Quality Common sense Marketing Advice With a Difference aimed specifically

at small tour companies | curated by a Private Tour industry Expert.

I am NOT a Marketing Agency, yet!

Jamie | Enigma? - A team of one - I am pretty low key, my friends say I am invisible and they forget I exist! I do not do webinars, radio or TV interviews, zoom meetings, luncheon talks, telephone interviews, write books or magazine articles and I hate writing blog posts and I do not attend conferences and trade shows, I simply go about my business in a low key, calm and professional manner and as I work for myself a relaxing 100 hour work week is perfectly normal for me and has been since I left school.

The most important US$899 you will ever spend on your business!

There are many thousands of small tour companies around the world doing their best to thrive in the most challenging of situations, given that the Covid Pandemic is still ravaging travel | tourism around the world, in Hong Kong our borders were closed in February 2020 and essentially remain closed today to Tourists from anywhere. There is light at the end of the tunnel and now is the time to think about promoting your tours, activities and experiences business for the anticipated recovery in 2023 and beyond

When I started researching the Tour Business in Hong Kong in mid 2010, there was one Private Tour Company with a lead guide that did not actually live in Hong Kong, a Hiking Company and over 1,500 local Tour Operators who shuttled guests around Hong Kong on tour buses with an onboard guide who spoke barely passable English from a memorised script - in the interests of research I did 3 tour bus tours, spoke with guests and decided that there was a potentially huge market for private tours in Hong Kong and that is how it all started

Fast forward to 2020 and when Covid 19 put our Industry on hold (and virtually destroyed it) there were listed on Tripadvisor roughly 400+ companies and individuals offering Private Tours and Group Tours of Hong Kong and 1,750 Travel Agents and Companies offering Bus Tours!

The key question is how do I get a guest to book a group tour, private tour, activity or experience (or whatever buzzword comes to mind) in the face of immense and seemingly overwhelming competition from the huge OTA’s that seem to dominate the market these days ( and you know who I am talking about ) with more to come from Airbnb, Viator, Tripadvisor, Google, Amazon and any number of Get Your Guide style companies in the near future and do not get me started on Viators new Accelerate programme

As a small tour operator I have faced these challenges since 2010 and what really gets under my skin is that the huge tour, activity and experience companies really could not care less about the guest and the quality of the experience all they care about is getting the booking and they fight it out on price, there does not seem to be much quality control in place to say the least.

I have been in Sales and Marketing for 45 years, self taught, self employed and I feel I have something to offer small to medium sized Tour Companies, simply go to my WHAT I DO page for all the relevant information.

I cannot and nor would I want to compete directly with the likes of the Tourism Marketing Agency and Tourism Solved the gold standard of advice in our Industry but what I do have is 45 years of practical sales and marketing experience, running my own Private Tour Business for over 9 years before retiring and completing 2,324 tours with 6,000+ guests and that is expert knowledge which can be applied to any tour, activity or experience operator.

Clearly one cannot overstate the importance of your website, it is critical to your growth and success - from day 1 I have created my own websites through Squarespace simply because of the ease of use and very reasonable cost (less than US$250 per year), yes, there is a learning curve but it is worth the effort and best of all I can make changes to the site within minutes, there are many companies offering to build websites - in the Tour business Tourism Tiger seems to be the clear leader

• it should be noted I do not have a commission agreement with either Squarespace or Tourism Tiger but I do highly recommend them, Squarespace in particular because I have been with them for just about 10 years now and retaining 100% control over the website is very important to me.

The timing of this venture has been on the cards for since February 2020 +, with ongoing health issues slowing me down a little bit I feel it is time to pass on my knowledge to others and to this end I have been working with other great Hong Kong Tour Companies to raise their market profile

I do try and keep things simple, the amount of “marketing” emails I get weekly runs into the hundreds, mainly offering SEO advice, how to work with Google or purchasing a new web site design and such, there are hardly any companies out there offering real world, valid advice on how to grow a small to medium size Tour Business..or any small business for that matter.

Interested | then review the Key Points, you will see that I am a little unconventional but my strategy has proven to be very successful.

• J3 Private Tours Hong Kong - I have not spent a single $ on social media (Facebook, Instagram etc) advertising or Google adwords and other costly marketing strategies.

• I do not use a 3rd party booking system, I prefer to retain 100% control over the tour booking side of things and no I am not a luddite, I am very tech savvy.

• I take a practical, common sense approach and use my own business statistics as a guide on how to run my Private Tour business

• I personally led every single tour, all 2,324 private tours with 6,000 guests from around the world | trust me - an invaluable source of data

• My Private Tour Fees are at the top end of the market

• I created and keep current on a daily basis both of my websites

• I handle all Sales and Marketing tasks, in fact every aspect of the business

• I have no employees, it is just me, Jamie - a team of one!

• My very lean operation has enabled me to get through the Covid 19 Pandemic

• I have 45 years practical Sales and Marketing experience

• Learn from my mistakes, flatten the learning curve and embrace change, what works for me could work for you

• I really know my stuff when it comes to running a successful small (ish) Tour business

You will know from your own experience that the amount of data relating to the Tour Industry is staggering, when I typed into Google the phrase “grow your small tour business” there was 1,130,000,000 results!! it is totally overwhelming, I went through the first 20 pages of results and it came as no surprise to see that most of the advice, ideas, expert analysis and such was coming from people and organisations that have no expertise in actually running a Tour Company, a lot of what was put forward was very generic and cookie cutter advice and probably totally useless.

J3C advice works and can greatly increase the number of solid leads and bookings for your Tour business (or any business for that matter) and because my fee is so reasonable you get a great return on your investment in my service.

Thank you for your time

Jamie

My Instagram Feed

Tags

Tourism Marketing | Tourism Marketing Agency | Travel Marketing Agency | Travel and Tourism Marketing | Direct Marketing for Tours | Direct Tours Marketing | Marketing Direct Tours | Direct Marketing for Private Tours | Marketing Direct Tours & Attractions | Marketing for Tour Operators | Selling Tours | Tourism Marketing for Small Tour Operators | Selling Private Tours