tour operators niche meaning

What is niche tourism and why is it so popular?

Niche tourism is a term that I hear a lot these days. But what is niche tourism? Well, the truth is that it isn’t any one tourism type, rather it is a collective term used to group a number of types of tourism. It is an umbrella term .

Confused? Don’t be! It’s actually very simple, and in this article I will explain why….

What does the term ‘niche’ mean?

What is niche tourism, macro and micro niche tourism, niche tourism definitions, why has niche tourism become popular, advantages of niche tourism, disadvantages of niche tourism, examples of niche tourism, further reading.

Before we can understand what niche tourism is, we first need to understand what is meant by the word ‘niche’.

Niche (pronounced NEE-SH in the UK and NITCH in the US), refers to an area or position that is suitable for a small group of people.

As an adjective, niche can refer to a number of things, including:

In the context of tourism, niche is referring to products, services or interests that are shared by a small group of people.

Niche tourism is the umbrella term covering a range of types of tourism . Niche tourism products and services serve a specialised segment of the tourism industry.

Niche tourism is the antithesis of mass tourism . It is the opposite of large group tours, all-inclusive holiday resorts and overtourism .

Other terms that identify similar, small market segments include alternative tourism and special interest tourism .

Essentially, niche tourism identifies forms of micro (small) tourism.

As demonstrated in the diagram below, niche tourism itself can be categorised as a macro (i.e. big) type of tourism. Within this, a number of smaller tourism types can be identified. These are micro forms of tourism.

The list of micro tourism forms listed here is not exhaustive. For a more comprehensive list, take a look at my article on the different types of tourism .

The term niche tourism hasn’t been around that long. In fact, before the 1990s niche was most commonly used to describe marketing (Robinson & Novelli, 2005).

Definitions have evolved from the concept of niche marketing, so I think that it is useful to look first at how the term niche marketing is defined.

According to Toften and Hammervoll (2009), niche marketing can be understood as a focus on a limited market, which is generally considered to be appropriate for small or specialised businesses.

Stanton, Etzel, and Walker (1991) define niche marketing as ‘a method that meets customer needs by developing products and services especially suited to small markets’.

And Kotler (2003) describes niche marketing as a focus on clients who demonstrate a specific set of needs, available to pay a higher price to companies best suited to supply their demand for goods and services.

The most comprehensive text on the niche tourism phenomena was published in 2007 by Robinson and Novelli (2007). This book introduced us to the concept, outlining the notions of macro and micro tourism that I outlined earlier. In their book Robinson and Novelli outline a variety of different examples of niche tourism. Whilst, more than twenty years have passed since this publication, it still remains largely valid and useful, although there are now a wider range of tourism forms than there were at the time of writing.

More recently, in 2005, Novelli described niche tourists as independent travellers choose specialised activities to engage with social life and to become cosmopolitans.

Taking all of this into consideration, niche tourism can be defined as ‘an umbrella tourism form, which identifies macro and micro tourism segments appealing to a specific group of travellers’.

Niche tourism has grown in popularity a lot in recent years.

This growth is owed to the way that we have changed as consumers. People have become more sophisticated in their wants and needs. We know what we want and that’s what we want. The ‘one size fits all’ traditional package tourism model no longer suits.

Around the globe people have become more globalised and more educated. We want more than a nice pool and some evening cocktails from our holidays.

People want education and culture and adventure. And we can access these things through niche tourism provision….

I would love to share some figures with you to demonstrate this, but studies tend to focus on the macro or micro tourism forms, as opposed to niche tourism as a group. But hopefully you’ll take my word on that one!

Niche tourism is often viewed as being a more positive form of tourism than mass tourism. This is because it generally involves smaller numbers of tourists who (usually) leave less of a footprint. In fact, it is often associated by sustainable tourism and responsible tourism (rightly or wrongly).

Some of the advantages of niche tourism are:

• It is less damaging on the environment
• Tourists come in smaller numbers
• Tourists tend to be more courteous and respectful
• Niche tourists often pay more than mass tourists
• There is a genuine interest in the local area and people

Of course, these advantages are not a given. It is impossible to generalise such a broad group of tourism types!

There are also disadvantages of niche tourism. The main issue is the small size of businesses and an inherent over reliance on tourism.

Some of the main problems commonly noted are:

• A lack of alternative revenue streams
• Too many visitors are attracted
• Niche businesses take business away from elsewhere
• Some niches are not environmentally friendly, such as golf tourism.
• Small visitor numbers means that the economic benefits are limited
• Niche tourism activities can come in and out of ‘fashion’ and popularity

Ultimately, it is careful tourism planning and sustainable tourism management that will reduce any negative impacts of tourism. Therefore, it is actually a misconception that niche tourism is better than mass tourism. This statement is unfounded and is totally depends on the type of tourism that is in question.

There are many examples of niche tourism around the world.

Below I have listed some of the most common types of niche tourism. I’ve written in depth articles about many of these- click on the links to learn more!

• Adventure tourism
• Ancestry tourism
• Couchsurfing
• Cruise tourism
• Cultural tourism
• Dark tourism
• Disaster tourism
• Educational tourism
• Enclave tourism
• Food tourism
• Health tourism
• Homestay tourism
• Insta tourism
• Pro-poor tourism
• Rural tourism
• Sex tourism
• Slow tourism
• Smart tourism
• Space tourism
• Sustainable tourism
• Volunteer tourism
• Virtual tourism
• Bike-packing

If you are interested in learning more about this important industry, I recommend the two texts outlined below.

Niche Tourism: Contemporary Issues, Trends and Cases- provides an integrated picture of speciality/niche tourism as a whole looking at both the ‘macro’ and ‘micro’ niche area. It has a comprehensive theoretical framework, and discusses initiatives, policies and strategies adopted internationally. With an emphasis on linking theory to practice, it is underpinned by up-to-date international case studies from around the world.

The Long Tail of Tourism: Holiday Niches and their Impact on Mainstream – The ‘long tail’ of holiday offerings implies dramatic shifts in the sector’s concentration levels and its competitive dynamics. In order to examine the applicability and validity of this scenario, a number of key holiday niches are examined in terms of their demand development, supplier landscapes, operational challenges and future potential.

Travel niches predicted to boom in 2021

2021 is here; the year that we have spent the last 12 months willing to come sooner. It is the year that has promised hope and relief from a pandemic that has plagued every inch of our lives. We have not only set our sights on the release of crucial coronavirus vaccines but we are also entering the year with the prospect of travel movements and a more stable tourism industry returning. So with our expectations high and a lot of weight riding on the year ahead we’re all posing the question: What’s next for the tourism industry now that the all-important 2021 has arrived? How will tour operators fare, what will tourists be looking for while on holiday and how do we capitalise on this renewed sense of enthusiasm towards tourism?

Niche. It’s all about travel niches in 2021. To put it simply, the success of tour operators will depend on the pockets of niche popularity. Tourists will be on the hunt for niche experiences crafted by travel experts; and there will be a great amount of enthusiasm surrounding personalisation, the foundation for niche tourism. The need to drill down into specific areas rather than be ‘all things for all people’ is evident when major tourism players such as Malaysia’s Tourism, Arts and Culture Ministry , are looking to niche activities and markets to set them on the path to recovery in 2021 and beyond.

After experiencing such a devastating start to the new decade, it’s no wonder that tourists want to feel special and select holidays that are truly meaningful to them. Whether you define a niche by price, demographics, geographics or psychographics, we wanted to draw your attention to the travel niches predicted to boom in 2021.

The first cab off the rank for popular travel niches in 2021 is multi-generational travel. Although already well established as a niche segment in the tourism industry, a newfound appreciation for family and family travel has seen it spike in popularity. After months of separation, isolation and distance throughout the pandemic, many extended families are using vacations as the perfect opportunity to reunite, reconnect and create memories with loved ones.

As a general rule, multi-generational travel is age inclusive and covers three generations; grandparents, parents and children. While catering to different ages and abilities can be seen as a challenge, more and more people are expected to travel this way as the numbers grow throughout 2021 and 2022 . Vrbo’s 2021 Trend Report proves this point, stating that 31% of travellers have indicated that their next trip is being planned off the basis of wanting to spend more quality time with their extended family.

Move over trains, buses and cars, the bike movement is stronger than ever. Putting your pedal to the metal has never been so appealing as people obsess over health and fitness, environmental consciousness and boosting domestic tourism. Whether individuals see biking as a serious sport hoping to challenge themselves through mountain biking and bikepacking, or they view it as a leisurely activity to soak in the sights with friends, this niche is beyond booming. So much so that there is currently a worldwide shortage of bikes , as individuals race to take to the roads, tracks and trails.

Giving greater amounts of freedom in the outdoors (a blessing in a COVID-19 world!), bike tours and cycle holidays tick all the boxes for tourists as governments and councils around the world inject greater amounts of cash into infrastructure for bikers.

Of particular note within this travel niche is the popularity of electric bikes. Rated as the third top trending ‘hot demand trips’ by the Adventure Travel Trade Association in 2020 , itineraries catering to electric bikers are all the rage. Making the activity more accessible to those less able or fit, electric bikes broaden the target market of cycle tourists, boosting the popularity of the segment. To add to this, tour operators are able to plan greater distances for trips with the help of these electrically assisted bikes.

It may go by many names, campervan, RV or mobile home, but there is one thing certain about motorhome travel and that’s its freedom. Similar to the other travel niches on this list, motorhome travel offers a great deal of flexibility, while not compromising on safety, during these uncertain times. With the ability to self-drive and remain socially distant from others, holidaying in a motorhome is an option that many are taking.

With 73% of millennials, 59% of Generation X and 47% of Baby Boomers interviewed by RVshare indicating that they would like to rent a motorhome in the next year, this niche is predicted to do very well over the next 12 months. The number of individuals actually purchasing a motorhome, in particular first time buyers, has also increased with over 40,000 RV wholesale shipments taking place in June 2020, a 10% increase from the year previous. Such numbers are indicative of how popular this niche segment will be going forward; the likes of an international drivers licence will help this niche remain strong, even when overseas travel resumes.

Helping to facilitate the return of domestic tourism, travelling by motorhome is seen to be a great option to get into the outdoors and have more spontaneity. With regulations and coronavirus numbers changing almost daily in some countries, planning a motorhome holiday is appealing due to flexibility with dates, timing and locations. Travellers who choose to travel in this way are drawn to national parks and outdoor locations .

We don’t think it could get any more niche than birding or avitourism . For years, stigma has hung over the bird watching community and birding tours as the activity was put in the ‘boring basket’ by many. However, like many things during lockdown, this viewpoint was flipped on its head as people craved deeper connections with nature and a sense of freedom. According to bird watchers around the world the drawcard of bird watching is that it brings with it an almost meditative state as birds symbolise the “ ultimate freedom of movement .”

With it being noted that a much younger generation of bird watchers is emerging following the outbreak of the coronavirus, we are putting bets on birding tours being one to watch in 2021 and beyond. Global lockdowns saw younger people, even children , whip out the binoculars and take note of bird species as a means to pass the time. Retailers experienced a 10-15% increase in spending within the birding category and engagement on Cornell’s bird logging app rose by 84% . Interactions with adventure travellers have also found that bird watching is one of their top rated activities .

Whether people are aware of it when they plan their next birding adventure or not, the number of bird species in a person’s surroundings is said to directly impact individual happiness . By simply immersing yourself in an environment with a variety of bird species, people can increase their overall level of life satisfaction; and what better time to do this than when on holiday?!

As is the story with most travel niches, newfound or long term individual interests, such as bird watching, are often the triggers for participating in such specialised tourism activities. Give this niche segment a big nod of support for the year ahead.

Seeking a complete disconnect and detox from technology, travellers often crave the absence of devices while on holiday. Taking the opportunity to soak up nature rather than WiFi, it is no surprise that holidaying can be the perfect escape from staring at a screen all day for work or an unhealthy social media habit. However, with COVID-19 quashing the possibility of travel for those in pandemic-stricken countries, technology has the power to transport individuals to other places from the comforts of their own homes .

