u/Brilliant_Candle5450

Last year running summer tours in Las Vegas (mostly desert trips, sunset experiences, that kind of thing) i was doing around 8 to 10 tours a month, sitting at roughly 45k. steady but kinda stuck.

then september hit. didn’t launch anything new. didn’t change pricing. didn’t run ads. same tours, same team, same setup.

now we’re hitting around 90k on pretty much the same volume.

only things i changed were small stuff. tightened up the booking flow, cleaned up communication templates, and started reaching people earlier in their planning instead of waiting until they were ready to book last minute. that’s literally it.

and i have no clue which one of those actually made the difference.

nothing felt like a big aha moment. numbers just started going up and stayed there. now it’s kind of messing with me because if i don’t know what worked, i don’t know how to repeat it or scale it further.

anyone else had something like this happen?

So ive been looking into both Viator and GetYourGuide for booking and promoting tours, and im curious what everyone else thinks!!

Viator seems to be the go to for reaching a huge global audience. It feels like they have all the big tourist spots covered, with a ton of tours. They have got a pretty good system for managing bookings and keeping everything organized, but it can feel a little crowded, so standing out can be tough.

On the other side, GetYourGuide has this clean interface and really seems to focus on unique and more niche experiences. Its super easy to use, and ive seen it attract a younger, adventure driven crowd. But it doesnt have the same global reach as Viator, so im wondering if its worth the trade off.

Anyone here used both platforms for their tours and which one do you find brings in more bookings and gets your tours in front of the right people?

I'm starting to feel like everything is all over the place, different bookings, confirmations, suppliers, and last minute changes. Its getting hard to keep track of everything without missing something.

How are you guys managing this without it turning into chaos?

Everyone talks about the easy stuff like hotels and flights. But what about the front row at sold out concerts, private yacht charters that book out a year ahead, chefs table at that one spot everyone wants.

I had a high paying client last month who wanted a specific chefs table in Paris. Called everywhere, waited lists everywhere, ended up disappointing them. Lost the repeat business probably.

What platforms or dashboards are you using that actually help with this?

I run a beach and water sports tour business in Florida, and I have noticed a big dip in bookings recently, especially as we head into the summer season. Normally, summer brings in a steady flow of people for jet skis, parasailing and snorkelling, but this year, it's been way quieter than expected.

I have tried tweaking my listings and promoting on social, but nothing seems to be sticking. What are you all doing to fill up your tours during peak season? Could really use some advice.

Had a client ready to book a Tokyo trip with a few tours and experiences, nothing too complicated. They just wanted to know if everything could be confirmed quickly before moving forward, and i told them it should be fine.

Then i got stuck waiting.

I had to check with different suppliers, send emails, wait for availability, and by the time i started getting replies it had already been hours. Then it turned into a full day of going back and forth just to lock everything in.

By the time i finally had all the confirmations, the client had already booked somewhere else. They said they needed faster answers and couldnt wait around.

That one annoyed me because it had nothing to do with price or the itinerary, it was just about speed. Made me realize how slow things can get when you rely on manual confirmations.

How are you handling bookings when clients expect answers almost instantly?

Is all I need a decent website and some Instagram pics of Paris at golden hour? Spoiler, that gets you crickets and a side of existential dread.

Spent months cobbling together trips to Europe hotspots like Paris, Rome, those places people pretend they have always wanted to visit. Threw listings on every platform under the sun because exposure right? Result? A parade of lowball inquiries, no shows who blame time zones, and enough maybe later emails to wallpaper my sad office. Meanwhile, my inbox filters out the legit ones because they are buried under spam from platforms promising the world but delivering pocket lint.

Finally clawed my way to consistent bookings, but only after realizing 90% of those platforms are just vampire middlemen skimming commissions while you do the actual work. Self deprecating truth: I was the sucker refreshing dashboards at 3am hoping for a ping.

Travel suppliers, which strategies actually triggered the client flood for your Europe tours?

Putting together a Greece group trip (Athens and Santorini) and Ive got around 40 activities booked across the group, boat tours, day trips, food stuff, all of it.

Everything was planned out clean, until people started changing their minds.

One person wants to switch their Santorini boat tour to a sunset one. Two others now want something more chill instead of the full day island tour. Someone else wants to add a last minute activity in Athens the day before.

Now Im stuck trying to reshuffle everything, checking availability again, dealing with different suppliers, figuring out whats refundable and whats not. Planning was easy compared to this part.

Can someone tell me how you handle this without it turning into a full time job mid trip?

Hey all, been running these small group tours around Florida spots for a bit now, think it's cool stuff like hidden beaches and local eats but bookings are dead. Like maybe 2 3 a week if lucky and that's barely covering gas.

Tried posting in local groups and such but feels spammy and nothing sticks. Saw some posts here about distribution being key and niche communities, makes sense but for tours?

I'm non technical just me doing this solo after side hustling it, lost my job recently kinda need this to work. Any real ways to get eyes on it without ads since money tight. Thinking reddit groups maybe but idk.

Curious what channels actually moved the needle for similar stuff. Thanks

I'm running a few tour operations in Madeira and the listing management across different platforms is becoming unmanageable. I have city tours, boat trips, cooking classes on like 5 different booking sites right now and every time I update availability on one platform the others get out of sync immediately. I'm manually checking each platform like twice a day to make sure nothing double books. It's eating up so much time that I could be spending actually running better experiences. I have literally to do copying and pasting listings with different prices onto each site as the commissions are different. I know I'm not the only one dealing with this but I haven't found anyone actually talking about how theyre managing it long term.