The secret weapon to increasing profits without sacrificing time or guest experience is here. It’s Trip Protection.
This week, we're uncovering the incredible potential of this often-overlooked strategy that can add thousands to your bottom line and peace of mind to your ideal target guests.
Join us as we explore best practices, real-world case studies, and data-driven insights that will help you implement Trip Protection seamlessly and effectively.
📊 Get ready to watch your profits soar! ✨ #TourOperators#RevenueBoost#TripProtectionTips#BusinessGrowthStrategy#TourismIndustry
But when done properly, this profit boosting technique is actually a win win. It provides your customers with more flexibility and more options to get Peace of Mind knowing that if their plans change, they're covered. Also giving you a nice revenue stream to add to your bottom line. Hi there, Kelsey Toner here, the founder of Guest Focus Tour Business Coaching, where everyday myself and our team of experienced coaches are helping you build a thriving, profitable tour business. Welcome to the first video in our series on maximizing profits in your tour business. Across these eight videos, we're going to be sharing insider tips and best practices for boosting your bottom line. Today we're going to start with trip protection, an incredibly easy way to boost your revenue. At the same time having minimal overhead or additional costs. So what is it? Well, trip protection is an optional upgrade or one click upsell that you can add during your checkout process or you and your team can sell it over the phone. Essentially it gives customers a more flexible cancellation policy where they can get a full refund, let's say up to an hour before the tour starts or 30 minutes beforehand. Most booking software companies will allow you to add this manually as an order bump or sometimes called a one click upsell. This is pretty important. If you want to maximize the number of customers that opt into this, i.e. boost your profits as well as making it really easy for customers to add to their booking. The nice thing about trip protection is that you as the business owner ultimately have complete control over the structure of this optional upgrade. Think of trip protection as an optional upgrade to your existing cancellation policy for those folks that might be a little bit more risk averse or there's a higher chance they might have to change their plans. But here's why this is so compelling and effective for you as the tour business owner data that I've seen shared from Booking. Software companies who are rolling this out with operators around the globe have consistently seen that refund rates and cancellation rates don't increase. The people that are going to cancel or refund or no show are still going to do that. We're not seeing rates go down at all, but the majority of people who will buy or add this extra opt in will not end up using it, allowing you to keep this extra revenue. So when done properly, this profit boosting technique is actually a win win. It provides your customers with more flexibility and more options to get Peace of Mind knowing that. If their plans change, they're covered also giving you a nice revenue stream to add to your bottom line. But let's take a look at how this is implemented in the real world. This is one of our coaching members, Kailani Tours on the Big Island of Hawaii on their Volcano Explorer daytime tour. If we Scroll down to the bottom just above where they pay, you can see here the add trip cancellation protection. And you can see here that this is an opt in or opt out. With one click, we see the shopping cart order value. Note the language purchasing trip protection allows you to cancel or reschedule. Their tour at any time for any reason up to one hour prior to trip departure, you'll be reimbursed for the full amount of each ticket less the cost of trip protection and processing fees. This is an excellent implementation of this trip protection and take a moment to pause and look at that exact language how we're very clearly showing the value that's being offered. Now Kailani tours and only has a 48 hour refund window before their tour. But with this one click upsell. We could easily add that to their cart. We're providing them that extra Peace of Mind. Now it's important to note that this service should not be called. Insurance, as selling insurance is often highly regulated in most countries around the world. Instead, we highly recommend you use terms like trip protection, tour protection, activity protection, but do not use that word insurance. This way you can have similar benefits like more flexibility or the ability to offer more generous refund policies without having to navigate the complex world of insurance licensing. As always, I'm not a lawyer and I don't pretend to be one on the Internet. We always recommend that you get legal advice to ensure that you're compliant with any laws. It might be relevant to your business or your jurisdiction. Let's quickly run through five best practices. The first is 15% as a recommended fee structure. Now you can charge whatever you want and booking software may give you the option to have this be a flat fee if you prefer. Our recommendation