Tourpreneur Tour Business Podcast

Building a profitable food tour business is tough. Building a food tour business in a 'secondary' destination with the foodie heaven of San Francisco right on your doorstep? Even tougher! On today's Tourpreneur, the podcast for tour operators, you will hear the story of Lauren McCabe Herpich, the tourpreneur behind Local Food Adventures in Oakland, California. In this candid conversation with Tourpreneur host Shane Whaley, Lauren McCabe Herpich shares with us the highs and lows about starting her own food tour business from scratch.

Tourpreneur Host Shane Whaley and Digital Travel Show Host Chris Torress discuss the major events of 2019 for the Tours and Activities Industry. includes: OTAs for tour operators. Good or a bad thing or both?The changing face of the tours and activities OTA landscape.Booking.com pulling out of the Experiences sector (for now.)Massive changes at Expedia.What exactly is Groupon doing in the tours and activities space?How was Arival 2019 in Orlando for Shane and Chris? What did we learn? What did we enjoy?We give you our opinions on that res tech debate between Peek, FareHarbor, Checkfront, and Rezdy.Who is our Tour Operator/Tourpreneur of the Year?And Much More...

Its the final episode of the Espresso Interviews from Arival. Nick Wilson shares with us how he leveraged his experience working at a luxury hotel to create Wicked Wine Tours and more recently the Wicked Weed Tour. Nick loves wine and always wanted to build how own business, in this espresso episode of the Tourpreneur Podcast with Shane Whaley, Nick reveals how five years ago, he started Wicked Wine tours in British Columbia and recently a Kelowna Weed Tour! How To Start a Weed Tour Business.Nick tells us that weed tours are similar to wine tours, there's no consumption in the vehicles. They take their guests to either a grow operation or an extraction facility, "A lot of people, maybe, have had experience with cannabis but they really don't know a heck of a lot about it. Very similar to our wine guests. "I like to drink wine but I don't know a lot about it." says Nick. He continued: "We educate them on the plant, male, females, indica, sativa, CBD, THC, all that kind of stuff. Now they're armed with a little bit of knowledge. Off we go to the dispensaries. They have private appointments with the budtenders. They can purchase their product, and many of our guests are from out of town so they don't want to fly with their cannabis which is legal in Canada, but if you're an international guest, obviously it isn't. They get to do a little shopping for their product while they're in town for a few days, and the feedback's been amazing."

Tom Kratsch of the digital marketing agency, Activities and Tours Marketing by TRK Creative Group sat down with Tourpreneur Host Shane Whaley, and shares some tips from his 25 years in digital tourism marketing and highlights the importance of measuring marketing performance in your tour operator business. Tom Kratsch's digital marketing agency Activities and Tours Marketing by TRK Creative Group focuses on the tours and activity industry.

Alice and Torin (The Flying Bike Guided Bike Tours, Asheville) who appeared on Episode 1 of the Tourpreneur Podcast sat down with Shane at Arival Orlando to give us an Arival Review. Alice and Torin, are second-time attendees, they share what their favorite Arival sessions were, who inspired them, what they are going to do differently as a result of attending Arival and where Arival can improve for future events.

There are a lot of inspiration and tips for tour operators in this one. Todd Kersey started his tour business, 22 years ago and now manages tours in 5 states and in 240 locations. Todd employees 280 people and he shares with us his tips for managing tour operator staff.Talking of Success Strategies for Tour Operators, Todd reveals that 74% of all his business comes via Search Engine Optimization and less than 2% of his tours are booked via OTAs!

Sweet John Muehlbauer sat down with Tourpreneur Host Shane Whaley, and shares more with us about how YourBikerGang strives to help guests 'unleash their bad side.'Sweet John walks us through YourBikerGang's pricing strategy and shares with us how they market and price a tour that, is so unique, nobody is searching for it.

Robert sat down with Tourpreneur Host Shane Whaley, and shares more with us about how Bindlestiff Tours create truly immersive experiences on their multi-day tours. We also talk about the major differences selling multi-day tours online, how the booking window is different and the challenge of selling multi-day tours online because of the higher price point. I also ask Robert how he reckons the tours, activities and experiences industry has changed over the years. Robert Graff speaks at many trade conferences and events, I have been lucky to see him on stage several times. He is an industry professional, a travel industry veteran that I have admired from afar, so I was delighted to spend some time with Robert, though ten minutes did not do us justice. I hope he is open to coming back on the show, maybe on one of our future round tables to discuss the state of the tours and activities industry because he has so much experience and knowledge to share with us.

TourismTiger's Matt Newton is one of the most experienced and knowledgable people I know when it comes to marketing tours and in today's episode, he shares some top website tips for tour operators. His book Sell More Tours (2015) is crammed with online marketing and web site tips for Tour Operators, it was one of the first books I read when I made the transition from hotels to the tour industry. I was delighted to finally meet Matt at Arival in Orlando and honored that he agreed to sit down for a quick chat to share his knowledge and marketing tips for tour operators.

Georgette Blau is the founder of On Location Tours offering TV and Movie Tours in NYC. From Sex in the City tours to The Sopranos Tours and now even Superhero tours. Georgette sat down with Tourpreneur Host Shane Whaley, and shares with us how she got started offering TV and movie tours in NYC. Georgette's story is inspirational.