Travel Business Lounge | For Travel and Tour Entrepreneurs

 I am so thrilled to say that I am joined by Amina Mohammed, the woman behind triple F photo tours, which is a small tour operator that leads photography trips to places all over the world, but specializes in trips to Uganda. She's also the mind behind Camera's For Girls, which is the charity arm of her tour business, which helps support some of the women that guests on her trips to Uganda had the opportunity to actually meet and get to know.  I loved my chat with Amina because she's really one of those women has a dream and goes for it. I also really admire her tenacity because she's built this business. She's very open and honest about the struggles she has faced due to COVID. However, I'm particularly impressed with her commitment to incorporating a philanthropic edge to her business. And I think this is something that we're seeing a lot more often in most industries, but especially in tourism, people wanting to be more sustainability minded, more ethically minded, and so I wanted to bring on a guest who could share their experience of building a tour company. Incorporated those values, but didn't do so just as a marketing ploy. It's obviously attractive to a potential client to see that a business that they're interested in traveling with has those ethical values, but you want to make sure that they're actually following through with the good that they're saying that they're doing and that it's not just a means of selling more tours.She is so committed to this mission beyond just the tourism aspect. She really wants to give back to the communities that she visits, which is just so inspiring. So I really hope you take something away from this episode and maybe inspires you as well to think in different ways of how you could make your own business.

Madeline Jhawar founded Italy Beyond The Obvious over a decade ago, after years of being the go-to person for friends and family members, questions regarding travel to Italy. In today's episode, Madeline tells us all about her journey on how she became that travel planning expert, how she founded and grew Italy Beyond The Obivous, and also discusses what are the differences between travel planners and travel agents. Just a few years, Madeline founded Travel Beyond The Obvious , which is this incredible program that teaches people how to become successful travel planners and run their own business. She breaks down how you get started, how you can find your first customers and the importance of niching down and having an expertise in a particular region or a particular area. 

Kaitlin Calogera is a trailblazer in tourism. In 2018, she founded A Tour of Her Own, the first tourism company in Washington, DC to focus exclusively on women's history. However, that is not the only thing that makes this company so unique. Rather than just use a standard fee-based tour model, TOHO also puts on events and offers a membership program to their community. This helps to attract locals and generate reoccuring revenue -- 2 things difficult to accomplish in the tourism world.  In this episode, we discuss how Kaitlin grew her business, why she opted to create a membership program, and how this business model works when applied to a tour company. She also opens up about the biggest challenges of working in tourism today and how she's continued to scale her business with a team. 

Today's episode is all about travel coaching. Geneva is an open book on her journey into becoming a travel coach. We discuss what it means to be a travel coach? What services exactly do you provide as a travel coach and how does that differ from a travel planner or a travel agent, or maybe just a travel influencer? We also touch on how hard it can be to show up authentically on social media when your instinct is to not want to show up at all. And lastly, we also talk about how she found her first clients as a travel coach and what her big plans for the business are going forward.

Today's episode is a little bit different because we're exploring a side of the tourism industry that we haven't discussed yet on this podcast, and that is the B2B market -- business to business, selling tours to other companies rather than direct to consumer. The Ways Beyond was founded by Nicki Wang and her partner in 2019. Nikki is originally from China, but moved to Paris many years ago and quickly noticed that there seem to be a gap in the tourism market. There are of course, a lot of big bus tours and also more expensive private tour options. However, Nikki wanted to do something that was slightly more elevated, but not for the mass market. And she also wanted to focus on offering cultural experiences rather than just standard tourist. And thus, The Ways Beyond was born. In this episode, Nikki takes us inside how her inbound tourism. Business operates, including the three types of clients she typically deals with and how her services vary slightly, depending on what. She also offers some interesting food for thought on how the business model works and also how she is using one social media platform in particular to grow her business. I've so much admiration for their tenacity and I can really see how this business could continue to flourish in the future.

