By David Hoekman

Tim Schneider of Schneider Publishing recently published “Life Cycle of a Volunteer.” He identified three stages in the life cycle of a person who volunteers to serve in association leadership positions. Those stages are the eager recruit, the productive board member and dialed in or burned out.

The posting prompted me to think about the life cycle of group tours.

Each departure of a tour has a life cycle — simply because each tour has a beginning, middle and end. The first day the passengers are polite strangers. As the tour progresses, the personalities of the passengers come through and everyone gets to know each other. Friendships are forged. By the end of the tour, the passengers’ shared experiences have molded them into something like a big family.

The tour operator hopes the majority of the members of this “family” had a good time and will sign up for another tour.

Tours themselves also have a life cycle. A tour that sold out quickly for several years in a row suddenly fails to generate any interest — or gradually contracts.

Or maybe a new tour sells like gangbusters the first time it’s in the brochure. A second coach is added. This tour is shaping up to be a winner. Except it turns out to be a one-time wonder. After that first spectacular departure, there is nary a nibble.

Tour operators can extend the life cycle of a tour by spicing it up. They seek out and include new attractions and new activities. They keep their ear to the ground. They make connections at regional and national trade shows.

Sometimes it pays to key in on a famous person when revising a tour. That’s what historian and operator Shebby Lee, owner of Shebby Lee Tours, based in Rapid City, S.D., did with a western North Dakota tour. She built a new tour, Teddy Roosevelt’s Dakota.

“The key is looking at something differently,” Lee told me. “By putting a theme on it and emphasizing Roosevelt’s part in all the places that we are going to visit, it just makes it more interesting.”

One of Lee’s other creative ideas was to put together a tour encompassing the eastern half of North Dakota and South Dakota. She calls it East Dakota.

What are some of the ways you have used to extend the life cycle of a tour?

 

When I was working with Horizon Group, Inc., one of the nation's largest operators of outlet shopping centers, we used incentive "sampler" booklets, "2-fer" incentive coupons, "Bargain Bucks" (which we gave to people on the group tours redeemable for merchandise at the outlet stores) and we also invited Miss Massachusetts to give out autographs and stand for "souvenir photos" with group tour participants. We planned special events like our grand opening at the Berkshire Outlet Center in The Berkshire Mountains outside of Lee, Massachusetts and incentivized all of our group tour participants with preferred seating at fashion shows and restaurant sampling events. These incentives also helped us with "return visits," by participants and their friends/relatives after the initial group tour, which helped generate foot traffic and ongoing increased sales for our national merchant stores.

I enjoyed this post. I just completed a Buddhist tour in India--as a traveler, not as a guide. I've worked in the travel industry for some time (mainly as a writer) so it was interesting to see it from this perspective.

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