Virtual reality is carving out a very successful niche for itself as online experiences offer a glimpse of travel for many. Facilitating tourism encounters through an immersive experience (headset, simulators), virtual reality technology can make someone truly feel they are seeing and experiencing things in the location on the screen. The gamification of tourism through the sales of virtual reality headsets is expected to grow by 53% by 2024 .

In the past, this technology has been a great marketing tool for Destination Management Organisations trying to spark wanderlust among potential travellers. Today in a world ruled by a pandemic, the idea of ‘try before you buy’ is still relevant as future bucket lists are created, but so too is the importance of keeping inspiration and discussions about travel alive.

Adding to the predicted boom of virtual reality, the technology also perfectly aligns with the ideologies and beliefs of environmentally conscious travellers . Reducing the amount of carbon emissions generated, preserving natural and heritage sites, and removing the need for mandatory quarantine or self-isolation, tour operators catering to this niche market will do well offering virtual tour packages. From virtual tours of the Louvre, Buckingham Palace and Ann Frank’s house to walking the Great Wall of China, going on an African Safari and diving in the Great Barrier Reef, it is likely that physical holidays will be replaced with virtual experiences in 2021 for those affected by travel restrictions.

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Niche Tourism: Exploring Unique and Specialized Travel Experiences

Niche tourism is a growing trend in the travel industry, catering to specialized segments of the market. It is the antithesis of mass tourism, focusing on the needs and interests of a smaller group of travellers rather than targeting mainstream attractions and amenities. As the global middle class expands and becomes better educated, especially in developing and densely populated regions, the demand for niche tourism experiences has increased.

This type of tourism can be characterized more by the activities and experiences sought by the tourists than by their numbers in a particular destination. Examples of niche tourism include eco-tourism, culinary tourism, adventure travel, and wellness retreats. These specialized experiences allow travellers to delve deeper into a region’s culture, natural environment, or unique attractions while benefiting local communities and economies more sustainably.

The rise of niche tourism has also spurred innovation and adaptations within the industry. As a result, destinations, tour operators , and travel service providers need to rethink their approach to cater to these discerning travellers’ specific needs and interests, ensuring that their offerings resonate with the niche market and enhance their customers’ overall travel experiences.

Table of Contents

What is niche tourism.

Niche tourism refers to specialized travel experiences catering to specific interests, activities, or demographic groups . Unlike mass tourism, which targets a broad audience with generalized interests such as sightseeing, beach vacations, or cultural exploration, niche tourism focuses on delivering highly personalized experiences that meet the particular needs or desires of a smaller segment of travellers.

Whether it’s adventure tourism for thrill-seekers, ecotourism for environmentally conscious individuals, or medical tourism for those seeking affordable healthcare options abroad, niche tourism aims to offer something unique that appeals to a specific type of traveller. It often provides more in-depth, specialized, and meaningful experiences, as it takes into account the specific preferences and expectations of its target audience.

Types of Niche Tourism

Indeed, niche tourism focuses on specialized and personalized travel experiences that cater to specific interests, hobbies, or needs. The following are the various types of niche tourism:

Adventure Tourism

Adventure tourism is focused on travellers seeking an adrenaline rush. This can include activities like skydiving, paragliding, scuba diving, or mountaineering. The key here is the thrill and the experience of something challenging. The destinations are often exotic or difficult to get to, and there might be a focus on natural landscapes.

Ecotourism aims to be as non-intrusive and beneficial as possible for the environment and local communities. This type of tourism might involve trips to natural reserves, rainforests, or other important ecological sites. It often includes educational components to inform travellers about the environment, local communities, and ways to protect natural resources.

Culinary Tourism

Culinary tourism revolves around food and drink experiences. This could range from high-end dining in major cities to foraging expeditions in the countryside. Food festivals, cooking classes, visits to farms, or exploring local markets could also be part of the package. Wine, beer, and spirits tasting tours are also popular.

Wellness Tourism

Wellness tourism focuses on mental and physical well-being. This could involve travel to spas, holistic health centres, or places known for natural beauty and tranquillity. Activities may include yoga retreats, detox programs, or spiritual teachings.

Dark Tourism

Dark tourism involves travel to places historically associated with tragedy, death, or disaster. Examples include concentration camps, battlefields, memorials, and sites of natural or industrial disasters. The aim is often educational and memorial rather than voyeuristic, although this can be a matter of debate and ethical consideration.

Medical Tourism

Medical tourism travels abroad to receive medical, dental, or surgical care. The reasons can vary but generally involve cost efficiency, quality of care, or availability of specialized treatments. Countries like Thailand, India, and Mexico often attract medical tourists due to the cost-effectiveness and quality of medical services.

Cultural or Heritage Tourism

This type of tourism is aimed at experiencing the culture and history of a destination. This can involve anything from visiting museums and historical sites to attending local festivals and ceremonies. Some tourists may even seek out locations that explore their ancestry.

Wildlife Tourism

Focused on wildlife and its natural habitats, this can range from safaris in Africa to bird-watching in South America. Ethical considerations are essential to ensure that wildlife and their habitats are respected and preserved.

Sport Tourism

Sports tourism encompasses a variety of activities, including participating in a sports camp, attending a major sporting event like the Olympics or World Cup, or simply touring a famous stadium. Golf tourism is a subset that deserves mention, as many travellers organize trips centred around playing at renowned golf courses.

Religious Tourism

Religious tourism involves visits to sacred sites for pilgrimage, missionary, or leisure purposes. Mecca, Vatican City, and the Ganges River are destinations that draw massive numbers of religious tourists each year.

LGBTQ Tourism

LGBTQ tourism caters to the needs and interests of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning community. This can range from gay-friendly hotels and beaches to events like Pride parades and LGBTQ film festivals.

Educational Tourism

Educational tourism focuses on learning experiences. This could involve studying a language abroad, participating in an archaeological dig, or taking a master’s class in photography while visiting iconic sites.

Film or TV Tourism

Some destinations attract visitors solely based on their appearance in movies or TV shows. For example, New Zealand has seen a tourism boom due to its portrayal as Middle-earth in the “Lord of the Rings” series, and fans of Korean dramas often visit filming locations in South Korea.

Wine Tourism

Wine tourism involves visiting vineyards and wineries to taste and purchase products directly from the source. It often includes guided tours explaining the wine-making process.

Activity-Based Tourism

Activity-based tourism is tailored around specific activities the tourist is interested in, such as scuba diving, fishing, or skiing.

Space Tourism

A very new and emerging type, space tourism aims to offer commercial trips outside of Earth. This is still mainly in the experimental stage but is becoming increasingly feasible.

Agri-Tourism

Agri-tourism involves participating in farm-based activities and gaining a closer look at the rural lifestyle. This can include activities like milking cows, picking fruits, and tractor rides.

Each niche tourism type has unique appeal, challenges, and ethical considerations. Understanding these can help travellers and providers create a more enriching and responsible experience.

Advantages of Niche Tourism

Niche tourism serves specialized segments within the tourism industry, catering to specific interests, demographics, or travel styles. There are several advantages that make niche tourism increasingly popular among travellers.

Firstly, niche tourism allows for a deeper, more authentic experience for travellers . Visitors can engage in activities and explore destinations that align with their passions or hobbies, such as culinary experiences, eco-tourism, or adventure sports. This personal connection can lead to a more satisfying and memorable travel experience.

Secondly, niche tourism benefits local communities by providing sustainable economic opportunities. Specialized markets often rely on small businesses and skilled artisans, which can spur job creation and economic growth.

Additionally, niche tourism helps to preserve local cultures and traditions as visitors seek to experience the authentic life and customs of the places they visit. This, in turn, encourages communities to maintain and promote their unique offerings.

Moreover, niche tourism can contribute to developing and promoting less explored destinations. By focusing on specific experiences and attractions, these destinations can differentiate their offerings from more mainstream tourist hotspots. This can lead to increased tourism revenue and economic development for lesser-known regions.

Niche tourism can also demonstrate a commitment to environmental and social responsibility. For example, eco-tourism and volunteer travel promote sustainable practices, such as resource conservation, wildlife protection, and community development initiatives. These tourism segments attract responsible, conscious travellers, reflect positively on the destinations they visit.

In summary, niche tourism offers significant advantages for travellers, local communities, and destinations. By catering to specialized markets, niche tourism enhances the overall travel experience, bolsters economies, encourages cultural preservation, fosters sustainable practices, and helps to promote lesser-known regions.

Disadvantages of Niche Tourism

Niche tourism, despite its advantages, does have certain drawbacks as well. One of the primary disadvantages of niche tourism is the  lack of economies of scale . This means that an operation with a lower production volume may face higher unit costs. Niche tourism activities tend to cater to smaller groups of tourists, leading to limited capacity for revenue generation.

Another challenge faced in niche tourism is the  lack of alternative revenue streams . Since these specialized tourism services cater to specific needs and interests, they may not easily adapt to market changes or diversify their offerings. This inflexibility can make niche tourism operations more vulnerable to economic fluctuations and industry trends.

Niche tourism can also lead to  over-reliance on a specific target market . Businesses focusing solely on niche markets may struggle to attract other types of tourists outside their specialization. This dependence on a limited market segment increases the risk of reduced revenues if the niche market experiences a downturn.

Additionally, because niche tourism focuses on specialized activities and experiences, there may be  limited access to resources, infrastructure, and expertise . This can make it challenging for niche tourism operators to maintain high levels of quality and safety, fulfil regulatory requirements, or stay up-to-date with advancements in technology and industry best practices.

Lastly, niche tourism can sometimes be at odds with  environmental sustainability . While many niche tourism products promote sustainable practices and experiences, some can have negative impacts on fragile ecosystems and local communities. For instance, certain adventure tourism activities may contribute to the degradation of natural environments by encouraging tourists to visit remote and pristine locations that may not be equipped to handle an influx of visitors.

In summary, disadvantages of niche tourism may include higher unit costs, lack of alternative revenue streams, over-reliance on a specific market, limited resources and expertise, and potential environmental impacts. While these challenges can make niche tourism less attractive for some businesses, it is essential to acknowledge these potential issues when pursuing specialized tourism operations.

Characteristics of Niche Tourism

Niche tourism is a fascinating facet of the travel industry, addressing individual tourists’ specific interests and needs rather than a generalized mass market. The defining characteristics of niche tourism include:

• Specialized Focus : Niche tourism concentrates on specific areas of interest or activities, whether wine tasting, bird watching, yoga retreats, or historical battlefield tours.
• Tailored Experiences : Unlike the one-size-fits-all approach of mass tourism, niche tourism is about providing tailored experiences that cater to its target audience’s specific desires and needs.
• Smaller Scale : Generally, niche tourism attracts fewer numbers compared to mass tourism. However, the emphasis is on depth and quality of experience rather than volume.
• Engaged Audience : Tourists drawn to niche activities are usually highly engaged and passionate about their chosen area of interest. They are often willing to invest time, effort, and money into gaining a deeper understanding or more enriching experience.
• Sustainable and Responsible Practices : Many niche tourism sectors prioritize sustainability and responsibility, particularly eco-tourism, agri-tourism, or community-based tourism. They often strive for a balance that benefits the local environment, economy, and society.
• Higher Per-capita Spending : Since niche tourism offers specialized experiences, travellers are often willing to pay a premium. This can lead to higher per-capita spending compared to traditional mass tourism.
• Deep Interaction : Niche tourism often promotes a deeper interaction between the traveller and the destination. For instance, cultural tourism might involve staying with local families, attending traditional ceremonies, or learning a local craft.
• Authenticity : One of the draws of niche tourism is the pursuit of authentic experiences. Travelers seek genuine interactions and experiences that are true to the locale, culture, or activity.
• Dynamic and Evolving : As societal interests change and evolve, so do the niches within tourism. For instance, wellness tourism has surged with the growing global focus on health and well-being.
• Less Seasonal Dependence : While mass tourism might concentrate on peak seasons (like summer vacations or winter holidays), niche tourism can often transcend seasonality. For example, bird-watching might attract tourists during migration seasons, while wellness retreats can be year-round attractions.

Niche tourism is characterized by its focus on specialization, depth of experience, and often a commitment to sustainability and authenticity. It offers unique opportunities for destinations to diversify their tourist offerings and for travellers to pursue their passions in depth.

Why is Niche Tourism Growing?

