During these tough times, do you wish you had some fellow tourism peers with many decades of experience to answer your questions and get solid tourism business strategies during Covid answers and advice on some of these core topics?

Customer communications and marketing to keep guests engaged
What to do and not do with your team to keep them productive
How to be more agile and not to feel stuck
Where should I optimize my systems to improve bookings & lower costs
When to start selling and how to do it
Insert your tourism business, marketing, sales, operations or planning topic here…

Then join award-winning, family owned tour operator Dan Austin founder of Austin Adventures and host “Tourism Tim” Warren, a fellow tour operator and founder of Travel Business Success Radio Podcast with almost 60 years combined experience in international and domestic tour operations and leadership in a candid tip-filled question and answer session with your tourism peers to help you survive and thrive in the these challenging times.

Tourism Business Strategies During COVID: Top Three Suggestions for Food Tour Operators Re-Opening Their Businesses

Stay relevant. One way of staying relevant is to come up with creative and amazing to go package. A friend of Dan has a similar business and one of the things they did was to create gift boxes with barbeque sauces and recipes. Give them something physical to keep the anticipation and excitement going.
Embrace the restaurants as your partners. Create a restaurant virtual visit and ask the Chef to come out and explain what he did and how he did it
Make everything an experience to remember because it is all about the experience. Instead of eating in the restaurants, you go picnics.

Bottom-line is to continue to try and make it an experience. Come up with ways and gimmicks to make whatever for you to get started again make that part of the experience. This time is the opportunity to make things interesting.

How does the industry plan against over visitation & over saturation once things open up?

The physical world is taking a breather right there. There’s probably never going to be a time like this in our history, to visit places without the crowds. No tour buses this year. The international travel scene will be an all-time low, so overcrowding doesn’t seem to be a problem or worry. And it’s a great time to travel if you can. Long term, it would be great to learn from this.

Evaluating on how to manage or control overcrowding.
Maybe it is minimizing the size of tour buses, shuttles, and cruises. Having less of them.
Just learning and seeing what works this year might actually motivate us to dig a little deeper and be better in the future.

Tourism Business Strategies During Covid: When do you see yourself starting to ramp international trips back up? How are you navigating the international situation?

Tourism Business Strategies During Covid

It’s really going to come down on the market. At this point, a lot of countries are still opening up and then closing back again. This makes implementing your

tourism business strategies during COVID difficult at times. Domestic trips are back about 70%. But internationally, we have guides or partners on the ground to find out what the consensus is. There are 4 different steps to situations like this. The first is fear. The next one in is understanding. The third step is planning. Then finally the action phase.

There’s a great website out there that you can monitor different countries and see what is happening daily.
It will help to monitor and talk to your partners in and out of the country. Dan has asked his marketing team to create an infographic of the top 10 international trips that they are able to anticipate to reopen.

What changes do you think tour operators will have to make? How do we help people feel comfortable about traveling again, especially older travelers who have time and money but may not be risk-takers?

Do your best to anticipate and just react accordingly. But don’t forget to have your plans ready and in place.
On scheduled departures, Dan and his team are navigating towards and trying to use more properties with private access, cabins or leased outside access versus hotels with a common area.
They also have created some programs for homestays like a mountain top executive style home. That market is growing exponentially.
Next year, to go to a one guide six guests-model for selected trips. Just to really give that private exclusive kind of vibe.
Limiting size of groups on trails. To lessen the group to 10 or less.

How do you see the markets in the Caribbean? Specifically; US territories?

Consider these Corona Virus travel marketing tips: This is a huge opportunity for the Caribbean. The closer to home, the better. People are always going to travel. And we are already seeing the big increase and bounce back of domestic flights. For now, anything that could be done in one connection is going to be key. It is impressive how airlines are setting the bar high for how to get people traveling again. Without the airlines, tour agencies are out of business. We need airlines to get our guests.

Tourism Business Strategies During Covid: Any specific suggestions or ideas on liability release forms, ways to sanitize vans, tents, equipment, etc.?

Creating pre-trip directive with suggestions: three weeks prior to your trip minimize your contacts to family and close associates only, and if you don’t feel well, don’t come. This policy protocols also includes what to expect before the trip, what they expect of guests before the trip, and what to expect during travels. Dan is also seeking a lawyer to review their liability release.
Standard sanitizing the van every night
Giving everybody personal hand sanitizer, masks, and anything they could possibly think of. It’s just being proactive and laying it all out.

What are your thoughts of payment plan instead of a pay in full fee for liability insurance?

Absolutely negotiate.

Insurance industry is actually pretty forgiving and kind. For Dan, their insurance is well over $100,000 a year. And as of now, they have vehicles that are just sitting. So they negotiated with their insurance provider and they were very kind to reduce their amounts based on current.

Their provider revised those and then backdated them to where they actually got some money back. And then they apply that towards next year. So don’t be afraid to ask and negotiate.

Be Sure to Listen to Part 1 of this 2-part series on: Tourism Business Strategies During Covid with Tourism Tim Warren and Dan Austin here.

Do you want more travel marketing and tourism business strategies during Covid 19 and tough economic times?

If you have more questions and want help to come out of these tough times stronger and better contact Tourism Tim Warren. Also check out Tourism Tim’s step by step “Double Your Tourism Bookings” online course to help you increase your leads, bookings and profits, especially in tough economic times.