🤔 Can you guess our most popular resources of 2025?? Kelsey Tonner, Guest Focus

 Hey, it's Kelsey here…

Every year tour operators in our community consume a lot of our free resources. 

Watching Guest Focus videos, reading articles, attending webinars, etc. 

But what were the most popular this year? 

5 Most-Watched Videos of 2025:

• From Boring to Brilliant: The Art of Storytelling on Tour - Transform your fact-heavy tours into captivating experiences through the power of storytelling
• Tour Design 101: The Foundations of an Unforgettable Experience - Discover how operators have transformed standard offerings into specialized experiences
• How to Price Tours for Profit: Boost Your Profits by 40% - We’re sharing three essential pricing frameworks that will help you see more profits in your business
• AI for Tour Operators in 2025: How to Use AI in Your Tour Business – A complete toolbox of specialized assistants, not just ChatGPT answering questions
• Building Communities: Complete Guide to Facebook & WhatsApp Groups for Multi-Day Tours - How to build community so you can build trust with your ideal target guests

5 Resources Tour Operators Used to Build Better Businesses:

• The Guest Focus Formula™: Our proprietary framework for creating outstanding guest experiences that drive repeat bookings and referrals
• Tour Description Templates: The specific structure that turns browsers into bookers on your sales pages
• Marketing Funnel Framework: The VIP Marketing Method™ mapped across the 5 stages of travel planning
• Pricing Strategy Tools: Cost-plus formulas, dynamic pricing models, and blended commission calculators that protect your margins
• Tour Business AI Lab: Free access to workflows, prompts, and operator-tested AI applications

5 Sales Page Improvements That Increased Conversions:

1. Run the 10-point audit on your current sales page—most operators fail at least 3 critical elements
2. Add trust signals strategically throughout the page, not just at the bottom (cancellation policy, safety badges, credentials)
3. Use "Check Availability" instead of "Book Now" to reduce booking friction
4. Include a clear tour timeline or itinerary format that helps guests visualize the experience
5. Address the unasked questions your guests have before they become objections

5 Strategic Focus Areas for 2026:

1. AI Integration: Moving from experimentation to implementation—let AI handle repetitive tasks so you can focus on growth (watch our AI series here)
2. Sales Page Optimization: Your tour page is either quietly making you money or actively losing you bookings (watch our tour descriptions series here)
3. Data-Driven Pricing: Using reports and analytics to make informed decisions instead of guessing (watch our pricing series here)
4. Off-Season Revenue Planning: Strategic projects during quiet months that multiply bookings next season (watch our off-season series here)
5. Experience Design: Creating memorable, multi-sensory tours that guests recommend without being asked (watch our tour design series here)

The difference between busy operators and profitable ones often comes down to focus. 

Not doing more things, but doing the right things consistently.

So gere's to a new year of strategic growth, not just harder work.

And of course to a 2026 filled with more insights, tools and resources from your friends at Guest Focus. ; )

Happy New Year!

Kelsey T & the Team at Guest Focus

P.S. open to sharing some love? A review or recommendation goes a long way… 

Here are some quick links to make it as easy as possible to say thanks:

Desktop:
FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/guestfocus/reviews
Google: https://g.page/r/CfETS_l0luNvEAg/review?rc

On Your Phone/Mobile Device:
FB —> You’ll have to open the FB app, search Guest Focus Page, then click ‘reviews’
Google —> This link will open our business profile on Google Maps, then click ‘reviews’

Kelsey Tonner
Founder, Guest Focus
guestfocus.com



Tour Business Coaching
Create Unforgettable Experiences.
Attract Your Ideal Guests.
Sell More Tours.

Tuesday Tip - Cut Unprofitable Segments Ruthlessly

Tourpreneur Tuesday Tip A USEFUL IDEA TO GROW YOUR BUSINESS Are you spreading yourself thin trying to serve every customer type? Hidden Iceland was running small group tours that accounted for 50% of their departures but only 10% of revenue. By eliminating that segment entirely, they freed up operations and marketing resources to focus on premium and luxury private tours-and grew 5% despite cutting half their trip volume. Try this: Pull your sales data and calculate what percentage of your revenue comes from each product line or customer segment. If you find a segment that requires disproportionate effort for minimal return, model what would happen if you stopped offering it. Sometimes the best growth strategy is strategic subtraction. Inspired by how Hidden Iceland transformed their business by saying no to budget travelers and doubling down on luxury.

Feeling a lag in sales? Great post by Kelsey Tonner > Guest Focus

Great post by Kelsey Tonner of Guest Focus, so am reposting it here :)

 

Learn the power of Google 'Things to do'.

Tourpreneur is excited to partner with Google to provide you with this free course on how to harness the power of Google ‘Things to do’ for your tour & activity business.

The goal of this short course is to introduce you to ‘Things to do’, help you enroll, and harness its power to grow direct bookings for your business.

We’re launching this course in coordination with the announcement of Google’s new Ticket & Activities Editor, a way to list your tours on ‘Things to do’ directly through your Google Business Profile. 