Niche tourism is experiencing significant growth due to a variety of interconnected factors. One key driver is the modern traveller’s increasing desire for personalized, tailored experiences that align with specific interests- adventure, culture, or wellness. Gone are the days when one-size-fits-all vacation packages appealed to the masses. Today, travellers seek unique, specialized experiences that cater to their tastes and preferences.

The rise of the internet and social media platforms has also played a crucial role in niche tourism’s growth. These platforms have democratized information, making it easier for travellers to discover and access specialized experiences. For niche tourism operators, digital platforms offer a cost-effective way to market unique offerings to a global audience, enlarging their customer base.

The quest for authenticity is another contributing factor. Today’s travellers are increasingly seeking “real,” meaningful experiences that allow for a deeper engagement with a destination’s culture, history, or natural environment. Niche tourism typically offers these kinds of in-depth, authentic experiences, whether participating in a traditional tea ceremony in Japan or trekking through a rainforest in Costa Rica.

Sustainability concerns have also given niche tourism a significant boost. With a growing global awareness of environmental issues, many travellers are seeking sustainable forms of tourism . Types of niche tourism like ecotourism, which focuses on environmental conservation and responsible travel, have seen a surge in popularity as a result.

Changes in demographics and lifestyle are also playing a role. As populations in many parts of the world age, and as people become more health-conscious, sectors like wellness and medical tourism are booming. Moreover, the economic benefits of niche tourism make it attractive for destinations. Specialized tourism often attracts a type of traveller willing to spend more on specialized experiences, helping to diversify a destination’s tourist income and making it less dependent on mass tourism.

Word-of-mouth recommendations and social media sharing of unique and specialized experiences effectively serve as free marketing for niche tourism. These shared experiences inspire and encourage more people to opt for specialized, off-the-beaten-path experiences.

The growth in niche tourism can be attributed to a combination of technological, social, and economic factors that have converged to make specialized travel more desirable and accessible.

The Impacts of Niche Tourism

Niche tourism can positively and negatively impact local communities, economies, and environments. Understanding these effects is crucial for sustainable development and responsible travel. Here’s a look at both sides of the coin:

Positive Impacts

• Economic Diversification : Unlike mass tourism, niche tourism allows destinations to diversify their sources of income. Tourists with specialized interests are often willing to spend more for specific experiences.
• Community Engagement : Like cultural and rural tourism , Niche tourism often involves deeper interaction with local communities, fostering mutual respect and cultural exchange.
• Conservation and Awareness : Ecotourism and wildlife tourism often funnel funds directly into conservation efforts, and they can also heighten awareness of environmental issues among travellers.
• Educational Value : Many niche tourism sectors have a strong educational component. Whether learning about a unique culture, ecosystem, or historical period, the educational aspect can enrich the traveller’s experience and broaden their horizons.
• Job Creation : Specialized types of tourism can lead to the creation of specialized jobs, potentially offering higher wages and skill development for local communities.
• Psychological Benefits : Wellness and medical tourism can provide direct psychological and health benefits to participants, offering therapies, treatments, or experiences that may not be available in their home country.

Negative Impacts

• Environmental Stress : Even ecotourism, if not managed properly, can put undue stress on local ecosystems. The influx of tourists can disturb wildlife, lead to pollution, and degrade natural habitats.
• Cultural Commodification : Specialized interest in local cultures can sometimes lead to the commodification of traditions and practices, where elements of culture are altered or staged for tourist consumption.
• Economic Dependence : Over-reliance on a particular form of niche tourism can make a destination vulnerable to economic fluctuations in that market.
• Accessibility Issues : Because niche tourism often caters to more affluent travellers willing to pay for specialized experiences, it could exclude less affluent local people from certain activities or areas.
• Resource Strain : Niche tourists often seek untouched or less-explored destinations, which might not have the infrastructure to support increased tourist activity. This can lead to resource strains on small communities.
• Exclusivity : Some types of niche tourism can inadvertently create an atmosphere of exclusivity, alienating local populations who may not be part of the target demographic (e.g., LGBTQ tourism, luxury tourism).

Understanding these impacts can help in the development of policies and strategies to maximize the benefits and minimize the downsides of niche tourism. This makes it crucial for stakeholders, from government bodies to tour operators , to engage in responsible planning and management.

Niche Tourism vs. Mass Tourism

Niche and mass tourism are two distinct approaches to travel and tourism, each with unique characteristics, benefits, and challenges. Here’s a breakdown comparing the two:

Niche Tourism:

Definition : Niche tourism focuses on specialized and targeted travel experiences that cater to specific interests, activities, or demographic groups.

Characteristics :

• Tailored Experiences : Offers specialized experiences for a select group of travellers with particular interests, such as ecotourism, medical tourism , or culinary tourism.
• Smaller Scale : Typically attracts fewer numbers than mass tourism, aiming for depth of experience over volume.
• Higher Per-capita Spending : Travelers are often willing to spend more for personalized experiences.
• Sustainable Practices : Many niche tourism sectors emphasize sustainable and responsible practices, especially ecotourism or community-based tourism.
• Economic Diversification : Allows regions to diversify their tourism revenue sources.
• Less Environmental Impact : With fewer visitors, there’s generally less strain on resources and infrastructure.
• Cultural Exchange : Promotes deeper interaction and understanding between tourists and local communities.

Challenges :

• Dependence : Over-reliance on a single niche market can be risky.
• Management : Requires specific strategies and policies to ensure authentic and sustainable experiences.

Mass Tourism:

Definition : Mass tourism caters to large numbers of tourists who typically visit popular destinations and attractions.

• Broad Appeal : Focuses on universally appealing destinations or attractions, like famous landmarks, beach resorts, or popular cities.
• High Volume : Attracts a large number of visitors, especially during peak seasons.
• Standardized Offerings : Packages and experiences are often standardized to cater to the majority.
• Economic Boost : This can provide significant cash injection into a region due to the sheer number of visitors.
• Job Creation : Creates numerous jobs in the service, transportation, and hospitality sectors.
• Environmental Strain : The large influx can strain local resources, lead to pollution, and degrade natural and cultural sites.
• Overcrowding : Popular destinations can become over-touristed, diminishing the experience for visitors and locals.
• Economic Dependence : If a destination relies too heavily on mass tourism , it can become vulnerable to economic fluctuations.

Key Differences:

• Scale and Focus : Niche tourism is about depth and specificity, while mass tourism is about volume and breadth.
• Impact on Destination : Niche tourism often has a smaller footprint and may invest more in sustainable practices, while mass tourism can bring economic benefits but also significant strains on a destination.
• Target Audience : Niche tourism targets specific segments or interest groups, while mass tourism aims for the broadest appeal.
• Economic Model : Niche tourism often results in higher per-capita spending but on a smaller scale, while mass tourism focuses on high volumes, often with lower per-capita spending.

In conclusion, while both forms of tourism have their merits and challenges, the choice between them often hinges on travellers’ individual preferences, as well as the goals and resources of the destination.

Niche tourism offers more personalized, focused experiences at the cost of potential exclusivity and specialized demands, while mass tourism generates significant revenue and accessibility but may lead to cultural and environmental degradation. Both forms have their merits and drawbacks, and destinations often aim for a balanced portfolio that includes both types.

Popular Niche Tourism Destinations

Niche tourism destinations are tailored to specific interests, from the serenity of wellness retreats to the thrill of adventure sports. Here are some popular niche tourism destinations that cater to various specialized interests:

• Costa Rica : Known for its rich biodiversity, Costa Rica is a hotspot for ecotourism, offering a variety of activities such as bird-watching, jungle treks, and conservation programs.
• Galápagos Islands, Ecuador : Famous for its unique wildlife and natural beauty, the Galápagos offer a quintessential ecotourism experience.
• Queenstown, New Zealand : Often dubbed the “Adventure Capital of the World,” it offers bungee jumping, skydiving, and whitewater rafting.
• Swiss Alps : Popular for skiing, snowboarding, and mountaineering.

Cultural Tourism

• Kyoto, Japan : With its ancient temples, traditional tea ceremonies, and geisha culture, Kyoto is a haven for cultural tourism .
• Rome, Italy : A paradise for lovers of history and architecture, offering ancient ruins like the Colosseum and Roman Forum.
• Bali, Indonesia : Known for its wellness retreats that offer yoga, meditation, and natural health remedies.
• Switzerland : Home to some of the world’s most luxurious wellness retreats, often set in stunning alpine locations.
• Bangkok, Thailand : Known for high-quality healthcare at affordable prices.
• India : Particularly popular for specialized surgeries and alternative treatments like Ayurveda.
• San Francisco, USA : Known for its vibrant LGBTQ community and events like the Pride Parade.
• Amsterdam, Netherlands : One of the most LGBTQ-friendly cities in the world, home to the first-ever gay marriage.

Rural Tourism

• Tuscany, Italy : Offers rustic experiences like vineyard tours and cooking classes.
• Himalayan Villages, India : Provides an escape from city life amidst snow-capped mountains and lush green valleys.

Activity-based Tourism

• Safari in Maasai Mara, Kenya : Offers wildlife spotting opportunities, including the Great Migration.
• Scuba Diving in the Maldives : Known for its stunning underwater life and coral reefs.
• Napa Valley, USA : Famous for its world-class wineries and vineyard tours.
• Bordeaux, France : Renowned globally for its wine culture.
• Spaceport America, New Mexico, USA : Virgin Galactic aims to offer sub-orbital trips to space tourists.
• Kazakhstan : The Baikonur Cosmodrome offers orbital space tourism, though at a very high price tag and less frequently.

Whether it’s the quest for adventure, relaxation, or deeper cultural experiences, these destinations offer something special for every niche traveller.

Special Interest Tourism: Find Your Niche

Special interest tourism (SIT) is on the rise, and for good reason. It provides travelers the chance to explore their passions and gives you the opportunity to curate a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Special interest tourism focuses on providing leisure and adventure activities that cater to the needs of a specific audience. Tapping into your special interest niche will connect you to a smaller, yet highly-devoted audience. Think quality over quantity. 

In a sector that celebrates individuality and personalization, there is something for everyone. Special interest tourism examples range from spiritual, adventure, and food tourism to military, nostalgia, and lighthouse tourism. These are just a few examples from the long list of special interest tourism options – you just have to find the niche that works for you and your audience! 

What does SIT look like in 2022? The COVID-19 pandemic has brought a shift in consciousness that has changed the way that travelers want to explore their destinations. In the summer of 2020, Booking.com conducted a global survey with 60 percent of respondents saying they would use an app or website that recommended itineraries where tours would have a positive impact on locals. Special interest tourism concepts and cases have shifted as travelers are increasingly concerned about the impact of their travels on the climate and local community. 

Top Types of Special Interest Tourism

Environmental tourism:.

As sustainability remains a chief driver in SIT, environmental tourism has emerged as a dominant niche. Often referred to as ecotourism, sustainable tourism and responsible tourism, environmental tourism focuses on activities that don’t compromise the needs of future generations. Environmental tourism is at the forefront of special interest tourism trends and will continue to grow in demand. 

In its 2025 Megatrends prediction report, Skift reveals how this is already influencing travel decisions. In a global survey, 51 percent of respondents claimed they would change their chosen travel destination and head instead to a less-popular one if that decision would have less of an adverse environmental impact.

Some online travel agencies and tour operators now offer guests the option of dedicating a day or two of their trip to activities like helping to construct a local water purification system or planting trees along shorelines devastated by hurricanes. 

Adventure Tourism:

According to Future Market Insights , adventure tourism is resilient and supports local economies by attracting high-value customers. With an increasing number of Millennial and Gen-Z travelers who prefer adventure sports, adventure tourism is creating a lucrative scope for expansion in the activities segment.  Adventure tourism activities vary in risk and difficulty and can include hiking, backpacking, climbing, mountain biking and snowshoeing. 

Wellness Tourism:

Wellness tourism is a growing industry, supported by travelers actively seeking ways to enhance their well-being. Dating back to the ancient baths in Rome, traveling for the purpose of improving our well-being has always been a priority, and now there are seemingly endless ways to provide customers with a wellness-centered experience. Whether it’s nutrient-rich food, a trip to a natural hot spring, or meditation and yoga, wellness tourism is an attractive niche for travelers because the desire for self-improvement is part of being human.  