In today's episode, we are pulling back the curtain and taking a look inside one of Chicago's most highly rated to her companies. Inside Chicago Walking Tours was founded by Hillary Marzec, a solopreneur, in 2015. After years of designing tours on behalf of other companies, she decided it was time to launch a business of her own, where she could take guests inside some of Chicago's most beautiful buildings. In this episode, Hillary reveals some of the benefits and challenges of running her own tour company, which marketing strategies have worked the best and which ones were potentially a waste of money, the reservation booking software that she absolutely swears by, and her strategy for growing her business and finding the best new guides. This is another great episode for anyone interested in starting their own tour company business. And it's also just an inspirational story of a woman who took on the massive challenge of starting a business on her own and who has succeeded in growing that business to become the number one tour on TripAdvisor.

Today's story all started with a T-shirt. Caroline Sande loved the slogan, Travel - Eat - Slay, so she decided to have it printed on a t-shirt that she could wear when traveling. After sharing photos of her in it on social media, people began reaching out to ask where they too could buy the same shirt. And within a few month, this idea for a fun t-shirt had evolved into a full-fledged business. Fast forward a few years and Travel Eat Slay is much more than a merchandising company -- it's a community. In addition to selling travel apparel, Caroline also began organising day trips around Europe for other UK-based travel influencers interested in visiting the most Instagrammable places. Together, they traveled to cities like Milan and Venice to take photos of each other and create content, all before flying back to London later that same day. When Covid hit and Caroline was forced to pause her day trips, she launched another business -- the Travel Boxx. This is a quarterly subscription box with must-have travel essentials for her growing community. In today's episode, Caroline walks us through the evolution of her multi-faceted travel brand and shares how she got started with selling merchandise, some of the challenges of being a travel influencer, and lessons she's learned since launching her subscription service. If you've ever considered incorporating merchandise into your business or if you'd like to learn more about working with influencers, this is an especially good episode. SHOW NOTES: https://travelbusinesslounge.com/ FACEBOOK GROUP: https://www.facebook.com/groups/323995252173500 INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/travelbusinesslounge/

Today's guest is the industry expert when it comes to email marketing and list building. After more than a decade working in the hospitality industry, Nicole Barrett decided to leave her role as Regional Director of Sales to launch the Travelpreneur Academy, which teaches travel and tourism professionals how to grow and harness their email list. In this episode, she covers email marketing from A-Z, starting with why email marketing is so effective, what her top tips are for creating a powerful lead magnet, and how to design the perfect email sequence that will get you more sales with your ideal clients.

Do you love going on ghost tours and think about someday leading one yourself, but worry that there aren't enough spooky stories to share where you live? Today's guest used to feel the same way, until she honed her research skills and learned how to uncover ghost stories in the most unlikely of places. Allison Jornlin launched Milwaukee Ghost Walks back in 2008, after a lifetime of interest in the paranormal. What started as a summer side hustle, has now evolved into American Ghost Walks, a hugely popular ghost tour ghost tour company that operates in more than a dozen cities and which Allison runs with her brother Mike. Today, she focuses on primarily on research and route development for new destinations. In this episode, Allison share's her best tips for researching for a ghost tour, her method for designing new routes, and how she deals with the ongoing challenge of managing customer expectations. And with Halloween just around the corner, I had to ask Allison to share a ghost story with our listeners, so stay tuned until the end to hear that!

Today's guest left her comfortable job at Amazon to launch a sustainable tour booking platform that connects eco-minded travelers with ethical tour operators around the world. Hilary Matson founded Yugen Earthside in 2020, despite a global pandemic and no prior experience in the travel industry. In this episode, she shares her process for screening new tour operators, some of the unexpected challenges of running an OTA, and the social media platform that has been most effective in helping her grow her business. Hilary also opens up about experiencing self doubt as a female entrepreneur and her biggest piece of advice for other women considering a dramatic career change.