10PAX

27/03/2021

My key take-aways from the Self-Guided Tours Forum by Arival Accel in one article - follow the link and enjoy reading!

To be honest I never thought about self-guiding tours and experiences as a part of my tour business before. Whenever I’d hear about them I would imagine deadly boring audio tours narrated by some human copy of AI voice. I asked my friends and none of them liked such kind of “tours”, some of them even though that may be they are not “smart” enough to understand what is the point of audio tours. However, after watching almost all presentations and round-tables on-demand (a super cool option for me) I completely changed my mind and was able to do the same with the mind of my business partner, and very soon we are starting to work on our self-guided tour!

   Once upon a time in the BC era (before Covid), if to be more exact on a beautiful spring of 2020 I was anticipating being a part of the Arival conference in Berlin. Things suddenly went the wrong way, things that happened these days in Berlin were a mini-model of craziness that was awaiting all...

27/03/2021

We tried to do virtual tours in 2020, is now time to tap into self-guided tours? Alex Bainbridge wrote a compelling article about 5 misunderstandings tour operators have now about this new way of giving tours to the guests. Here are the main ideas of the article:

1. "In-app purchase" model is not the only one to sell self-guided tours, there are at least four other ways: Free to consumer, advertising based revenue;
Consumer subscription;
Part of a larger purchase;

2. The customer experience is poor (in comparison to human tour guides)
The self-guided tour can be translated into many languages and can be much cheaper than a real tour, so the experience can be actually even better compared to the usual tours with human guides.

3. Self-guided is pedestrian-only
Short answer: no.

4. No humans are involved and the self-guided platforms are an anti tour guide

There are hybrid models and mostly all tours are designed by tour guides who will receive profits from the sales.

5. A self-guided tour means it is self-guided, and it is a tour

Tbh I didn't understand that part of the text, Alex is talking there ab definitions of AI tour guide, R2P tours, and auto-tours

And at the end, he's giving useful suggestions on which questions to ask the self-guided tour platforms before listing your tours. Highly recommend reading 👌

https://www.destinationcto.com/2021/02/5-things-everyone-gets-wrong-about-self-guided-experiences/

Self-guided experiences are the future of local tourism. Inspired by this article by Arival “5 things tour operators get wrong about self-guided tours” (and their upcoming self-guided tour conference) now seems a good time to go through what self-guided is and why it will be so important going f...

05/03/2021

A sad story to hear about all those tour operators who suddenly lost everything due to the termination of Urban Adventures. A great article by Arival.Travel!

Interviews with UA partners and Intrepid Group CEO James Thornton make it clear: the end of the brand’s franchise model signals a humbler, tougher era ahead as operators small and large face tough decisions to survive – and revive.

20/05/2020

Great article by Christian Watts, Founder & CEO at Magpie Travel about Virtual Experiences.

I feel like 100 companies came up with this same idea at the end of March and each launched Virtual (online) Tours to the market within a space of about 2 weeks. Aside from a little bit of connecting with past customers, and maybe energizing staff and tour guides, I didn’t really see much point.

08/05/2020

This week I enjoyed watching detailed workshop "How to Design, Launch and Sell Online Tours and Experiences" from the amazing team Be a Better Guide. I still didn't decide myself on how to do our virtual experiences and this workshop brought some new insights but also put some more questions too.
So based on workshop there are seven main types of virtual experiences:
- Pre-recorded video sessions
- Live Online Events
- Custom/Private Online Tours
- Fundraiser / Go Fund Me event
- Food/drinks delivery
- Audio or MP3 tours
- 360 virtual tours – virtual reality

Here is the link for the workshop:
https://www.beabetterguide.com/design-launch-and-sell-online-experiences--replay

I was thinking about launching live online events but now I'm a bit confused with the timing - I guess it won't be available for guests from far-away countries like USA because of crazy time difference, may be Europe - it's possible if our guests will be ready to have the online tour before the noon.
Another point to think about is PERFECT internet connection, which sometimes especially now is overloaded.
So I'm more thinking about pre-recorded video sessions and some kind of food/culture delivery boxes which do not require timing restrictions and I won't worry about decent internet connection. But then there are other questions appear such as:
- what kind of topics to choose for pre-recorded video sessions, so people would agree to pay? It's so easy to find almost anything for free now.
- what the price should be for these sessions?
- what price should be for the boxes?
- how will the post work?)) how much time will it take to arrive?

