The Inbound Report

Covering the Inbound Tourism Industry Since 1996

Featured Receptive

by

Jake and MelCould Mel Tye, a Small New England Operator, be the Tour Operator of the Future? When Google’s designers changed their algorithm in 2013, Mel Tye—he owns Tye’s Top Tour & Travel in Merrimack N.H.—soon found that he was losing nearly half of the organic traffic to his website. So, last year, he took action by enrolling in a graduate level e-commerce marketing course at a local college and blogging all along throughout the experience about his trials, tribulations and feelings of inadequacies to his 2,200 followers on Facebook. Those who were expecting an academic train wreck as this fifty-something tour operator in an old-school industry took on the digital world instead were treated to weekly pronouncements of frustration and vulnerability as he shared a class with “whiz kids” who knew so much more than he did; but they also read and sensed the pure joy he experienced with every new skill he was able to learn.

“The average age of our client base two years ago was 65 plus; I had to do something,” lamented Tye, as he recalled the motivation for his decision. “Eventually, I was able to bring the age down to 45-to-65 years old.”

Tye is one of those no-nonsense types who, when people approached him to arrange an appointment at the recent American Bus Association (ABA) Marketplace, had no compunction in telling them, “I have no interest in selling Montana so you’re better off spending time with someone else.”  And now, he uses Facebook to crowdsource interest in tour ideas he’s had.  A post from Jan. 6 typifies his social media approach.  “I have received about 10 calls and emails today asking if I am going to have a trip to Cooperstown to see Pedro Martinez get inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Will you let me know how strong the interest is? I will have this tour ready tomorrow if the interest is strong.” The next day he announced the tour was on with 25 people.

Tye also announced on his Facebook page that he will be distributing selected packaged travel product on Amazon.com with this post:  “I am entering the test phase to make sure the bugs are worked out. I feel like the little fish in the shark invested waters, but, as the saying goes; with no risk there is no reward. I am grateful that my contacts at Amazon.com believe that selling packaged travel on Amazon.com is viable.”

Tye, who is active as an East-of-the-Mississippi tour operator with a specialty in New England, also serves as a receptive tour who sells to international tour operators.  “I wanted to show that you’re never too old to learn,” which, coincidentally, be one of the themes of his presentation at NAJ’s RTO Summit in New York on May 6th. (For more information, visit: www.rtosummit.com. )

www.activeamericachina.net
www.activeamericachina.net

 

The Amazon Connection: Inbound met with Tye during the ABA Marketplace and conducted a follow up interview regarding his affiliation with Amazon and his other pursuits. Following are excerpts from the interview.  

 

Inbound: How were you first approached by Amazon?

Tye: I found them. I reached out to Amazon last June, and told them that they sell everything else … Why didn’t they consider packaged tours.  I “seeded” the idea and told them how it might be structured while I was taking a graduate level e-commerce marketing class at one of our local colleges. They came back to me with some ideas for pricing, and we and two or three operators in the South are being used as beta programs for them. They hope to have 12 different tour operators from different regions of the country selling packaged programs.

 

Inbound: How have sales performed since the test?

Tye: The goal is to do $30,000 in sales over three weeks. Yesterday was the first day and started off with close to $5000 in sales. There is absolutely no reason why packaged travel cannot be sold like any other product on Amazon.  We have broken the glass ceiling, and Amazon is excited about this new product. We have a commitment to test the sales through November of this year.

As always, I am pushing the limits of what can be done to distribute our products where the market is not crowded. I have multiple irons in the fire for distributing our products in a digital format.  I am creating affiliate marketing programs just like the big guys have.

 

Inbound: What types of tours are you running?

Tye: Currently we are testing three different program all of which are mostly selling baseball tours to Boston and New York City as part of the beta program.  We’ve reserved 50 seats each for the tours. Here’s an example: http://local.amazon.com/greater-manchester/B00TKO9JJU?ref_=site_more&cid=site_more

 

Inbound: How was the pricing structured?

Tye: I can’t talk about the actual pricing, but with package tours it’s all about creating perceived value by the customer.  If I can add components that travelers cannot get anywhere else, the consumer is willing to pay a premium.

 

Inbound: What other types of tours are you developing?

Tye: November-March is considered mud season in New Hampshire. We’re calling it “value season” and will be promoting it through multiple channels.

 

Inbound: You stated that 40 percent of your business is from international.  Since you don’t attend the traditional inbound show such as IPW, how do they find you?

Tye: International operators find us through our search optimization efforts when they are seeking New England bus tours or motor coach tours.  But consumers are finding us, too.

