understanding your audience
It's imperative that you (or your tour guides) tell the right story that connects with your customers, regardless of whether you're an established tour company that understands its audience or a single person just beginning to sell a unique experience.
What kind of travelers backpackers, couples, families, millennials, baby boomers, etc. do you want to draw in? Make sure you are knowledgeable before tailoring your experience to the desired audience (or audiences).
In the first section of our Getting Started Guide for Experience Hosts, you learned how to decide what kind of experience you could provide to tourists based on your own interests, expertise, or skills, while also taking into account local rivals and market opportunities.
You've decided what kind of experience to provide in this second section. Congratulations! It's time to increase your level of expertise so you can deliver a top-notch, immersive product, especially through fantastic storytelling. Of course, you might already possess the knowledge necessary to deliver with assurance. If not, the advice provided below is useful for crafting your experience's narrative.
- Learn more about your Experience by enrolling in pertinent courses, workshops, or pieces of training.
- Conduct research in the travel area, online, or at your local library.
- Test out comparable situations to see what functions best for yours. During the experience, converse with other travelers to determine what worked and what could be improved.
- Engage the community and expand your network. Make friends with those who may be knowledgeable about your field and who can assist you in developing your story.
Create a Narrative for Your Experience
Take into account the various audiences you might present your experience to. Keep your main point simple and omit any extraneous details. Integrate fascinating facts and unique anecdotes into your larger narrative. Consider ways to interact and connect with your visitors. As an icebreaker, you might ask your guests to pair up, introduce themselves, and explain why they chose to participate in the activity. (You may also use this as an opportunity to gather information.)
Try it, then modify it
Try out your own experience with some close family or friends. Try out various strategies, then rework and improve your final product.
Examples of Product Development
Let's say you want to develop a distinctive culinary experience, such as a food-themed tour or dining itinerary in your city, to bring all of the aforementioned product-development ideas to life. Here are some suggestions for its design:
- The best way to market food tours is to focus them on a particular theme or angle. Showcase a particular cuisine or type of food that is well-liked in your city, such as crepes in Paris or tacos in Downtown Los Angeles. A particular diet, such as gluten-free, vegan, or vegetarian, maybe the focus of a food tour.
- Visit hidden local eateries: Include bars, restaurants, or markets that a tourist might not otherwise find on your food tour. Taking customers to secret, local hotspots increases the value of your offering by giving them an experience they can only get with a knowledgeable local tour guide.
- Point out a special tour guide or instructor: Tourists are looking for unusual ways to experience your city. In order to set your product apart from similar ones, emphasize why you are the ideal leader or instructor for it. This crucial detail demonstrates to visitors one way in which your tour differs from and is superior to tours offered by rivals, regardless of whether your tour is led by a chef, foodie, food critic, or even grandma.
- Provide hands-on classes and workshops: Travelers want to fully experience the local culture, so they are looking beyond the conventional food tours that stop at markets or cafés. A local or specialty dish like pasta, sushi, gelato, or ramen is transformed into an interactive way for visitors to meet locals, learn something new, and have a lasting experience they can take home in the form of recipes, cooking techniques, etc. through food-making classes or workshops.
- Invite them to join you for dinner: Create a novel way for tourists to sample local food, like a meal prepared by a chef or served in a home. This can include prepared specialty foods, experiences that take place from market to table, or a 6-course meal. Another way to introduce customers to local cuisine and other tourists or residents is through social brunches.
As an additional illustration, suppose you want to take advantage of the fact that tourists from all over the world are searching for distinctive approaches to experiencing foreign locations in their native language. You've chosen to make a non-English tour available on Viator in the US. Here are some strategies for creating a successful product:
Make a straightforward sightseeing schedule:
Tourists who are visiting a city for the first time want someone to show them the highlights. You can provide a useful experience for them to feel more at ease while exploring a new place by organizing a straightforward sightseeing tour of some of the city's most well-known attractions, hosted by a guide who speaks the traveler's native language. For instance, you might want to offer a Pike Place tour in Seattle with an Italian-speaking guide from the area.
Show off your interests:
Even if you are not an authority in a particular field, make use of your local knowledge and offer an Experience based on a hobby or interest you have in food, sports, art, or another activity or area of expertise in your city. You can provide them with a deeper understanding of, for instance, a particular Los Angeles neighborhood, park, or food scene while imparting what you love about the City of Angels by acting as a local host who speaks a visitor's language.
Select a specific area or activity to focus on:
Products typically perform better when they have a very specific angle. Your experience should be centered around a well-known landmark or region of your city. For instance, in New York City, you could provide a walking tour of Central Park with a Russian-speaking guide or a tour of Brooklyn's street art in that language.
Enhance your experience by:
Look for ways to distinguish your product from competing offerings. Utilize your skills and interests to develop a special activity or perspective that will set your offering apart from the competition.
1. Guidelines for Becoming a Tour Guide
2. Recognizing Your Market
Get Compliant 3.
4. Establishing Your Account
5. Market to travelers online
7. Marketing Strategy
7. Get Reviews & Bookings
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