In perfect world I guess it would work like this: pre-recorded video session would bring guest to buy live online event (private or group) in case if he really liked the pre-recorded part of course.

Ohh I know that I need to move much faster with my ideas, I'll try to bring the results of my efforts here.

26/04/2020

26/04/2020

26/04/2020

26/04/2020

My first interview with Raj Gyawali - tour professional from Nepal, he is a founder and owner of Social Tours. I met him at the Arival event in Bangkok where he was presenting amazing speech about responsible tourism as company culture. He has 18 years of experience of managing his tour company (crazy!) and I hope you will find interesting moments in this interview as I did, so here are my own main take aways:

- travel agency as an experience designer;

- dinner for drivers so they could learn from each other in relaxed atmosphere;

- leadership reports;

- whatsapp group for guides and office employees, so they could exchange ideas and opinions about trips and itineraries.

Take your time and read full interview, I'll be glad to hear your thoughts!

Don’t worry, I did not find anything suspicious. So what I found is that you were studying Agriculture and did MBA in Development, then you worked with H&M, and it was mostly very commercial activity, right? And then you did your first tour with your partner from UK: he graduated from a good scho...

25/04/2020

Amazing interview with Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky conducted by Skift founder and CEO Rafat Ali.

Key take-away I made for myself:

- crisis transfers you back into the time when you just started your business with all those uncertainties & fears, but at the same time it checks your ability to come up with new ideas, to adapt business for a new reality, and to see are you brave enough to continue your work;

- the first thought comes to second: why your business deserves to exist at all? does it really bring value to your customers?

- travel in conditions of restrictions became, even more, easier than it was before! Of course, I mean e-travel ;) Before the decision to travel to a specific place was something that would a lot of time (and money), but now anyone can decide very fast to buy or not a virtual tour with price 20-30 USD per person. So then theoretically it should be easier to sell online tours then actual tours?

- think why did you start your business in the first place and try to keep up on bringing these deliverables to your clients.

What do you think about this interview?

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said his company is adapting to what he believes will be a post-coronavirus era where "travel redistribution" will take hold.

25/04/2020

My name is Gaukhar, I am the co-founder and owner of a small tour agency located in Almaty Kazakstan. I think we all can agree that 10 PAX groups are perfect for every guest to enjoy an experience and still pay a reasonable price. If it is good for the guest, then it is great for us, tour operators, right?

I started this blog to learn some of the best practices from tourism professionals. Also to inspire and promote more 10 PAX groups in my business. I hope you find it helpful as well.

How it all started:
The original idea to start a blog came to me when I took part in Arival (2019) an event for tour agency owners that takes place in Berlin. After attending I suddenly understood how much can be learned by simply talking to other tourism fellows! The world is a small place and if we help each other by sharing ideas and experiences - we all win! So, here I am, excited to start up a dialog about the tourism business with topics that I hope will be interesting to anyone interested in tourism.

What you can find here:
10pax.com is primarily about dialog among fellows in the tourism industry. The interview page is where I address all the questions I had in my head to people who have achieved great results. They share stories of some of the challenging work they do in their everyday life.

Also, I’ll be re-posting interesting articles and exerts from fascinating discussion groups on Facebook that I find helpful as a tour agency owner. I'm here to keep you updated with all the latest news and trends in tourism.

Do you have any ideas on what should I write about? Please chat with me!

29/03/2020