Proven Strategies to Boost Early-Season Bookings for Your Tours and Activities

Picture this: Your high season is a distant memory and your tour business has been in its quieter months for some time. As the low season winds down, now is the moment to shift gears and focus on ramping up for the busy season ahead. 

Rather than coasting through your final stretch of downtime, this period serves as the perfect opportunity to set the stage for your most successful high season yet, by harnessing the power of early-season and pre-season bookings. In doing so, you generate a steady cash flow throughout the year, reduce off-season downtime, and maintain business stability even during your slower months. 

This article looks at strategies you can use in marketing, promotions, partnerships, and operational readiness to ensure a strong start to the season. We also provide tour business marketing tips to boost tour bookings ahead of your peak season.

Get Your Business Ready

As part of your travel season prep, your first step will be to ensure all operational areas of your business are in tip-top shape by conducting pre-season tour marketing. 

This includes reviewing your website, optimizing your existing booking software, as well as ensuring any visuals placed throughout your communication channels are up to date. Let’s dive into each of these areas a bit more.

Update Your Website

Your website should act as a reliable friend to your customers – it’s engaging, yet easily interactive and helpful in solving their problems. It should also be accessible, no matter your potential tour-goers’ computer or mobile device.

Displaying your latest tour offerings and available capacity in a clear manner helps your guests make informed decisions about their excursions. It also reduces friction or frustration in the event of sold-out tours and minimizes the risk of a poor user experience. 

Tools like Google Analytics determine your website visitors’ behaviour and overall website performance. This further assists when updating your website, in turn generating even more traffic from potential customers.

Optimize Your Booking Software

A vital part of your tech stack, tour booking software ensures smooth booking experiences for your tour-goers. It also needs to be mobile-optimized, so it’s responsive for guests on the go. 

Choose a tour booking software featuring an all-in-one platform for centralized management, that offers a user-friendly interface for any staff members updating your tour listings.

Refresh Visuals

Part of your website experience and overall tour booking process is about helping guests to visualize their excursion with you. Create this experience by updating your website’s photos and videos to reflect upcoming tours. 

Promote Early Booking Incentives

Give your early bird customers a sweet deal by promoting early booking incentives like discounts, deals, and exclusive offers. 

Let’s explore in more detail how these elements can boost bookings during your pre-season and prep your calendar well in advance for a busy season full of bookings.

Provide Discounts and Deals

By offering early bird discounts or bundled packages, you not only reward early bookings but you also encourage potential tour-goers to make their reservations ahead of time, to save their seat and recoup funds otherwise spent paying your full tour costs.

Set up early bird promo codes and utilize strong preseason calls-to-action strategically throughout your website to ensure you capture early bird bookings.

Create Seasonal Travel Offers

Entice tour-goers to book with you during the off-season and prepare for the high-season by offering unique excursion experiences only available during the early season. 

Promoting the exclusivity of tour offerings like discounted upsells and add-ons or free food and beverages as part of your packages is a great strategy for ensuring you have a balance of bookings throughout your low and high seasons. 

Furthermore, emphasizing limited time-offers generates urgency around your tour packages and encourages potential guests to purchase their excursions well in advance of their trips.

Launch Marketing Campaigns

So many marketing channels, so little time! Experiment with different opportunities by engaging with followers on social media, running email marketing campaigns, or testing out paid advertising tactics like Google Ads to see what works best for your tour operator business.

Harness Email Marketing

Email marketing connects you with your existing customers and new, potential tour-goers. From website sign-ups to click-throughs and calls-to-action via your social channels, email marketing is an ideal tactic to not only nurture potential leads, but also send compelling discounts, highlight tour offerings, and ensure your brand and company remains top of mind. 

Use email marketing to generate excitement ahead of your high season using customer testimonials, stunning visuals, or enticing videos. Or, highlight the benefits of joining a tour during your low-season, such as less crowds, more personalized experiences, and cheaper rates.

Hop on Social Media

Pre-season is the best time to post across your social media channels, engage existing followers, as well as build and maintain new audiences. Tour countdowns and behind-the-scenes posts are all fantastic ways to hook your audiences in, learn about your tour operating company, and generate excitement for their upcoming excursion with you.

Customer testimonials and reviews also serve as important social proof to your followers, often serving as a determinant for guests deciding to book with you or your competitor. Prepping canned responses to customer reviews (both good and bad!), cuts down on response times and showcases your customer service staff as responsive, reliable, and courteous.

Use Google Ads and Retargeting

Optimizing your tour booking site to align with search engine priorities can position your tour company among top search queries, improving your chances of tour-goers booking with you the closer you are to the top of Google’s search results.

However, there’s another way to use Google to your advantage, through paid advertising. This tactic targets your past customers and similar audiences through Google ads. These customer demographics are great for targeting during your slower booking months. Tour goers are likely already familiar with your brand and the tour experience you provide, increasing the likelihood of booking again with you and generating repeat business.

Encourage Repeat and Referral Business

Your existing or previous tour-goers will likely be a demographic you’ll lean on heavily during your off-season to generate early bookings. They understand your services and the experience you generate, so they know what to expect and can be a great audience to encourage repeat and referral business.

Loyalty Programs

Offering discounts or perks to your returning guests is a great way to reward them for their loyalty to your business. Take it a step further by creating a tailored loyalty program that rewards them with smaller discounts for every package booked, and a larger deal after every five or even 10 bookings

These exclusive incentives generate recognition and appreciation for your customers and encourage them to return soon.

Referral Bonuses

A loyal guest is more likely to refer their friends or family to you for their tour booking needs. As a thank-you, reward those customers with referral bonuses, offering select discounts to apply to their future tour bookings. 

Or, grant special upgrades for their next excursion, like free meals for all-day tours, additional time for activities like kayak rentals, and more.

Leverage Partnerships and Local Networks

Your greatest allies in your bid to generate pre-season bookings are often local businesses, community tourism boards, and similar organizations. By leveraging local partnerships and networks, you generate business opportunities during your low season, in anticipation of early bookings for the high season.

Partner with Local Businesses

A closer look at your Chamber of Commerce or region’s business directory will likely reveal countless mutually beneficial partnerships to drum up foot traffic for your business, convert potential customers, and increase sales. 

Sources for collaboration include:

• Local community organizations and nonprofits.
• Retail stores and boutiques.
• Fitness centers and wellness studios.
• Professional services like banks or real estate agencies.

By partnering with these, as well as entities beyond the realm of tourism, you diversify your partnerships and generate more eyes for your tour services.

Join Tourism Boards

A quick Google search will easily reveal your region’s local tourism boards and initiatives. Consider joining, volunteering, or organizing events with these outlets to help generate word-of-mouth interest for your tour company, while at the same time giving back to your community.

Off season is also prime time for local events and festivals too. Utilize these avenues to your advantage by signing up and participating. Offer exclusive tours and activity deals as part of your tour packages for anyone who stops by your booth during these events.

Your Best Season Yet with Rezgo

Begin planning your pre-season marketing now, testing different strategies along the way to see what works for you, and continually optimizing your various communications channels and platforms. 

By taking action early and building momentum through ample preparation and promotion before the peak season, you set yourself up for a profitable and successful start for your next high season.

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