Even if you’re very familiar with ‘Things to do’, this course will help you get up to speed with the latest developments.

Are you using your Google Business Profile to the fullest?

 Yesterday Google held a fantastic event focused on small business owners harnessing the power of Google's tools to grow your travel businesses.

Here are a few takeaways and updates you should think about in relation to your Business Profile on Google (and if you don't have one, claim yours immediately!):

• Do not “set and forget” about your Business Profile. Tend to it regularly—adding posts, updates, new photos, responding to reviews, adding or updating your tours. This matters a lot.
• Use the new features of Business Profile, including "Business Posts" to announce discounts and product updates. These posts show up on your Business Profile and in search results. (50% of customers look for promotions and discounts when searching for a business online.)
• Create an FAQ in the “Questions and Answers” section of your profile to save you time and help your customer.
• You can now add links to your social media accounts. Up to 7 accounts, and they'll display 5 of them.
• Update your photos at least monthly, and make sure they’re authentic—not staged, not overly edited.
• Load your individual tours on your profile using the new Ticket Editor! Do it now, it's so easy. If you're using booking software, chances are they might be connectivity partners with Google Things to do. But if not, simply go into your Business Profile, click on Activities and load your tours, with links to the individual tour pages. Now your Business Profile becomes a one-stop shop for the customer, linking directly to your tours.
• Mobile, mobile mobile: make sure your site is fast and friendly for phone users. Several Googlers brought this up, so it's clearly on their minds.
• Use the analytics from your Business Profile! It's actually quite powerful. Google shares a lot of useful analytics with you, such as where your guests are coming, highest activity times and days, search queries that led them to your profile, and much more.

If you want to learn more about loading your tours as part of their 'Things to do' program, take our free course we've created in partnership with Google.

Getting Faster: Know Your Website, and Know What’s Slowing It Down

 

The numbers don’t lie: Users prefer faster websites and applications.

There are many factors that impact the speed of your website.

Some you have control over; others you do not. This paper examines the various factors that impact web performance,

and the steps businesses can take to assess and improve the performance of their web properties.

https://content.cloudflare.com/NzEzLVhTQy05MTgAAAGKx7CkjnMPGM1-Z5FgXiUYqMcWKRiFboLmxWRUkdLQx2S3poh1bFswSmNp1xzdRbiEwm0y5qw=

SPTO SME Recovery Toolkit - now in Video Form!

 

SPTO SME Recovery Toolkit Videos   Warm Pacific Greetings,   We are excited to announce that the SPTO SME Recovery Toolkit is now available in video format! The Toolkit was developed to support the recovery of small, medium, and micro-sized tourism enterprises in the Pacific. It provides guidance on the entire product development process, from understanding market trends to online sales and marketing. We thank the SPTO member countries, industry and partners who contributed to this initiative and we hope you find these videos informative and helpful.   Best regards, The Division of Sustainable Tourism Pacific Tourism Organisation

These videos are a great way to gain insight into the toolkit and its chapters. We encourage you to watch each video to fully grasp the concepts and principles presented. Let us walk you through each of the videos and their corresponding chapters:

This chapter supports users to understand the evolving market trends. It provides guidance on different types of tour operators and agents before introducing key evolving consumer trends and how to apply these trends to your particular destination and business.

This chapter provides tips on adapting your product to ensure it appeals to the right target market. It presents important considerations that must be made in designing your tourism product. Learn how to refine your ideas for adapting or enhancing your product or creating a new experience.

This chapter provides you with essential information about international standards for health, safety, and security, as well as information on health and safety guidelines for COVID-19 safe operations.

This chapter guides users on pricing principles to ensure that your products are priced competitively while providing a profit. It walks you through the different steps to calculating prices for different types of products and how to allow mark-ups to be added with different businesses you might work with.

This chapter provides guidance in preparing your businesses for this new normal and re-evaluating how your business connects to customers, considering the importance of digitalization.

This chapter provides a clear understanding of the role played by staff, particularly tour guides, in the delivery of quality service and what practices to adopt to build reputation and trust.

In this final chapter, users will learn the different digital marketing options they can explore for their businesses. It introduces the different types of online sales and marketing platforms to promote your business, generate sales, and build relationships with your targeted audience.

Access the SPTO SME Recovery ToolKit here

Access the full SPTO SME ToolKit Videos Playlist here

For more information, please visit https://southpacificislands.travel/ or contact us at sustainable@spto.org

Radical Regeneration: A New Look at Sustainable Tourism #VIS2022

Tourism is an important economic driver for islands.

The sector is actively shifting towards becoming more sustainable in the face of environmental degradation caused by climate change - but what exactly are the options being developed?

Find out in this session!

How Erik built a tour operator business from scratch (and how he sold it.)

San Francisco tour founder Erik Hormann started with one Volkswagen bus and built a thriving vintage van tour business. 

After 5 years, he sold it to new owners, bringing the business full circle. 

This is his story and it is packed with lessons and advice for tour operators.

Women in Travel: The Highs and Lows of Changing your Career into Tours &...