Knowing and Selling the Modern Tour

PHOTO: The tour market has moved toward smaller groups, a format that allows access to many places larger groups cannot visit because of logistical reasons. (Photo courtesy of International Expeditions)

The question is always the same: How can agents successfully make a lucrative income from selling tours? That answer is ever changing because tours themselves change. The tour market is evolving, tour operators are responding to changing demand, and trying to anticipate where it is heading.

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But the essential value proposition of tours remains the same. The basic proposition of combining the buying power of a group, to pool resources to bring down the costs of basic trip costs such as lodging, transportation and activities, is an idea that is as strong today as it was 50 years ago.

A tour program is like a computer program, or a recipe designed to bring about a particular result. In this case, the goal is to create a great trip.

But this is where the industry has changed. It has changed in its definition of what a great trip is. Or rather, the definition of what a great trip is has split off in a thousand directions. There are almost as many definitions of a great trip as there are individual travelers. That is how the tour industry has evolved: to accommodate an ever-expanding range of possible trips desired by travelers.

To sell tours, here’s what you should consider:

Education. The first principle of capturing a larger share of the tours market is to learn about them. Study the tours, study the market and study the demands of your clients.

There are many ways to study tours. You can learn a lot by just surfing the Web. You can also learn a lot by reading trade magazines. (Disclaimer: this is a trade magazine.) But the best way to learn about selling tours is from the tour operators themselves. Virtually all tour operators are eager to help travel agents learn how to sell their products more effectively.

Tour operators offer training in a multitude of ways. Most maintain field sales forces that make personal calls on agencies for face-to-face training. Most offer various Web-based training, such as webinars. Some offer more elaborate training programs online. Some have educational and training conferences for large numbers of agents.

The ultimate form of training is familiarization trips. There is no better way to learn to sell a destination or a tour product than to experience it yourself.

Tours Diversification. The old standardized multi-country tour of 40 years ago has split off into many separate courses of evolution, producing a huge variety in the kinds of tours available.

But at the core of the diversity are several general trends that you should be aware of

The largest trend is diversification itself. In response to changing demands and changing possibilities, there has been a great proliferation of new kinds of tours.

Improvements in booking technologies over the years, another trend, have made it increasingly possible for tour operators to cater to the individual desires of their customers, to produce custom tours targeted to a wide variety of individual tastes.

The expansion of the numbers and kinds of tours available has not eliminated the original multi-country panoramic tour from the market. However, they now come in many different forms — and virtually all of them are less regimented, more fun and more enriching than those offered 40 years ago.

PHOTO: Tour participants don’t want to just see a destination by driving by the ‘must-see’ sites. They want to go home with an experience of a place, one that could probably not be had anywhere else. (Photo courtesy of Austin Adventures)

Small Groups. The tour industry has shown a tremendous amount of creativity in developing all sorts of different kinds of tours by mixing old components in new ways and serving up destinations in new ways.

One of the most popular variations on the tour form is small group travel. In general, the market has moved toward smaller groups, a format that allows access to many places larger groups cannot visit because of logistical reasons.

Experiential Travel. By now nearly every tour operator knows that what they are selling is experiences. Tour operators have found thousands of different ways to do that. But they all acknowledge that tour takers don’t want to just see a destination by driving by the “must-see” sites. They want to go home with an experience of a place, one that could probably not be had anywhere else.

Cultral Immersion. Travelers no longer want to stay on the surface of things. They want the chance to dig down into a culture and get a feeling for the views of the people who live at the destination.

The best way to achieve cultural immersion is to interact with locals themselves. Most tour operators incorporate into their programs some sort of educational experience, like a presentation, a tasting, or a demonstration.

Behind-the-Scenes Access. Through buying power, prestige, clout and influence, tour operators develop contacts at destinations that provide access for their customers to things few individual travelers are likely to get on their own.

Some tour operators are able to put their clients at the front of the lines to major travel attraction, while others compete trying to offer the most novel and interesting kinds of insider access imaginable. It’s an important component of the modern tour product.

More independence. Travelers have moved increasingly in the direction of desiring more independence and less structure on trips, fewer commitments, more time to explore independently or reflect or rest. Most tour itineraries today are structured with flexibility built in.

Tighter destination focus. Although there is still plenty of demand for tours that travel through several countries, the trend has been toward explorations of smaller areas. That provides the opportunity for more in-depth explorations of a specific area with less travel time between.

The Malleable Tour Model. The basic model of group touring that has been around for at least a century is still viable and vibrant, acting as the basic form underlying thousands of different modern variations on the ancient practice of traveling in groups. Like ancient theater, group touring seems to be an almost universal part of human history. And it continues to find new expression in the innovation of modern tour operators.