Finding your special interest niche 

What is unique about your tours that makes you stand out? What values do you share with your customers? These are things to consider when choosing your niche. For example, female-run Travel Insights offers “Wander Women” tours. These all-female trips are centered around local women’s businesses and achievements, focusing on those who work within their communities to sustain their culture, heritage and the planet’s future. This is brilliant for a number of reasons: it ties into the growing desire for sustainable tourism, while allowing female travelers to develop lasting relationships with other like-minded women. If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that we all need connection in our lives. 

You know your audience better than anyone, so why not consider personalizing your tour packages? According to Think With Google , nearly 57% of travelers are in favor of personalizing their buying experiences based on their personal preferences. It might be wise to think of ways that you can offer flexible packages and tailor them to suit the traveler’s needs. There is a rising demand for personalization, and it will aid in the expansion of the market in the coming years.

We see this happening in Kenya, which is home to over 3000 tour operators offering safari excursions. This has led many operators to begin incorporating unique features to meet their customer’s needs. On top of seeing wildlife, a customer might be passionate about food, so they might consider pairing their tour with culinary lunches and dinners. Or perhaps they value wellness, so an operator might pair their tour with yoga classes. The possibilities are endless!

Another great way to find your niche is to focus on your local area. Consider the heritage sites , national parks, or landmarks in your region that make it special. Are there any sites in your area that have been formally recognized? A popular destination in adventure tourism is the hike across the Grand Canyon rim-to-rim trail, which was made even more popular in 2019 when it was declared an International Dark Sky Park by the International Dark-Sky Association.

Awards like this are worth noting because they increase tourist popularity and attract people based on the title alone. Chances are you’re already aware of how amazing your area is, and it’s already accessible to you, so think of the ways that you like to enjoy it, and build your niche around makes you passionate about where you live. 

Reaching the right audience

With special interest tourism, you’re not providing an experience for the masses and your marketing should reflect that. You want your messaging to reach those who will appreciate what you have to offer and get excited to book with you. In order to target your audience, you need to know who they are. Consider factors like their budget, age, gender, values and interests. The great thing about having a niche is that it allows you to become an expert in that area, and with expertise comes credibility. 

Once you have chosen your niche, you can focus your research to pinpoint exactly what your audience is looking for and market to them accordingly. If you are a smaller business, consider moving to an online booking system rather than booking over the phone or in person.  Online analytics can give you the data you need to make a big impact even with a small marketing budget.

Social media is also a great way for small businesses to market to their audience. Not only is it relatively inexpensive, but content is also targeted towards users based on their tastes and preferences. There are a number of ways to promote your tour on social media . With the right strategy and audience information, you’ll attract business organically. 

Making special interest tourism work for you

The beauty of special interest tourism is that you can focus all your attention on one thing and really excel in a specific area. Lasting relationships are formed with your customers because you understand their needs and interests. You’ll gain credibility by having a clear mission and executing it well. The importance of special interest tourism is that it gives travelers the chance to bond with like-minded people and form genuine connections, and in a disconnected world, that is invaluable. 

Written By | Caitlyn McGee

Caitlyn is Vancouver-based freelance writer covering the tourism industry. With a Communication Studies degree, she specializes in digital and content marketing.

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How to choose a travel niche: Exploring niche tourism in the travel Industry

• June 2, 2023

Niche markets in the travel industry are specialised segments that cater to specific interests, demographics, or travel styles. They help businesses in the industry target their offerings and better cater to their customers’ needs.

This article aims to explore the concept of these niche markets. It seeks to illustrate how they function, their increasing popularity, and their role in shaping the future of tourism. 

What is niche tourism?

Niche travel and niche tourism refer to specialised travel experiences catering to a specific interest, activity, or demographic group. Rather than offering broad, one-size-fits-all travel experiences, niche tourism providers deliver tailored services and packages to accommodate their target market’s unique preferences and needs. This can encompass numerous specialisations, from adventure or eco-tourism to wellness, cultural, and food tourism.

Importance of choosing a travel niche

Choosing a travel niche is important for both travel providers and travellers for several reasons:

• Customer satisfaction: Tailored services and packages increase the likelihood of customer satisfaction as they align more closely with individual interests and expectations
• Market differentiation: In a highly competitive industry, carving out a niche allows businesses to distinguish themselves from competitors, positioning them as experts in a particular area
• Increased loyalty: Niche travel experiences can foster increased customer loyalty, as customers who have had their specific needs and interests met are more likely to return
• Sustainable business growth: Focusing on a niche can help travel providers achieve sustainable business growth. They can better understand their market, streamline their offerings, and refine their marketing strategies, leading to more efficient operations and stronger customer relationships
• Enhanced experiences for travellers: Choosing a niche allows them to have more personalised and enriching experiences. They can immerse themselves more deeply in their interests and activities, resulting in more fulfilling journeys

Understanding niche travel

Niche travel is hugely significant for both travellers and travel industry providers for several reasons:

• Personalisation: Niche travel allows for customised experiences that cater to specific interests, creating a more personalised and enjoyable travel experience
• Expertise: Niche travel companies often have a high level of expertise in their particular area, enabling them to provide  in-depth experiences and knowledge
• Community: Travellers with shared interests can form a sense of community, enhancing their overall travel experience

Differentiating niche travel from mainstream tourism

Niche travel and mainstream tourism differ in several key aspects:

• Broad vs Specialised: Mainstream tourism caters to a wide audience and typically includes popular destinations, attractions and experiences. Niche travel, on the other hand, is specialised, targeting a specific demographic, interest, activity or offbeat destination
• Mass market vs Personalised: Mainstream tourism is often mass-market-oriented with broad appeal, whereas niche travel focuses on delivering personalised experiences
• Generic vs Unique: Mainstream tourism often offers generic, one-size-fits-all experiences. In contrast, niche travel focuses on unique experiences tailored to the specific interests or needs of the traveller

Exploring the concept of experiential and specialised travel

Experiential and specialised travel, often considered a subset of niche travel, prioritises unique, immersive experiences:

Experiential travel

This form of travel prioritises personal and unique experiences over sightseeing. The goal is to immerse oneself in the local culture, meet the locals, and engage in activities characteristic of the destination.

Specialised travel

Specialised travel focuses on a specific interest or activity, such as wine tasting, skiing, horse riding, cooking, yoga, dancing, wildlife photography, or yoga retreats. These tours are typically led by experts in the field and offer a deep dive into the particular interest.

In both experiential and specialised travel, the emphasis is on creating meaningful, personal experiences rather than just visiting a destination.

Benefits of choosing a travel niche

There are many benefits to be gained from choosing a travel niche to focus on. 

Personal fulfilment and passion-driven travel experiences

Choosing a travel niche allows for deeply personal, fulfilling experiences that cater to one’s passions and interests. A culinary enthusiast may opt for food tourism, for example, immersing themselves in the local cuisine of different regions, thereby enriching their gastronomic knowledge and skills. The connection between personal passion and travel provides a unique, deeply satisfying experience that extends beyond typical sightseeing.

Building expertise and becoming an authority in a specific area

When individuals or businesses focus on a travel niche, they can develop in-depth knowledge and understanding of that area, becoming experts in that field and enhancing their reputation and credibility. For instance, a travel agency specialising in eco-tourism can accumulate a wealth of knowledge about sustainable travel practices and destinations, setting them apart from generalist competitors.

Targeting a specific audience and creating unique travel offerings

Choosing a travel niche allows businesses to target a specific audience with unique travel offerings. This specificity can aid in designing marketing campaigns and packages that speak directly to a defined group’s interests, needs, and expectations, thereby improving the effectiveness of marketing efforts. For example, a company with a niche in adventure tourism can tailor its offerings to thrill-seekers and outdoor enthusiasts, providing experiences that general travel agencies might not offer.

Opportunities for collaboration and networking

Focusing on a travel niche opens opportunities for collaboration and networking. Businesses can collaborate with other organisations, cross-promote each other, and engage with influencers or thought leaders to enhance their visibility and credibility. For example, a travel agency focusing on wellness tourism might partner with yoga studios or wellness coaches to offer retreats or workshops, enhancing their services and strengthening their network.

Identifying niche markets in the travel industry

Adventure and outdoor travel.

Adventure and outdoor travel cater to individuals who crave physical activity, exploration, and nature-based experiences. It’s a broad category that can include anything from mountain climbing and hiking to off-the-beaten-path tours and camping in remote locations. Adventure travel can also involve paragliding, rock climbing, or white-water rafting, appealing to thrill-seekers and those hunting an adrenaline rush.

Culinary and food tourism

Culinary and food tourism is all about exploring a region’s culinary traditions and food culture. This type of travel involves food tours, cooking classes, wine tastings, and farm-to-table experiences. Culinary tourism allows travellers to dive deep into local food scenes, taste authentic dishes, and learn about the history and tradition behind regional cuisines.

Wellness and spa retreats

Wellness and spa retreats focus on relaxation, self-care, and holistic experiences. This market includes yoga retreats, meditation workshops, spa treatments, and other health-oriented activities that aim to rejuvenate the body, mind, and spirit. Wellness retreats often occur in serene environments such as beach resorts or mountain lodges, offering travellers an escape from their daily routine and stress.

Cruise travel

Cruises are a popular niche market that offers unique sea experiences and can vary greatly in destinations, sizes, and themes, from luxurious world cruises to river cruises, from family-friendly cruises to expedition cruises for adventure seekers. Cruises often offer comprehensive packages that include accommodation, food, entertainment, and excursions, providing an all-in-one travel solution for many tourists. Find out how to be a successful cruise travel agent with The Travel Franchise.

Ski tourism

Ski tourism targets winter sports enthusiasts. Travellers might head to mountainous regions for skiing, snowboarding, and other winter activities. Ski resorts often provide comprehensive services, including equipment rental, ski lessons, accommodation, and après-ski entertainment, making it a popular choice for winter holidaymakers.

Scuba diving holidays

Scuba diving breaks cater to those who are interested in underwater exploration. Travellers often visit exotic locations known for their coral reefs, marine wildlife, and clear waters. This niche market includes the diving experience itself and often offers diving instruction, equipment rental, and other related services.

Sustainable, environmental and eco-tourism

Sustainable and eco-tourism is a rapidly growing niche in the travel industry, focusing on responsible travel practices. This niche promotes travelling in a way that respects local culture and environment, minimises impact on nature, and contributes to conserving natural and cultural heritage. Eco-tourism often involves visiting pristine, fragile, and relatively undisturbed natural areas, contributing to their preservation. Sometimes it also incorporates volunteer holidays where people spend their time helping conserve the environment.

Sports and sporting events tourism

Sports and sporting events tourism is a niche market that attracts sports enthusiasts and fans. This can involve travelling to participate in sporting activities like golf, cycling, or swimming or attending major sporting events such as the Olympics, the World Cup, or the Super Bowl. This niche often provides related services such as ticket booking, transportation, and accommodation.

Medical and wellness tourism

Medical and wellness tourism combines medical treatments with leisure travel. This niche caters to individuals who travel to receive medical treatments such as surgeries, dental procedures, or wellness therapies that may not be easily accessible or affordable in their home country. After receiving medical treatment, these travellers often take the opportunity to recuperate and relax at their destination.

Factors to consider when choosing a travel niche

When deciding which travel niche to specialise in, there are several considerations. 

Personal interests, passions, and expertise

When choosing a travel niche, it’s essential to consider one’s interests, passions, and areas of expertise. If you deeply understand and love a particular area, this can enhance your services, make your work more enjoyable, and resonate strongly with your target audience.

Market research and demand analysis

Conducting thorough market research and demand analysis is essential. Travel agents must understand the trends in the travel industry, identify which niches are growing, and assess the demand for different travel experiences. It’s also essential to consider your potential customers’ demographics, preferences, and behaviours.

Competition analysis and identifying gaps in the market

It’s important to research what other providers in your potential niche offer and identify market gaps. If there is an underserved area that aligns with your interests and expertise, this could present a unique business opportunity.