 

Inbound: Where’s your business coming from?

Tye: Mostly Western Europe. Europeans don’t want to travel on large motor coaches and we promote that—we use Mercedes Sprinter vans. Some of the tours begin with 10-12 passengers, but then end up expanding into a full motor coach.

 

Inbound: What are the source countries for your customers?

Tye: We see FITs booking from UK and Ireland who are buying direct;   We also have one coach from Australia and New Zealand and we partner with an Ireland operator by handling each other’s tours.

Additionally, we have 11 Sprinter tours booked from Italy between now and April 2016.

 

Inbound: Where do you see yourself moving in the future?

Tye: I am pushing the limits of what can be done to distribute our products where the market is not crowded.  I have multiple irons in the fire for distributing our products in a digital format.  I am creating affiliate marketing programs just like the big guys have and I’m hoping to be selling our packages on eBay as well; eBay already has a program for distributing packaged travel, but it is extremely cumbersome to use. It involves being certified as a travel seller and submitting form after form. I don’t believe selling packaged travel on eBay is practical for the little guy.

 

Inbound: What’s your take on ABA and NTA having staging their shows so close to one another?

Tye: What we really need is one large show for one week. Everyone would make money.  ABA on one end and NTA on the other end and a core in middle … revenue shared on the core.

DigMe '15

San Francisco May Put a Muzzle on the Talking Tour Bus Driver

by

Tour Bus Kills WomanIn San Francisco May End the Days of the Talking Tour Bus Driver: In a move that could have far-reaching consequences should other municipalities elsewhere in the U.S. embrace the idea, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors has introduced legislation that would prohibit bus drivers  from narrating tours while driving. Introduction of the proposed measure follows a fatal accident last October in which a motorized cable car tour bus struck and killed a female city employee who was crossing the street just outside City Hall in San Francisco, allegedly by a driver who was distracted.

Supervisor Norman Yee, who introduced the legislation, explained that driving a tour bus around San Francisco is more complex than driving a regular vehicle, which is why drivers of tour bus drivers need to concentrate on driving instead of narrating while driving, adding that distracted drivers poses a significant risk of injuries or death to motorists, pedestrians and bicyclists: “According to the California Traffic Safety Survey in 2013, 36 percent of Californians surveyed thought that talking while driving posed a the biggest safety problems on California roadways and nearly 70 percent of California drivers surveyed said they had been hit or nearly hit by a driver who was talking or texting.”

DigMe '15

New Hotelbeds Group—More Than Just Hotels

by

Hotelbeds logoNew Hotelbeds Group—More Than Just Hotels: The news several weeks ago that TUI, which owns Hotelbeds, had changed the name of its TUI Travel Accommodation & Destinations to Hotel Beds Group is aimed at pushing the notion that the latter sells more than just hotel rooms.  An indication of what TUI, the largest travel company in the world, is doing came during an NAJ conference session prior to the announcement with a presentation by Alberto Cevera Xicotencatl, regional manager, specialist and groups, the Americas, Hotelbeds. A snappy, energetic, widely traveled thirty-something, he intersperses his quick-response answers to questions with epigrammatic asides (“The last thing we sell is travel. We sell experience. We sell dreams come true”) while trying to convey the point that the company is about more than just hotels.

“Hotelbeds,” he explained was a misnomer, as the company also provides event tickets, transfers, car rentals, attractions, excursions and more, which, he explained, has helped it sell to all group types.

ETS-ad

Asked to give a quick breakdown of the activity generated by his office—while its global headquarters are in Palma de Mallorca, an island off the eastern cost of Spain,  its Americas operation is located in Cancun, Mexico—his answers offered the following:

  • It sends about 8 to 12 groups each month to the U.S.
  • The average size of the group it sells/books ranges from 60 to 100 persons, with some as large as 300 to 400.
  • It gets between 2,000-3,000 RFQs a year.
  • From 60 to 75 percent of the groups are leisure.
  • The rest of the groups are mostly MICE; in the first year at Cancun, MICE was about 5 percent of its business and it has more than tripled its share since then.
  • There are better conversion rates in MICE market than in leisure. “It’s becoming a last-minute market. It’s tough to handle when you have it (a request) come within a month out … when you used to have 18 months to prepare. But we enjoy it.”
  • Currently the company’s top U.S. destinations are Florida (Miami, Orlando), Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York, Washington, and Boston “with every now and then some place like Wichita … and I have no idea where that is.”
  • Asked about group trends—are they growing smaller, larger and what are their ages—“It depends on market. People are looking for experiences. The more special, the more specific you can get … that’s what people are looking for …. We are in an industry that doesn’t follow trends. We set trends, we don’t follow them. The biggest trend is that we have to take ownership of that responsibility and develop them.”
  • His office’s top source markets now are: Brazil, Spain, South America, Mexico (mostly with companies and businesses), “a little from England,” and “it’s been an amazing year from Arabic countries.”
  • Other advice (to suppliers): “Whatever you think is new your destination, tell us … I cannot know, I need you to tell us. We are your distribution channel, and you are our creative team.”

