ing for more boutique and intim­ate exper­i­ences to escape the crowds. This is a dir­ect reac­tion to the 2020 pan­dem­ic. The same data also shows that cus­tom­ers are pre­pared to spend more money on upmar­ket and lux­ury experiences.

Tour­ism and hos­pit­al­ity busi­nesses can make small changes now that will make big dif­fer­ences to their viab­il­ity and prof­it­ab­il­ity into 2021, and to cap­ture the unique oppor­tun­ity that is on offer right now. There is huge poten­tial for small tour oper­at­ors to thrive over the com­ing years as trav­el­lers look for more mean­ing­ful tour­ism experiences.

Here are four things that tour oper­at­ors can exam­ine right now:

1. Upgrade to upmarket

Upgrade your product to offer a more upmar­ket exper­i­ence to fill the cur­rent and ongo­ing demand for lux­ury, boutique, and intim­ate exper­i­ences. It can also poten­tially cre­ate an addi­tion­al rev­en­ue stream for you. For example, our com­pany Aus­trali­an Lux­ury Escapes cre­ated Sydney Walk­ing Tours because we noticed demand for that kind of product increase among our cli­ents. While walk­ing tours are not neces­sar­ily per­ceived as upmar­ket, we add value through the intim­acy of small groups and premi­um inclu­sions. The tours are there­fore not only attract­ive to our “five-star” cli­ents but also afford­able to a whole new “four-star” mar­ket seg­ment who may be inter­ested in our oth­er products now or in the future. This last point speaks to the import­ance of the third point below: “Sys­temise to scale”.

Review your product range and see where you can upgrade or add value. If you oper­ate a charter boat com­pany offer lux­ury trans­fers to and from the pickup point. Charge more for this ser­vice or build it into the cost.

Col­lab­or­ate and pack­age exper­i­ences. If you oper­ate a 4WD tour, part­ner with a loc­al eco resort for lunch or a loc­al eco bike oper­at­or to build their exper­i­ences into your tour. You can charge more as it gives your cli­ents a rich­er exper­i­ence. And it enables you to build stronger rela­tion­ships and cross-pro­mote with oth­er operators. 

2. Distribute or die

Review your dis­tri­bu­tion. If you are not work­ing with domest­ic travel whole­salers, you need to be. And if you are not work­ing in the inter­na­tion­al mar­ket right now, you need to be. Work out where your niche is and do some research into who can best assist you in dis­trib­ut­ing or selling your product. Set prices and rates accord­ingly and then tar­get those whole­salers. There are big advant­ages in work­ing with domest­ic whole­salers and travel agents. Some­times your mar­gins may be less, but there are no upfront charges, and whole­salers and travel agents have great lists of customers.

3. Systemise to scale

The num­ber one sys­tem that tour oper­at­ors neg­lect to devel­op is a sys­tem for cus­tom­er reten­tion. No mat­ter the size of your busi­ness, you need a cus­tom­er rela­tion­ship man­age­ment sys­tem. There are so many simple and cost-effect­ive ways to engage your cus­tom­ers on an ongo­ing basis. Unfor­tu­nately most people spend the major­ity of their time chas­ing new cus­tom­ers that they fail to look after their exist­ing cli­ent base. If you’re not look­ing after your cli­ents someone else will be. Simple news­let­ters can be good enough but the con­tent must be rel­ev­ant and enga­ging. There are so many forms of smart social media these days. I recom­mend that every tour oper­at­or should have, as a min­im­um, a Face­book page and an Ins­tagram account. Tour­ism is very visu­al and Ins­tagram was cre­ated for photos.

4. Customers are King

We are in the ser­vice industry, so we are here to serve. Enga­ging with your cli­ents mean­ing­fully allows you to provide a deep­er level of exper­i­ence for your customer.

Cus­tom­er ser­vice should be a no-brain­er but too many tour oper­at­ors fail to spend the time or have the right atti­tude for super­i­or cus­tom­er ser­vice. The US mod­el is pretty good. If you ever sit down at a res­taur­ant in the US you have an attent­ive wait per­son serving you ice water with­in seconds. Iron­ic­ally, they are paid much less than their Aus­trali­an counterparts. 

Ask your cus­tom­ers what they want or need. You nev­er know what addi­tion­al inform­a­tion and/or book­ings you may receive from them. With­in our com­pany, our staff are trained to ask our cus­tom­ers how we can assist them fur­ther. Quite often a $1,000 book­ing turns into a $5,000 book­ing as we are able to offer addi­tion­al ser­vices or exper­i­ences that our cus­tom­er may not have known we provide. 

In con­clu­sion, the pan­dem­ic has cre­ated a lot of dis­rup­tion in our sec­tor, and with dis­rup­tion comes oppor­tun­ity. Poten­tial cus­tom­ers are going to be look­ing for more mean­ing­ful exper­i­ences mov­ing for­ward, exactly what most tour oper­at­ors want to provide. Now is the time to take action to fully cap­it­al­ise on these opportunities.

What do you think? Share a short anec­dote or com­ment below. Or write a deep­er “GT” Insight. The “Good Tour­ism” Blog wel­comes diversity of opin­ion and per­spect­ive about travel & tour­ism because travel & tour­ism is everyone’s business.

Fea­tured image (top of post): Abstract art by 8926 (CC0) via Pixabay.

About the author

Grant Char­les­worth [email] knows what it takes to oper­ate a tour com­pany hav­ing built his small Sydney-based oper­a­tion into the nation­al lux­ury eco-tour com­pany Aus­trali­an Lux­ury Escapes.

Grant has been oper­at­ing Aus­trali­an Lux­ury Escapes with his wife since 2000. Aus­trali­an Lux­ury Escapes was one of the first com­pan­ies to be awar­ded Advanced Eco Accred­it­a­tion by Eco­tour­ism Australia.