Accessibility and feasibility of the niche

Accessibility and feasibility are other crucial factors to consider. Some niches may require more resources or specific expertise to execute successfully. For instance, arranging adventure travel experiences might require extensive knowledge of safety protocols and outdoor survival skills. Assessing the feasibility of your potential niche ensures you can provide high-quality, reliable services.

Potential profitability and sustainability

While a niche might be personally fulfilling and have a good demand, it must also be financially viable for it to be a good business choice. It’s also important to consider the sustainability of the niche. Some niches may be trendy but have little long-term potential, while others, such as eco-tourism, align with long-term trends towards more sustainable and responsible travel.

Steps to choosing your travel niche

So, how do you choose your particular travel niche? 

1. Research and explore different niche markets

Your journey to choose a travel niche should start with broad research to explore different niche markets in the travel industry. This step involves learning about various travel niches, understanding what they entail, and identifying the ones that resonate with you.

2. Evaluate your personal interests, skills, and experiences

Next, evaluate your interests, skills, and experiences. Reflect on the types of travel that excite you, and consider your strengths and experiences that might contribute to success in a particular niche. This step is about identifying where your interests align with potential niche markets.

3. Analyse market trends and demand for specific niches

After identifying potential niches, you’ll want to analyse market trends and demand. Examine current trends in the travel industry, understand consumer behaviours and preferences, and determine which specialisations have strong growth potential. Market research can provide valuable insights into the demand for specific travel experiences.

4. Consider the potential challenges and opportunities within each niche

Assess the competition within the niche, identify potential entry barriers, and explore possible partnerships or collaborations. Considering challenges and opportunities can help you gauge your chosen niche’s feasibility and potential profitability.

5. Seek advice from industry experts 

Contact people already operating within your potential niche, attend industry events, or join relevant online communities. Experienced industry professionals can provide valuable insights and practical advice, helping you to avoid potential pitfalls and make informed decisions.

6. Make an informed decision based on your information

Review your research, reflect on your interests and skills, and consider the advice you’ve received. Choose the travel niche that best aligns with your passion, skills, and market demand. Remember, your chosen niche should be a viable business opportunity and something you’re excited about pursuing.

Embrace the power of niche tourism

Choosing a travel niche holds immense potential for success in the ever-evolving tourism industry. Embracing a niche that aligns with your interests and passions, and has a robust market demand, can lead to gratifying experiences and a thriving business.

The power of niche tourism lies in its ability to provide personalised, in-depth, and unique experiences beyond conventional tourism. As a franchisee with The Travel Franchise , you have the opportunity to harness this potential and can offer travel options that cater to specific interests, from adventure and outdoor activities, culinary explorations, and wellness retreats, to eco-tourism and more.

As you embark on this exciting journey in niche tourism, remember to continually monitor market trends, adapt to your customers’ evolving needs, and stay true to your passion. In doing so, you’re ready to create meaningful travel experiences that resonate with your audience and stand the test of time in this dynamic industry.

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Multi-Day Tour Operators 2021: Reshaping Supply Chains and Distribution

Executive summary, definition and core products, the tour operator value chain, digital marketing to become primary sales channel, rise of online booking platforms, the ongoing shake-up of supply chain roles, the new era of modernization and professionalization, covid-19 is driving new types of tours, the pandemic also accelerated many existing trip trends, collaboration and transparency across the industry, bankruptcies are coming, what will the new multi-day tour landscape look like as covid fades, related reports, report overview.

Perhaps no sector has been as badly hit by the pandemic as tour operators, given their intrinsic connection to cross-border travel as well as  human interaction. Based on our research and discussions with over a dozen executives we see an industry on the precipice of major changes. 

This report will focus on the global multi-day tour operator sector with a heavy emphasis on itinerary-based guided tours. We will also briefly touch upon packaged tour sales. Multi-day tours are one of the last truly offline spaces of the travel industry. But that isolation cannot last. This report will cover the structure of this complex and fragmented industry. We see an ecommerce revolution occurring in the next five years that will reshape the way the industry supplies and distributes its products. 

We will also discuss the impact of COVID-19 on the industry and how we see the types of tours offered, and the operators themselves, evolving as a result.

What You'll Learn From This Report

• How the complex supply chain of the multi-day tour industry works and the different kinds of businesses and tours that exist within it.
• How digitalization is disrupting the industry and where the biggest new opportunities exists
• How tour operators have responded to the pandemic
• What we think the new multi-day tour landscape will look like as COVID-19 fades

Executives Interviewed

• Matt Berna, Managing Director, North America for Intrepid Travel
• Murray Decker, Chief Executive Officer of Tour Amigo
• Gavin Delaney, CEO and Co-Founder of TravelStride
• Tom Hale, Founder and President of Backroads
• Travis Pittman, CEO and Co-Founder of TourRadar
• Catherine Prather, President of the National Tour Association
• Massimo Prioreschi, CEO of MT Sobek
• James Thornton, Chief Executive Officer of Intrepid Travel
• Gavin Tollman, President of The Travel Corporation
• Enrique Velasco Jr., Chief Commercial Officer of Coltur Peru
• With special thanks to Jared Alster and Tom Buckley, Co-Founders of Dune7 for their background contributions to this report

From our vantage point today it’s easy to take for granted that people across the world would use their leisure time to travel. But tourism — traveling for the pure enjoyment of it rather than for trade or religion — is a relatively recent development in the grand scheme of things. Most date the birth of modern mass tourism to Thomas Cook’s first package tour in 1841. 

But naturally a lot has changed since then. Today’s tour operators need to be constantly evolving to keep up with the changing face of modern travel, as Thomas Cook itself discovered the hard way — and that was before a global pandemic hit!

This report will focus on the global multi-day tour operator sector with a heavy emphasis on itinerary-based guided tours. We will also briefly touch upon packaged tour sales. Though smaller than the hotel or airline industry, anyone seeking to understand leisure travel overlooks tour operators at their own risk. Pre-COVID, 12% of U.S. leisure travelers booked a package tour and in the United Kingdom, 47% of household travel spending was on packages. In Southeast Asia, 60%+ of trips were packaged or semi-guided tours.

Perhaps no sector has been as badly hit by the COVID-19 pandemic as tour operators, given their intrinsic connection to cross-border travel and human interaction. Many operators are still seeing revenues down 80%+ even as other sectors like hotels and airlines are moving to a recovery. The pandemic changed the kind of tours that people want, driving them to seek the outdoors, small groups, and domestic trips.  

Based on our research and discussions with over a dozen executives, we see an industry on the precipice of major changes. It is one of the last truly offline spaces of the travel industry, but that isolation cannot last. There is a need for new modern tools and digital distribution, which presents a massive opportunity for new tech startups in the space. We see an ecommerce revolution occurring in the next five years, similar to what short-term rentals experienced following the success of Airbnb. This disruption will be compounded by the profound damage inflicted by the pandemic

In a sense, we already have a bit of a roadmap based on the past trajectory of other travel businesses that moved offline to online. We expect to see the emergence of a few major online booking sites and a new class of intermediary tech vendors to handle online bookings, channel distribution, and inventory management. Eventually this will lead to conflicts over direct distribution, repeat guests, and rate parity. 

We also believe that the pandemic will spur a winnowing of the ‘middle class’ of tour operators. A wave of bankruptcies and mergers is likely to come leading to consolidation in a handful of large players on one side and on the other side a long-tail of specialist operators that can niche down into their own unique offerings.

The Tour Operator Landscape

The multi-day tour industry is a big tent that incorporates a wide range of operators, suppliers, and distributors. Plus, at times it seems like every company in the space is running a slightly different business model. 

Our first step towards untangling this web of interconnected tour companies is to put a basic definition in place. 

Tour Operator : A tour operator is any company that sells two or more trip components together. At its most simple this could be a flight, hotel, or cruise sold together as a package. More complex tour operators bring together transportation and accommodation with local meals, activities, and guides. 

There are three core products sold by tour operators: packaged travel, itinerary-based tours, and small ship & adventure cruises.

Small Ship, Adventure, and River Cruising

Small expedition ships and river cruises are often included as within the tour operator space. The same travel agents that sell land-based multi-tours frequently also offer specialized cruises. Major booking sites like TourRadar have a prominent and well-stocked river cruise section. 

This space was traditionally dominated by specialists, like Azamara, Lindblad Expeditions, orViking River Cruises and they are some of the fastest growing businesses in the entire cruising sector. Arguably these smaller companies have as much, if not more, in common with a land-based tour operator than they do with the mega-ships of Carnival or Royal Caribbean. And to that point, we are now starting to see traditionally land-locked operators go to sea, with, for instance, Intrepid Travel now offers polar cruises and TUI owns several cruise ships.

Small ships do meet our definition of a tour operator as they bring together transportation, accommodation, activities and food into one package. Though in fact, if you stop and think about it, so does the entire cruise industry, regardless of ship size. In order to prevent this report becoming too big we will set aside all cruising — big and small — as its own topic to be covered in future research. The rest of this report will be focused on land-based multi-day tours. 

Packaged Travel

Packaged travel offers the distilled essence of our original tour operator definition. These trips bring together two or more components of travel supply, usually a flight and a hotel, and offer the combination together as a single new product to the consumer. The main selling propositions for this kind of product is typically value for money, convenience, or unique supply. Packages are also very commonly sold as an upsell for travel suppliers.

Given that there is no itinerary design included, this type of product is most popular among those looking to ‘fly and flop.’ These guests are typically looking to spend their leisure time off in a hot location with a cold beverage. And they want to access that vacation as easily and cheaply as possible. 

One of the main reasons why package tours can offer better pricing to a traveler than assembling the separate components of the trip themselves is because, from the point of view of a travel supplier, packagers operate as an opaque selling channel. 

Take hotels as an example: in a package the customer is quoted a single price for the entire bundle – flight + hotel + car – so the traveler can’t pinpoint how much they are paying per room night. This means that hotels can offer discounted rates without violating rate parity and undercutting first-party pricing. Tour operators tend to move high volumes so hotels are incentivized to offer bulk pricing for their business. Bed banks and global distribution systems often act as intermediaries providing wholesale supply to tour packagers. 

Convenience is another main driver of packaged tour sales. There is a large segment of consumers, especially in Europe, that don’t want the stress and confusion of booking all of their own travel arrangements. While those of us that have the most severe cases of the ‘travel bug’ may have turned booking travel into a hobby (perhaps many of you reading this), we can admit that this is possibly not the most fun part of a trip for an average vacationer. 

Another reason why a traveler might pick a packaged tour operator is because they can offer exclusive supply. Perhaps there is a resort that the operator owns and therefore the only way to visit it is by booking via a package. One of the best examples of this is TUI owns or operates over 400 hotels to ensure it can control the guest experience and provide access to rooms in supply-constrained markets like Cape Verde. It also owns nearly a dozen cruise ships and several charter airlines. Jet2 also follows a similar model with its own in-house airline that complements its vacation packages as it can offer uniquely convenient airlift for its guests only. 

Dynamic Packaging

One of the most exciting developments in the packaged tour space is dynamic packaging. This is a relatively new development in the packaged tour space driven by the growth of tech connectivity in the industry. The concept is that, rather than operators or agents manually pulling rates and building bundles by hand, algorithms automatically create package deals live during the guests’ shopping experience.

The next step for this market is the development of open platforms that plug into suppliers’ booking engines and allow dynamic packaging ‘as a service.’ For example Hotelbeds offers dynamic packaging via an API that could allow for this. Third-party platforms for bundling opens up a whole new world of plug-and-play upselling capabilities for travel suppliers that might not have traditionally considered a packaged tour product, although it also brings with it the potential for rate parity issues.

Airlines have long used packaged tours as an upsell to drive revenue and margin on the flight products they were already selling. These bundled upsells often accounted for a small slice of revenue. JetBlue in a 2018 investor day disclosed that its attach rate for JetBlue Vacation was just 1.5% of transactions. However these small percentages can add up to big dollars, like at LatAm which sold $22 million worth of tour packages in 2020, still less than 1% of group revenues. But the package revenue shares can go quite high, even at a traditional mainline carrier. Japan Airlines Group (JAL) — certainly not a discount packager like Jet2 — sold $485 million of packaged tours in 2021, accounting for ~10% of group revenue, according to IdeaWorks . 