Follow-up on Kuoni’s Departure from the Tour Operator Business

by

Follow-up on Kuoni’s Departure from the Tour Operator Business—It  Could Remain a Swiss-Based Company and U.S.-Based Units Will be Untouched: Following the Jan. 14 announcement by Zurich-based Kuoni, the oldest and one of the largest tour operator companies in continental Europe, speculation—particularly in the travel trade media—over the future of the company’s various operations in different countries led to a follow-up series of statements from principals in Kuoni-owned GTA and Travel Bound. Gleaned from company statements and other sources, here is what happened, is happening and is not happening in the wake of the Jan.14 announcement.

  • Kuoni is divesting itself of its European retail travel businesses and recommitting itself to its North American and Asian B2B/wholesale businesses, including Gulliver’s Travel Associates (GTA) and its subsidiary, New York-based Travel Bound.
  • The countries where Kuoni is dropping its retail businesses are Switzerland, the U.K., Belgium, Netherlands, Hong Kong, China, India and Scandinavia.
  • The change in focus will not directly impact anything in the U.S. or Canada. This means brite spokes, an experiential tour company launched in 2013 by New York-based AlliedTPro (a Kuoni-owned brand) will be unaffected.
  • Ivan Walter
    Ivan Walter

    Ivan Walter, CEO of GTA, released a statement directed to GTA’s retail partners saying that Kuoni “plans to focus on its core business as a service provider to the global travel industry and exit from its tour operating activities.”

  • Elizabeth Crabill,Travel Bound’s president, Elizabeth Crabill, told TravelPulse that Kuoni is “exiting its European B2C operations in order to focus on its B2B divisions, including FIT and groups business with Travel Bound.”

Walter said Kuoni is committed “to further developing the three divisions of Global Travel Distribution (GTA, Travel Bound and TravelCube), Global Travel Services (the Kuoni Group Travel Experts brand and Destination Management Specialists) and VFS Global. As we rapidly and sustainably grow as a leading service provider for the global travel industry, we will continue to offer you attractive and competitive services and solutions.”

  • Named as possible suitors in the search to take over the units for sale are Hotelplan and TUI Suisse, the second and third-largest tour operators after Kuoni. Both have shown interest in the units for ale.
  • In fact, the former head of Kuoni’s Swiss tour operator business, Thomas Stirnimann, who is now Hotelplan’s CEO, told a Swiss travel trade magazine Travel Inside that the company would look into a possible acquisition.
  • Martin WittwerMeanwhile, Martin Wittwer, CEO of TUI Suisse, told Travel Inside that there already had been unsuccessful talks last year to combine Kuoni and TUI’s Swiss tour operating businesses. However, TUI is already has a strong presence in all markets where Kuoni businesses are now up for sale.
  • ETS-ad

 

OPERATORS

by

Hotelbeds logoTUI Travel Accommodation & Destinations is Now Hotelbeds Group: Following the merger of TUI Travel with its parent company, TUI AG, TUI Travel Accommodation & Destinations has changed its name to Hotelbeds Group, which includes Hotelbeds—the worldwide bedbank operation is headquartered in Palma de Malllorca, Spain, with its Americas operation based in Cancun—and a range of global businesses whose brands include Destination Services, Activities, Laterooms.com, Intercruises and Roiback. The move is indicative of how some receptive tour operators have branched out to provide travel product from their own inventories to and from destinations worldwide. A little more than a month before the TUI announcement, Alberto Cevera Xicotencatl, regional manager, specialist and groups, the Americas, Hotelbeds, hinted that such an announcement was coming when he spoke at NAJ’s RTO Summit in Orlando, explained that Hotelbeds was trying to convey the fact that it sold more than room blocks, noting that “the whole idea was to replicate the model of a one-stop shop.”

AA-China-ad

An industry service provided by

Staff

Tom Berrigan, Managing Editor/Producer
Contact us!

Connect Travel

15 Technology Parkway South
Suite 205
Norcross, Ga 30092

Accessibility by WAH