is 15%. Data shared by Fair Harbor shows that about 15% of the total cart value or the per ticket price is that sweet spot between having a good number of your customers see the value and ultimately choose to add this protection. Above 15%, we start to see a drop off. And customers don't see as much of that value. We've seen similar data shared publicly from Waive Res as well as Thomas Marketing Intelligence who say this 12 to 15% really is optimal for your business. Secondly, transparency is key. Do not try and trick people into this upgrade. We want to present the options clearly as an optional upgrade to the existing cancellation policy. You should definitely have this on your core to our sales page as well as in your FAQ. Three, consider stricter cancellation policies one of the big levers. That tour operators have when adopting trip protection is that you can make your existing cancellation policy a little more strict to increase the perceived value of this upsell. Also, if you have an overly lenient cancellation policy, like hey, you get a free refund up to 24 hours before and the trip protection is only really adding an additional 23 hours of coverage, your customers may not see the value in that upgrade #4 test. Opt in versus opt out. Now with any order bump, you can have the default to have it selected. Were not selected, meaning will people have to opt out of trip protection or will they have to click it to add it to their order? Now as you can imagine, the data clearly shows that if you have an opt out policy, then you're going to see a much higher adoption rate. So this is worth testing, but also assess customer feedback and #5 really sell this add-on. Meaning add things like highly recommended in brackets under the trip protection area of your checkout page. Also consider adding a short customer testimonial of someone who really appreciated that extra value offered by the trip protection. OK, so maybe at this point in the video I've convinced you to give this a try, but what sort of real world results should we expect? Well, let's run some numbers. Let's say you run a Tour Company where your average ticket price is just $50.00 and you have around 10,000 customers. Over the course of a season, that would make 15%. Let me check my math here. 15% of that $50 ticket would be roughly $8. So let's say we even have a relatively conservative adoption rate of around 5%. That would be an extra $4000 of revenue. Coming to you as the tour business essentially as pure profit with minimal impact on your refund rate. Some of the tour businesses and our coaching program that are doing over a million a year in direct sales have reported that since implementing trip protection, they're earning over $3000 a month in essentially pure profit just by implementing some of these best practices. Another water sports operator shared with me that when they made their cancellation policy more punitive for their Sea Doo rentals and they added a default on in terms of trip protection, allowing people to cancel right up until the last minute. They saw as high as a 75% adoption rate as well with Sea Doo Rentals. This is a higher ticket item and was leading to a lot of extra revenue in their tour business every single year on autopilot. As always, it's important to approach this profit boosting best practice from a place of service. Genuinely try to balance the value offered to your guests with your own desire to grow those profit margins. OK, there you have it my friends. Our first insider tip in boosting your profits. In the comments below, let me know, are you using tip protection presently? How have you got it set up? And if you are not yet using trip protection, set some time in your calendar this week to get this set up and running. Look, if you're enjoying this video series and these tips, it would mean the world to me if you could share this with a friend or some of her colleagues here in the industry. Thanks so much for being here and I look forward to seeing you in the next video with another profit boosting tip.
Your guests’ journey doesn’t start and end with their tour. As a tour operator, your marketing should meet guests where they’re at.
Google spent two years researching the travel experience and found that every traveler goes through 5 key stages. As a tour operator, are you effectively marketing to each one?
Introducing the VIP Marketing Method™, designed to engage your potential guests at every stage of their journey:
1. Dreaming: Spark wanderlust with inspiring content. (73% of travelers use social media for travel inspiration - make your experiences shine!)
2. Planning: Be the go-to resource for trip research. (48% of travelers spend more than one week planning a trip - be their trusted guide!)
3. Booking: Streamline your process for effortless reservations. (70% of travelers say booking speed and ease are crucial - don't lose them at the finish line!)
4. Experiencing: Delight guests with personalized touches. (70% of travelers update their social media during vacation - give them something great to share!)
5. Sharing: Encourage and amplify positive reviews. (49% of travelers rely on recommendations from friends and family - turn your guests into brand advocates!)