Most airlines, if they sell tours at all, operate closer to Jetblue with the business driving a low single-digit share of group revenues. But JAL and other exceptions prove just how high the numbers could potentially get. Many airlines see today’s low package numbers as a mere starting point from which to build significant ancillary revenue streams to complement their unbundled retail strategies. Dynamic packaging has made this far more feasible and now airlines of all types from AirAsia, Allegiant, and  EasyJet to Emirates and American Airlines are selling tour packages. 

In the past, standing up a packaged tour offering at an airline would require a lot of time-consuming negotiations with hotel and car rental suppliers and even after all of that work, supply might still be limited. Airlines are in the core business of selling flights and not negotiating hotel wholesale rate contracts. With dynamic packaging airlines have the ability to tap into B2B platforms that can build bundles around their routes with relatively low lift. Bedbanks, like Hotelbeds , GDSs, like Amadeus , and tech vendors, like Switchfly all now offer dynamic packaging tools. This means that in today’s fast evolving landscape, airlines can add new routes and immediately be selling dynamic packages around that destination on launch.

The development of dynamic packaging further blurs the line between a tour operator, like a TUI, and an online agent, like Expedia. If JetBlue (supplier), TUI (operator), and Expedia (OTA) can all sell the same flight plus hotel package, what is fundamentally the difference between these three companies? 

We believe that online travel agencies like Expedia and Booking will be some of the biggest beneficiaries of the move towards dynamic packaging and the above blurring of industry lines. In a dynamic world, having the most possible permutations of trip choices is a key differentiator. And the OTAs sit in a sweet spot where they have strong pre-existing direct customer relationships while also having millions of hotel, flight, and car listings across the globe already live in their databases. When guests shop for a flight, the OTA can then offer them the upsell to add on a hotel room or car booking, all for one packaged rate. The discounted package price is calculated automatically on the fly based on the unique combination of travel choices selected by the shopper. The discount can come from specific wholesale rates pushed by the suppliers to the OTA or the booking site might just choose to algorithmically reduce its commission margin to encourage an upsell to a higher ticket purchase. They can also resell their inventory and technology as white-label dynamic packaging tools to other agents, hotels, and airlines. Both Booking Holdings and Expedia as well as smaller OTA players like lastminute.com have all been running experiments around the best way to sell tour packages. Expect to see more developments in this space.

Itinerary-Based Tours

Itinerary-based tours are, arguably, the heart of the tour operator industry. These tours go beyond simply bundling component travel products, adding on top of that core package a layer of local expertise and itinerary design. These tour operators will be the focus of the rest of this report. 

Price is not often the main selling point here. Rather, the convenience of not having to plan, the assistance of a guide, or the uniqueness of an itinerary is the main selling point. There is quite a lot of variety within products offered in this space. 

There are three main variables that we can use to define the main types of itinerary-based tour products:

• Fixed-Date Departures vs. Custom: Fixed date tours are offered with a pre-scheduled departure date and a set itinerary. Travelers buy these pre-built itineraries off the shelf. In contrast, custom tours are built to suit each individual guest with a unique schedule and departure date.
• Guided vs. Self-Guided: Though the classic image of a tour includes a guide leading a group, this does not always have to be the case. Self-guided tours are growing in popularity. In this case, the traveler buys a travel package that can include local connections, activities, meals, and suggested sights, but no in-person guide to contextualize the destination. 
• Group vs. Individual: This has more to do with the buying behavior of the guest than the actual itinerary on offer. In group travel, the entire tour is booked up by a single organization, perhaps a school group, work retreat, or a large family. On the other hand, individuals traveling book a single slot as part of a larger overall planned departure that combines many other individuals or a small group of travelers that don’t know each other.

We can mix and match these different variables, offering for instance a guided group fixed date tour or an individual self-guided custom tour. 

In addition to the main products on offer, there are two primary layers of operators in the itinerary-based space. One is based on the source market that the travelers buying the tour are departing from, and the other based on the destination market that the tour is taking place in. 

• Outbound Tour Operators: These tour operators service international travelers. They typically focus on a single origin market but often service multiple overseas destinations. Outbounds specialize in the market that travelers purchasing a tour are departing from and can provide native language marketing, sales, and customer support. They also have the cultural context to understand what kind of itineraries may appeal in their home market. Outbound businesses may operate their own in-destination trips or outsource the local logistics to a destination management company. An example would be a UK based tour company that offers British travelers a variety of trips across Asia and continental Europe. 
• Destination Management Companies: Also known as inbound tour operators or receiving tour operators. These operators receive inbound international travelers. They typically focus on a single destination market but often service travelers from multiple overseas origins. By specializing in a single destination, they have the local know-how and logistics to ‘make the trains run on time.’ They can sometimes use their local connections to source unique experiences. DMCs usually contract with an outbound tour operator but increasingly may sell direct to the overseas consumer. An example would be a local Peruvian tour operator that specializes in running Machu Picchu treks for guests coming from many different outbound operators and nations. 

The line between outbound and inbound operators has always been blurry and it is only getting hazier. The core distinction we will be making when referring to outbound operators vs. DMCs is the difference between retail-specialists focused on the source market and logistic-specialists focused on the destination. 

These terms originate from the cross-border market but, especially as local tourism boomed during the pandemic, have a place in domestic markets as well. While they may not technically be ‘outbound’ operators when within the same country, there can still often be a separation between the retail tour operators and their domestic DMC partners or subsidiaries (though one could even argue New York City might as well be an outbound foreign market from the perspective of a Utah river guide).

Illustrative Example of the difference and connections between Outbound Tour Operators and Destination Management Companies.

With the baseline definitions and products understood, let’s examine the lifecycle of how a tour is created and comes to market in the land-based tour operator space.

Our model of the tour operator chain has three layers of value add. It starts with the supply of core travel products like hotels, flights, trains, and cars. These ‘raw materials’ of the tour might come from direct contracting with an airline or via a reseller like a bed bank. Some fully integrated tour operators  even own their own charter airline or resort properties. 

The next layer is the tour operator itself. “The tour operator is the manufacturer,” says Catherine Prather, President of the National Tour Association. Unlike a hotel or airline that is fundamentally anchored to a physical asset, tour operators sell a value-added travel service not tied to a single tangible product. By that we mean that tour companies ‘assemble’ unique trips by taking building blocks from other travel suppliers and adding an additional layer of intangible value-add. That value-add might be local expertise, cheap bundled pricing, or peace of mind. This transforms the raw materials into a more valuable new product which they can resell into the marketplace. 

We distinguish here between tour packagers that are doing pure bundling and itinerary-based tours where an additional layer of in-destination curation and expertise is used in the ‘manufacturing’ process. A company like TUI is still a multi-day tour operator at this tier. It ‘manufactures’ its own tour products and retails them through first-party channels and also re-sells through agents and other distribution channels. But the tour products it offers are mainly a bundling of different supply components. In contrast, a G Adventures both bundles the supply components and adds an additional design component by planning daily activities and arranging for local guides. 

There is also the opportunity in this layer for wholesalers and retailers. Specialist DMCs often design local tours that can be resold to larger retail travel agencies that can tap into their local market of outbound travelers. 

The final layer is that of distribution. There are three primary channels. First is the direct channel driven by in-house sales and marketing efforts. Then there are the two major intermediaries in the space, online booking sites, which operate on both commission and advertising models, and travel agents. It should be noted that tours are one of the last great bastions of traditional travel agents (along with business travel). A very significant volume of tour products is distributed by the large travel consortia and even, in some countries, by brick-and-mortar retailers. This is because tours are one of the most complex travel products, a result of the above ‘manufacturing’ process, making a human intermediary much more valuable. 

A hotel room might have a handful of core attributes (star rating, price, location, room type) and several more secondary ones (Wi-Fi, pool, view, floor height). But even the most basic tour can have dozens or more key attributes (departure date, size of group, length of trip, itinerary variations, level of physical activity, type of accommodation, age of participants, etc.). This creates difficulty to code for tours in the back end, as well as for consumers to shop and compare multi-day tours. This has made it doubly hard for online booking sites to take off in the space; however, these challenges are slowly but surely being overcome and digital platforms are growing in prominence as distributors of tours. 

We understand that we have tried to simplify a very complex space and so there may be many nits to pick with this diagram. But we think that these core mental models of three main tour products (packages, itineraries, and cruises) sold via layers of value (supply, operation, and distribution) is a useful way to help decipher the tangle of different operators in this industry. 

A lot of the confusion in the space seems to stem from the many different permutations of how vertically integrated an organization chooses to be and what permutation of products they choose to sell. But by building this mental model of the industry we can better see past the superficial differences of each specific company. A lot of the variation we see across tour companies is often reflective of different choices about what parts of the value chain to vertically integrate and what products to sell. But within each specific part of the value chain in isolation, business models are often more similar than they may first appear. 

For example, tour operators that run their own in-destination programs vs. ones that outsource to a DMC are not two fundamentally different types of tour companies but are instead making different decisions about how vertically integrated they want their organizations to be. Or a travel agent that sells tour packages is best thought of as vertical integration between the ‘manufacturing’ stage of packaging process and a distribution channel, rather than as a wholly separate kind of company from a tour operator with a large first-party salesforce.

Technology Shakes Up The Multi-Day Tour Industry

It is clear from our research that a wave of technological change is washing over tour operators as we write. Tours are one of the last major travel industry categories still heavily built off analog tools and manual processes. Catalogs and phone calls are frequently a part of the tour sales cycle. 

Research from the Adventure Travel Trade Association (ATTA) suggests that just 8% of bookings came via online travel agents. And that more than two-thirds of bookings came from some form of offline channel. Though this was just a small sample and only representative of a niche type of tour operator, it speaks to just how small online distribution platforms are in this space. 

Travel has attracted significant investor attention — nearly $30 billion of funding over the last five years — much of it focused on the digital transformation of the industry. Online platforms, which started in just airlines and hotels, have pushed into nearly every travel market. Nowadays practically every sub-sector from short-term rentals and business travel to day tours and packaged tours has either a major public company or a “unicorn” private startup valued at more than $1B, oftentimes both. All that is except for multi-day tours. 

Tours and in-destination activities have actually been one of the fastest growing categories of travel investment, raising nearly $900 million in 2019, but almost all of these dollars seem to focus on single-day, rather than multi-day tours. Three of the largest startups in multi-days tours — Evaneos, Tourland, and TourRadar, have collectively raised under $300 million in capital while activity OTA Klook has raised $720 million by itself.

Part of this is the challenge of marketing complex tours online as well as resistance from incumbents content with the old ways of doing business. But changing expectations among employees, supplies, and customers, accelerated by COVID-19, are driving digital innovation to the fore in the sector. 

This digital ‘splash’ will have ripple effects up and down the entire tour value chain, affecting everything from the smallest on-the-ground guide to the largest corporation. Gavin Tollman, President of The Travel Corporation, one of the largest tour operators in the world, believes that, “digital has really been one of the greatest evolutionary changes during [the pandemic] for us.” And being the last major travel sector to digitize does have a silver lining: by drawing on lessons from other sectors, we have a pretty good road map for how the industry may be transformed.

As with hotels and airlines, digital marketing will only continue to grow in importance to the industry. Naturally, this means that search engine marketing budgets will have to grow. 

This is especially true in the U.S. market. Matt Berna, Managing Director, North America for Intrepid Travel, explained that, “[in America] We spend the lion’s share, easily 80% of our budget, on direct digital marketing strategies.” Although Berna caveats that in other markets, like Australia, travel agents and retail storefronts remain key marketing tools, that a large tour operator like Intrepid is so heavily invested in digital marketing should be a sign of the times.  

But the rise of digital marketing goes beyond performance marketing. For instance, Search engine optimization is arguably just as important and when done right is not cheap either. “We’ve done a lot with SEO,” says Berna, “building a lot of new content, writing content, building out our pages and website.” 

Digital marketing also involves building brand recognition at the top of a sales funnel moving online, with brand advertising shifting to platforms like YouTube and ‘word of mouth’ being spread on social media. In fact, Gavin Delaney, CEO and cofounder of online tour site Travelstride told us that 90%+ of customers start their tour research online. 

