Today you’re making your actual tour. If you’re designing a multi-day tour, please focus on just one tour day. It’s designing a customer journey, and requires you to visualize every step of the journey they go on towards taking your tour.

None of these questions below are exhaustive. They are meant to get you thinking along these lines of visualizing the customer’s journey before, during and after the tour.

Months ahead: (Multi-Day Tours)

How does the customer begin booking this tour? What do you require: a deposit then several payments? What can you do to connect with the customer before they arrive? Can you create a trip-specific Facebook group so people get to know each other, or send out a virtual welcome tour of you showing them a teaser of what they’ll see, and who you are? What will get them excited about the journey ahead? Might you send a little object, like a backpack, water bottle, or just a nice email?

The Guest Arrives in the Destination

Where is your customer coming from? Are they flying into an airport, and spending a week on vacation in your destination? Are they locals looking to get out of the city for the weekend? Have they arrived from abroad and are going to be very jetlagged?

How does this guest find and book you?

The overwhelming majority of walking/food/day tours are booked last-minute, after the guest has arrived in their destination. Do you have a website that people are directed to, with easy options to book tours last-minute? Do you have a body of time available in your life schedule to offer regular booking opportunities? Are your tours on weekends, at strategic days of the week? Do you have relationships with local hotels or companies to provide you a flow of guests? Are your customers coming in for a convention, and booking you through a DMC, for example? Brainstorm all the ways you want the people on your tours to find you.

It’s the day of/before the tour.

Are you sending a reminder email? Do you have to send the meeting location, or are you meeting them privately at their hotel? Are they at the group hotel, ready for a multi-day tour, but they need to know where your welcome desk will be, or what time the welcome dinner is? What will make the guest feel excited, and supported in the immediate lead-up to the tour?

The guests arrive for the tour.

How can you make your guest feel certain they’re in the right spot? How are they feeling? Is it hot out, are they in public? Is there any potential ambiguity, or pain-points where they’re arriving? Who will be there greeting them? Can they use the restroom last-minute if they need to? Is there shelter in case it’s raining? Can you offer them something to make them feel content while waiting? Can you set up a booth, or wear a t-shirt or hold something to make sure public participants see you? Are other companies meeting their guests there, too? (That is VERY common!). Remember, this is your 800th time operating this tour, and their first time taking it. Avoid “expert blindness”.

Time to start the tour.

How do you create connections among your guests immediately? Time to set expectations. What opening information do they need to know, to prevent unpleasant surprises? Are you finishing at lunch? Dinner? Should they know when the first restroom break will be? Or are there any? Remind guests of the tour length, and build excitement and anticipation.

Lead the tour!

Yay, you’re finally on the tour! Outline the stops involved, think about highlights to hit, the amount of time (with buffer) you’ll need to walk/drive between stops. Basic commentary: what should be said at the beginning of the tour to set everything up? How does the drama unfold over the tour? What is the wow moment, the big crescendo everything built towards? Can you reveal some sort of surprise along the way? Are there problem/pinch points that you foresee? (weather, amount of walking, lots of drive time) Can you solve those low points with a treat, some technology, a video or game on the van? How will you be interacting with your environment: are there busy streets, loud settings where you might need amplification or audio transmitters?

This section should be built as a separate “technical itinerary” so you can scrutinize and tweak the tour flow, and write out your commentary.

The tour is finished.

How do guests feel? Hungry? Restrooms? Are they euphoric and want to keep hanging out, or do they want to go home? Do you need to collect their email addresses somehow? Do you need to solicit reviews? Can you give them a little token of appreciation? How can you advertise your business for next time? Get repeat customers? Sell them something additional: a history book you’ve produced, t-shirts? How can you be assured they’re going to go talk about this tour.