The Importance of Private Day Tours: Standards in Pricing and Distribution are Paramount
How can the travel industry better accommodate the private tour?
This was the question posed by Travel Curious CEO and Co-Founder Amir Azulay at his roundtable discussion at Arival Activate in Berlin last month. The agenda for the session was to champion the private tour and collectively work towards standardisation for pricing and distribution of the private day tours in the industry. Amir invited discussion on the complex structure of a private tour as opposed to its group tour counterpart, and said this often leads to a clunky booking process for the customer.
Amir was joined by other passionate tour providers and members of the travel industry, including Tourpreneur Founder Mitch Bach and Arival Founder Douglas Quinby.
Tourpreneur is a community of passionate tour business owners who are one of the key voices in the tours and activities space and Arival is at the forefront of events, insights, and community for creators and sellers of tours, activities, and in-destination experiences. Both companies work diligently for the tours and activities sector of the Travel Industry and were an invaluable addition to the discussion.
But before the group took on this big challenge, another question needed addressing:
Why should the industry care about the private tour? Why are they important?
The experience economy is upon us, customers are now buying experiences rather than products, customer experience is now a top priority for business leaders and consumers now consider experience king.
According to Mintel* feelings of precariousness and financial insecurity both created and exaggerated by the pandemic mean that consumers are looking for a sense of control. They want to feel safe when they are traveling and are opting for private travel options and immersive cultural experiences.
The private tour fulfills all these needs, and more.
We are looking at a period of exponential growth for the global tours and activities market, which is expected to reach $266.7 billion by 2027* - this presents big opportunities and it is imperative that the private tour is championed in order to take full advantage of this growth.
To aid discussion, Amir explained that with digitisation, OTAs had driven the industry towards a ticketing model, and the challenge is that the group tour ticketing model does not work for private day tours.
Amir’s roundtable discussion marked the start of a shift in the industry, the attendees left with a better understanding of the urgent need to accommodate the private tour, that private tours cannot be ignored any longer and all stakeholders need to adopt a standard that demystifies the booking process, and allows for scale through automation, and the time to act is now.
If the industry only regards group tours and by definition a private tour has a different business model and key parameters, if we do not address this, especially in distribution, we have situations where the consumer experience is disjointed or the customer is having to pay significantly more than was intended.
We are looking forward to building the future of the tours and activities market, working in ‘the best part of travel’ alongside Tourpreneur, Arrival, OCTo and other members of the industry to achieve exponential growth and delight the customer in the process.
*Mintel Global Consumer Trends 2022
*Research and Markets, Tours and Activities Reservations - Global Market Trajectory & Analytics