By implementing the VIP Marketing Method™ across all five stages, you're not just marketing - you're creating a seamless experience that turns browsers into bookers, and guests into loyal fans.
Listen in to hear how the VIP Marketing Method™ can work for your business across the entire customer journey.
https://lnkd.in/gJvcxjUP#VIPMarketingMethod#TourOperatorMarketing#FiveStagesOfTravel
Travel pros, mark your calendars! WeTravel's free virtual summit is coming September 10-12, and it's packed with insights you won't want to miss.
You'll hear from industry experts (like our own Kelsey Tonner!) on the latest in booking and on-the ground experiences shaping how you build, operate, and market multi-day group travel. And you'll also hear how to craft experiences that resonate deeply with today's travelers.
And let's talk AI. It's not just buzz - it's a tool that's reshaping our industry. You'll learn practical ways to harness AI, including how to build your own GPT for tour operations. Don't worry if that sounds techy - it'll be broken down into simple, actionable steps.
Each day runs from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Eastern, ending with networking sessions where you can connect with fellow operators, suppliers, and DMCs from around the globe. It's a chance to expand your network and potentially find your next collaboration.
The best part? It's entirely free and virtual. Join for one session or all three days - it's up to you. Either way, you'll leave with concrete strategies to level up your multi-day group travel business.
Be sure to tune into the the talk on enhancing website conversion...you'll see a friendly face presenting! Hope to see you in the virtual crowd!
https://hubs.li/Q02GRsVb0#WeTravelSummit#TravelIndustryGrowth#FreeVirtualEvent
What if your marketing actually filled your tours instead of draining your bank account?
The tourism industry has changed. Cookie-cutter strategies and one-size-fits-all advice just don't cut it anymore. It's time to change how you connect with your ideal guests.
Enter the Guest Focus VIP Marketing Method™.
This isn't about chasing the latest trends or shouting into the void. It's about:
1. Crafting Valuable content that your dream clients can't resist
2. Building Intimate relationships that transform casual browsers into raving fans
3. Maintaining a Pervasive presence that keeps you top-of-mind (without running yourself ragged)
Imagine swapping your feast-or-famine cycle for consistent bookings. Picture your reviews page filled with glowing testimonials. Envision a marketing strategy that energizes your business instead of exhausting it.
This is what happens when you align your marketing with the Guest Focus VIP Marketing Method™.
Ready to turn your marketing from a costly chore into your most powerful booking tool? Tune in to our latest episode and discover how to make the VIP method work for your unique tourism business.
The only thing you have to lose? Your marketing headaches.
https://lnkd.in/gUQJ7jnQ#VIPMarketingMethod#TourismSuccess#MarketingRevolution#TourismMarketing#GuestFocus#MarketingStrategy
Tour operators, do you know about the profit-boosting abilities of selling gift cards?
Gift cards aren't just about holiday sales. They're a year-round strategy for boosting profits and stabilizing cash flow.
Here's why:
👉 Many gift cards may go unredeemed - straight to your bottom line
👉 Gift card users often spend more than the card's value
👉 Average 151-day lag between purchase and use means improved cash flow
Even discounted gift cards can lead to increased profitability. It's time to rethink your approach.
Ready to transform your tour business's financial future?
https://lnkd.in/gUCeB5XZ#TourismIndustry#BusinessStrategy#RevenueGrowth
The path to higher profits isn't always about booking more guests. It's about smart cost management.
How? By mastering the art of expense control.
From leveraging cutting-edge booking software to creative vendor negotiations, there are countless ways to streamline your operations and boost your bottom line.
Imagine:
Cutting administrative work by hiring smart
Slashing overhead costs through strategic partnerships
Negotiating better rates with suppliers
All while maintaining - or even enhancing - the quality of your tours.
Ready to hone your tour business into a lean, profit-generating machine?
Let's explore the strategies that could truly change your approach to expenses and propel your business forward.
https://lnkd.in/gYYRp-pX#TourismIndustry#BusinessStrategy#ProfitGrowth