Speaking to the power of social media, Tollman told us, “if you said to me, what has been one of our greatest success stories in the last year? It has been the use of social channels to tell our stories in a robust way that people can look and see. When the world was shut down and we were still operating trips, how powerful it was to show people that they could still go and show them what we were actually doing.”

Directly linked to the growth in digital marketing techniques is the rise of online booking platforms for multi-day tours. That’s primarily startup websites like TourRadar, Tourlane, Evaneos, and TravelStride. Today, these come in two flavors: commission-based agents (e.g. TourRadar) and advertising-based listing sites (e.g. TravelStride). There are still few true metasearch sites that search other online booking sites due to complexities of itineraries in the space. 

Complex itineraries make it difficult to convert online intent to online bookings and Travelstride’s Delaney says that two-thirds of the industry still ends up being booked over the phone or via another direct channel through an operator or agent. “One thing to keep in mind,” he explains, is that “a hotel and a flight, they have five key data points… a departure date, an arrival date, a return flight, a price, a seat type, right?” And while alternative accommodations may expand that to 10 data points, Delaney points out that, “In a multi-day tour, typically, we have 125 data elements… does day three include breakfast? What are you doing in the afternoon of day four? What’s the average physical level? How much walking is there? Is this appropriate for an age group? … [Multi-day tours are] a step function, more complex in terms of how you organize that information to make it useful for travelers to search and feel confident enough to book.” 

Adding to the difficulty of driving online sales is that these are expensive bookings, the average transaction at TourRadar is $2,500. But Travis Pittman, CEO and cofounder of the online booking site says that it regularly takes “bookings up to $10,000, $20,000.” In contrast the average transaction on Airbnb is ~$400. 

Despite these challenges, online booking sites are making strong headway. We note that large online travel transactions are becoming increasingly common. To continue the previous example, despite its low overall average transaction size, Airbnb’s fastest growing category is long-term stays of 28+ days which can easily run up to $2,000 – $3,000 ticket sizes, all sold online. 

And as aggregators of both tour supply and online demand, multi-day tour OTAs are uniquely positioned to win in a digital marketing heavy environment. We believe that the industry will inevitably close the gap between the 90% of travelers that start their searches online versus the third of travelers that end up completing this process by booking online. 

For starters, consumers are increasingly coming to trust these online platforms. To that end TourRadar’s Pittman highlighted that, “a key part of TourRadar has always been reviews…  that’s how we began really, and that’s stayed throughout.” Those reviews do more than just establish credibility with guests, they also help from a search engine optimization standpoint. 

Reviews paired with the wide range of tour supply on the platform, means that an online booking site will probably be a highly ranked organic result for high intent tour searches. This also drives a “billboard effect” where online users that are “passing by” while searching for travel inspiration repeatedly come across the same few multi-day tour aggregator and review sites. 

The guest starts by searching for a tour in Peru but also considers one in Columbia, and ultimately shifts focus to a Costa Rican trip. The destination specific brands will change each time, but TourRadar, TravelStride, and others will keep popping up. This familiarity drives trust in the platforms and makes users more likely to eventually book via an online intermediary, even if not for the destination they were originally searching for. 

These platforms also have an advantage in online distribution by means of the wide range of supply that they aggregate. This comprehensive supply lets them drive repeat customers who want to explore a variety of different tours and destinations. An Argentinian tour specialist will struggle to drive guest loyalty because as Delaney points out, “even if you have the best possible trip, most people won’t go back to Argentina twice in a lifetime.”

It’s more than that, customers can be quite picky about even simple things like departure dates. Says Delaney, “the vast majority [of tour customers], even when they have a great time with that tour operator, … It’s just like, oh, I really liked Intrepid, but their itinerary dates don’t quite match up and G Adventures has a very similar one but their dates … match up with what I want better.” This mercenary behavior plays into the hands of online booking sites and other aggregators like travel agents who have cross-brand supply and allow for comparison shopping across dates and prices for similar itineraries. 

This means that all else equal, the same exact customer probably has a higher lifetime value to an online booking site than they do to a regional tour operator. Pittman emphasized that, “CRM [customer relationship management] and bringing customers back is an extremely important part of this journey.” Accordingly, TourRadar and similar sites can ‘afford’ to outbid regional tour operators in performance marketing because even though they may end up paying more in dollar terms, they could still well be earning the same or an even better ROI on their ad dollars than what the regional specialist was targeting. 

The final piece of the puzzle comes from the focus and size of an online travel agency. As we have seen with flight and accommodation OTAs, these booking sites eventually grow to have larger marketing budgets than most individual tour operators can hope to muster. This, paired with the above ROI efficiencies, let online booking sites win more online performance marketing search auctions, more consistently than other operators, driving traffic. 

All of this means that if, as we believe, the amount of multi-day tours being booked online grows, then the relative importance of these OTAs is also likely to grow.

In our previous section on the tour operator value chain, we discussed the difference between local wholesale tour operators and outbound retail tour operators. In the past these two businesses had a mutually beneficial relationship. Running dozens of local operations was impractical for the retailer while for a local operator, in Morocco say, it would have been unthinkable to directly market tours abroad in multiple countries.

But the accessibility of online marketing and digital distributors has upended this relationship. It has opened a whole new world of opportunities that were never before possible while also bringing with it a whole new slew of challenges. “We’re seeing DMCs also work with us now,” says TourRadar’s Pittman. “… They’re [DMCs] seeing the opportunity to go direct to market. So they’re not just reliant on these bigger operators to get to [market]”.

That local DMC in Morocco can now list its tours on an online booking site and collect bookings from across the globe. Though it will have to pay a commission – likely 15% to 25% –  a DMC can now cut out the intermediary and bring those retail margins in-house. All of this without a direct booking engine! If the Moroccan DMC chooses to invest in an English-language webpage and a modest AdWords budget it could be in the direct tour business across the U.S., Canada, UK, and Australia almost overnight. 

“What’s happening is that the producer and the consumer are getting closer and closer and closer,” says Enrique Velasco Jr., Chief Commercial Officer of Coltur Peru, a local DMC. “They [the producer and consumer] can start speaking to each other. Whereas before, they were thousands of miles apart, there was no communication between them.”

Wholesalers are now competing directly against their retail partners. And to make matters more confusing, many of these retail tour operators also distribute through travel agents and OTAs. That means that the same exact tour could well be marketed to the consumer in four different places (direct via wholesaler, direct via retailer, indirect via OTA, and indirect via travel agent). 

Adding in another layer of complexity, Pittman told Skift that TourRadar plans to launch a new platform for redistribution by the end of the year that will, “basically allow any third party to distribute the inventory that we have… the GDS of multi-day [tours].” The ability to push the same tours through as many distribution channels as possible will never have been easier. 

On the one hand, this breadth of channels means more shots on goal and more chances for the right guest to find the right tour. As TTC’s Tollman puts it, “Consumers are going to buy travel where they want to buy travel. And we will ensure that we are in those places for them.”

But on the other hand, imagine a physical store putting the same exact products right next to each other on the shelf, just with slightly modified packaging. Each variation with different pricing and margins. That would never fly in the real world, the consumer would optimize for lowest price and the manufacturer for best margin until only one product remained. 

The main reason it works with tours is because of confusion in the space and unsophisticated customers that prevent true comparison shopping. Travel agent clients today are unlikely to be comparison shopping with online travel agents or direct channels. And guests are often afraid to book complex and expensive itineraries online or with a party they don’t have a pre-existing relationship with. 

Compounding this, many tour operators – both wholesale and retail – are heavily reliant on third-party sales. Though they see the potential of direct, it is currently too small a part of their business to be self-sufficient and they are afraid that too sharp a pivot towards direct will alienate distributors and result in a net overall decline in sales. 

But we would argue that fear and opacity are not a strong foundation to build a business on. The clear trend in online shopping is towards more transparency across products and prices and for the rising generation of customers to be more comfortable with making large ticket purchases online. Plus, over time, tour operators will become more confident in the size and stability of their direct channels and more willing to confront distributors over commissions. 

We think that the blurring of industry lines will drive several reactions. It will cause distributors to delineate their value add more clearly, with travel agents for instance retrenching into high-touch luxury service with many add-ons and complex arrangements. Wholesalers will be able to compete on price as direct-to-consumer wholesale clubs like Costco do today. And retailers will be driven to vertically integrate so that they can offer more destinations, in turn driving repeat guests, and potentially also create more exclusive supply arrangements so that they cannot be undercut or resold by other players. 

James Thornton of Intrepid told us that, “I think we’ll increasingly be more vertically integrated as an organization. In 80% of the cases it’s our DMCs operating the products that we sell [and] you’ll see us potentially move into other aspects of verticals. It might be more accommodation, it might be having exclusivity of certain routes or departures. You might see us have more small ships, for example.”

Let’s face it, most founders of a tour operator didn’t jump into the business out of their love for programming. They did it for the love of travel! But with the world going the digital direction we describe above, the need to modernize and professionalize many tour operators, especially smaller ones, is becoming increasingly urgent.

Many operators still keep the details of their tours logged on excel or even pen and paper. And we know of operators and travel agents that need to make multiple phone calls to confirm a booking. According to Tourism Research Australia, 88% of bookings are still made manually through email booking requests and offline methods. A survey by ATTA found that just 50% of operators they surveyed have an online reservation system that takes credit cards. This won’t fly in the coming era of tour operators. 

In order to drive effective direct to consumer capabilities, tour operators will need to develop a full technology stack. This includes responsive websites with SEO in mind, booking engines to capture sales, customer relationship management software to track guest inquiries and bookings and MarTech tools for performance advertising, retargeting, and email marketing, among other techniques. 

James Thornton told Skift that Intrepid Travel wants to have “more focus on customer experience on the website. [We are] trying to improve the overall digital experience both at the point where people come into the brand and transact with us, but then also when they come on the trip more of the documentation being served up in a digital format, the feedback loops being in a digital format. And that just helps us as an organization be able to react more real-time than previously we would.” 

Shockingly to us, Intrepid Travel only installed its first CRM system just three years ago. This is a standard sales and marketing tool for major corporations and Intrepid’s late adoption of this software speaks broadly to the industry’s need to modernize its tech stacks. 

We should note that Intrepid still managed to attract 460,000 customers a year and a 25% repeat rate without CRM software. Pretty good. But it could be better, and looked at from a glass half full perspective there is a huge amount of untapped potential ahead for Intrepid to grow into as it modernizes its sales operations. 

Even though Massimo Prioreschi, CEO of MT Sobek, a boutique mountaineering and outdoor adventure company, runs a smaller business than Thornton, he too has been investing in new technology. “In the last 18 months we’ve revamped our reservation system, phone system, CRM, and guest portal” he says. “This time of fallow, where there weren’t guests traveling”, Prioreschi explains, “[was an] opportunity to upgrade our technology. And so I think in five years, our guests will feel this ease of dealing with us.”

Above these core investments, a particularly exciting tech development we heard about came from The Travel Corporation, which “started using robots for all yield management,” according to its President Tollman. “We have dynamic pricing on all of our trips,” he explained. “And what that has done for us is … if costs are added to [a tour], we can adjust them dynamically as we move. So we are not stuck with flat pricing, which is one of the most high-risk features of the old way that tour operators used to work.”

This kind of revenue management is industry standard in the airline and seeing growing adoption across hotels. Based on this cross-industry trend, while TTC may be an early adopter, we expect more tour operators to adopt similar pricing tech. 

And all of this is just on the direct-to-consumer side. 

The technology for business-to-business (B2B) distribution is evolving as well. “Historically it was PDF and Excel files,” Berna explains. “[Peak DMC would] get a quote and then they’d send it to an Intrepid salesperson, who would make it look good and send it to the client.” That approach won’t fly anymore. Berna says that, “technology is going to improve a lot … [to allow us to] provide quicker quotes, more accurate quotes, better looking quotes so that DMC can work directly with those tour operators.” 

Tour operators aren’t exempt either as they have distribution partners of their own – online and offline travel agents – that will be demanding modern booking capabilities. For instance, Tollman told us that The Travel Corporation is, “evolving our APIs to expand and let agents actually get even more content, and more content that’s relevant. Not just dates and rates, but all robust content there too.” Interestingly, he sees potential for APIs to expand the company’s distribution reach even outside the bounds of traditional channels, teasing that “We are also looking at a number of distribution channels, which typically have never sold multi-day tours.”

And although the largest operators in the world are starting to evolve, the reality is that most small and medium sized tour companies lag significantly behind. Here’s a striking fact: Murray Decker, the CEO of multi-day tech vendor Tour Amigo, told us that, “of all the operators we’ve had discussions with, about 95% of them actually don’t have a dedicated multi-day tour [backend] system, or are using a mix of multiple systems that are designed for other travel business (day tours, activities, etc).”

If there is to be a post-COVID gold rush in multi-day tours then these back-end vendors, like Tour Amigo, are selling the pick-axes. Inventory management, content management, and booking engines are part of a standard digital retail tech stack in airlines, hotels, short-term rentals, and most recently day tours. Not only do they allow for operators to keep up with evolving distribution channels, but there is a major book-keeping and business management benefit as well.

Digitizing inventory allows for more advanced sales analytics, quicker account reconciliation, fewer back-end staff, and reduced errors. Murray estimates that at large travel agencies and tour operators the error budget due to manual loading mistakes can run into the millions of dollars.

The path forward is clear to us: DMCs and tour operators alike will need to buy or develop new back-end systems that can deliver live pricing and availability. Intrepid’s Matt Berna reflects that, “I used to talk to product managers and ops directors about how great our products were. Now I talk to data science engineers.” 

These backend systems and APIs are increasingly table stakes to participate in the current digital tour operator landscape. But they don’t come cheap and an unfortunate reality is that, especially in the wake of COVID-19, many operators will not have the cash on hand to upgrade these systems, shutting them out of modern tour distribution. We see this creating a class of have and have nots, especially in the more commoditized product offerings. This will drive some to sell out to more sophisticated tech platforms or simply to fall behind and go out of business.

The Impact of COVID-19 on the Multi-Day Tour Sector

Up until this point in the report we have discussed the structure of the industry and how long-term changes in technology are causing tour operator business strategies to evolve. In this section we will discuss the more immediate changes caused by COVID-19. This includes both new trends in the actual tour products being offered, as well as how some industry-wide practices and standards are evolving in the wake of the pandemic.

“We are going through a seismic shift in our world,” says Gavin Tollman, “the fact is we’ve entered just an entire new world.” COVID-19 has caused a dramatic shift in what kind of tours that travelers take. Some of it is due to changing preferences, such a desire for more cleanliness and safety, while other changes are due to government orders such as the closing of borders. Regardless of the reason, tour operators have responded by creating new types of tours for the pandemic era.

Rise in Domestic Tourism

The biggest new trend to emerge from the pandemic is the new emphasis on domestic tourism. At Intrepid Travel, Berna tells us that, “before COVID, about 60% of our customers worldwide came from Australia. … It’s flipped now. The US is our biggest booking market for Intrepid worldwide… 50% now of all travelers are American.”

Tollman of The Travel Corporation concurs. “Our domestic US travel brands [are doing] unbelievably well. Our domestic Australia brands, pre their last shutdown, [were also] unbelievably well… One is really beginning to see whether it’s  in South Africa, the U.S., Australia, or the UK, domestic first, near-destination second, and international third.”

Focus on Sustainability 

The other major new shift has been towards a more thoughtful understanding of travel’s impact on ourselves and the world around us. “If you said, what is fundamentally changed,” Tollman asks, “it’s going to be sustainability.” His family of tour brands are making significant shifts to be more respectful of the communities they visit and have pledged to be carbon neutral by 2022. 

James Thornton, the CEO of Intrepid Travel was emphatic about this point. “Increasingly people want to be purchasing and working for and buying from companies that are truly sustainable, not companies that say that they’re sustainable, but companies that really are and have the independent accreditations to back that up,” he explained. Intrepid Travel is the world’s largest certified travel B-Corp and has been carbon neutral since 2010. 

This is not just a COVID shift but a generational one, according to Thornton. “Increasingly millennials and gen Z are wanting the higher standards of environmental and social expectations when they travel. … Younger people are expecting brands to reflect their own values and particularly think about things like climate change.”

The shift towards sustainability doesn’t have to come at the cost of the trip experience, and if executed thoughtfully, can even enhance the overall experience. Thornton gives the example of a trip to Cambodia which would typically have an internal connecting flight. But the airport is a generic and stressful experience. “What we’ve now done,” he explains, “is remove the flight aspect of that trip and introduce a boat trip. One, it’s a more relaxing experience. Two, it’s a more local experience. Three, it emits a tiny proportion of carbon by comparison.” 

Thornton also believes that demand for domestic travel can continue due to its climate impacts. “I think there’s going to be more questioning about just jumping on a plane to fly to the other side of the world, to go there for a week,” says Thornton. “I think you’ll see a trend towards people traveling closer to home more frequently, but then when they go for longer trips overseas, those trips will probably be a bit longer in nature to factor in the carbon emissions.”

Small Groups

There has also been a shift towards smaller groups, custom itineraries, and more high-end accommodation. This kind of travel provides extra space, flexibility, and exclusivity which are perceived as cleaner and safer, the ultimate luxuries during pandemic. 

But rather than this being a new trend introduced by lockdown, Catherine Prather of the National Tour Association explains, the move towards small groups, “was already happening prior to COVID and that’s really been amplified [by the pandemic]. I think that’s something that’s really just here to stay because people were already wanting to have a smaller group experience, but that was being driven by not only generational changes, but also by people wanting those authentic experiences. It’s easier and better to have that with a smaller group.” She also highlights luxury travel as, “something that was already happening.” But now, Prather says that “People equate luxury with safety and cleanliness and security.”

Active Vacations

Another big COVID-19 winner has been active and outdoor vacations. This was already a fast growing trip type but the perceived safety of the fresh air and the backlash to lockdown really poured a lot of gas onto the fire for these tours. 

Tom Hale, Founder and President of Backroads, a leading bike and active tour operator, told Skift that, “demand for active travel was already growing pre-pandemic, and COVID has accelerated the trend with people wanting to spend more time outside in a safe and active environment.” 2022 bookings at Backroads are currently 70% above 2019 levels, its best historical year ever. 

Further reinforcing the above domestic trend, Hale spoke to how Backroads quickly pivoted to add domestic capacity, leading to them taking “20% more guests on trips in the US than we ever had before.” Hale sees the trend towards smaller, active trips continuing even as the pandemic fades. “We expect to see huge demand for Europe and other international locations in 2002] … and predict that … 2023 will see unprecedented numbers of active travelers.”

Outside of product offering, another major industry transformation due to COVID-19 that many spoke to us about was a new sense of teamwork and transparency across the industry. 

“There has been a lot more collaboration,” says Prather, “hey, this tour can go, but I really need five extra people. Do you have clients who may want to experience or go on this trip?” This is partially born out of a sense of camaraderie brought about by the near-death experience of COVID and a realization that it will be a group effort to keep the sector afloat. 

“People are a lot more open,” agrees Matt Berna. “What I mean by that is DMCs will go to the partners and say, ‘Here’s our costs. You can see them, but I need to make 5%.’ … Nowadays, it’s open books. We’re all in this together. We need to all make money, but we also need to see where our costs lie… That trust piece I think that still will continue.”

There is also an element of working together to develop best practices and industry standards in the face of a rapidly shifting disease picture. “There definitely has been a lot more sharing of information,” Prather explains, “How are you dealing with this? Are you asking for proof of vaccination? Are you masking on your tours?”

The final reality of COVID is that despite many operators’ best efforts – all of their cost cutting, pivots to new tours, and industry-wide collaboration – many will not make it through this crisis. There have been far fewer bankruptcy cases than expected, but we believe that this is mostly because of emergency funding, lenient creditors, and forgiving customers. All of this will soon begin to wear out. 

Prather warns, “I don’t think we’ve seen the shakeout as much yet in terms of true consolidation because of the PPP loans [A U.S. small business aide loan] and idle loans and things like that, that have helped people survive.” Gavin Delany of TravelStride goes even further, “there definitely is going to be significant consolidation. A number [of tour operators] have already gone out of business, mostly smaller ones.”

Many businesses went into hibernation but may find that restarting is more challenging than expected.  For instance, many tour operators’ first trips back will be 2020 tours rescheduled into 2021. And while it must feel good to be operating again, the timing of cashflows can be deadly. There are few new dollars coming in the door as these were mostly previously paid for, but staff salaries and suppliers need to be paid all the same. This further draws down already diminished cash reserves. 

Delaney says that, “I’m actually sort of surprised at this point. I would have thought more companies would have gone out of business. So up until this point, they’ve been fairly resilient.” He points out another challenge of coming out of hibernation. “I think part of the challenge is the rebound will actually be slowed a little bit by the fact that [tour operators] cut all these sales staff. So in June, pre Delta variant, we had this surge in interest. People wanted to book trips and there were not enough people to answer the phone and answer questions.” As with seemingly every other industry, tour operators are being plagued by labor shortages and supply chain backups.

There is also a great disparity between the types of services that tour operators provide and the kinds of regions they service. Those with a domestic outdoor focus are obviously doing better than an operator that specialized in international study abroad, which has been totally shut down for the foreseeable future.

On the whole though, revenues are still down dramatically. the ATTA, in a survey of adventure tour operators found that 74% of respondents had seen a 80% or greater reduction of revenue in 2020 compared to 2019. And these are the outdoor operators that are supposed to be doing the best! Prather says that “our members are telling us… It won’t be until 2023 that we will really see a full recovery in terms of getting back to 2019 levels.” 

And that’s a long way for a struggling tour operator to make it alone. Add in the investment required to digitize and the scale increasingly needed for effective distribution, and the hurdles become insurmountable for some.  In that same ATTA survey, 15% of tour operators surveyed said they are possibly closing down, 3% are definitely shuttering. 28% surveyed were interested in being acquired by or merging with another company. 

As bad as things have been for tour operators, we believe that we have yet to see the full wave of bankruptcies and consolidation to come in the multi-day tour industry. 

Overall, we believe it is possible to look at how flights and accommodations were transformed in the wake of their digital revolutions in the early 2000s as a road map for the multi-day tour industry. 

The flip side of the rise of digital marketing and online booking sites is that, as many an airline or hotel discovered, tour products will become increasingly commoditized. Both OTAs and Google search encourage suppliers to fit their tours into the neat boxes drawn up by online distributors. And comparison search engines necessarily require that the more unique aspects of a tour be minimized in favor of the more standardized feature sets like departure date, price, length, and destination. 

Matt Berna, Managing Director, North America for Intrepid Travel told us that, “the reason I say that the price is becoming more important is some of these OTAs.” Berna clarified that, “we like to work with review sites like the TourRadars of the world where [the sort algorithm] goes by customer reviews… whereas [if] we go just to a platform that sells a price only, it’s going to be really, really competitive and it may not be worth the business for us.”

Commoditization, in which the main means of competition becomes price, is exactly what the rise of digital distribution did to airlines, hotels, and alternative accommodations. True, tours are more complex products, and therefore may never become quite as commoditized, but the direction of the trend is clear to us. 

Using this as a benchmark, we see four broad paths forward for tour operators to follow in response to the rise of digital channels and online and the commoditization it will bring.

1) Embrace Commoditization : If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, as the saying goes. Rather than try to fight it, some tour operators will choose to compete on price and make up for lower margins with volume. Call it the Walmart strategy.

Sometimes customers just want, “your bread and butter trips” says Berna. Berna explains that Intrepid works very hard to differentiate even these trips based on quality, but admits that, “once you get into that competitive set, we’re all selling the Inca trails… of course, the only way to really compete sometimes is the price.” Intrepid, as one of the largest tour operators in the world, has the scale necessary to run trips like this. 

But very few other operators will be able to grow to the size necessary to win at this game. Expect only the largest operators in the world to pursue this strategy. That leads us directly into the next industry shift we expect to see.  

2) The Big Get Bigger Through M&A: There’s safety in numbers, and more importantly, operating leverage. We discussed in the earlier online booking section how these sites have a scale advantage in performance digital marketing. The airlines and hotels both found the best way to compete was to consolidate to build this same marketing advantage for themselves. Call it the Marriott/Starwood strategy. 

By consolidating, the biggest players broaden their supply choices which makes it easier to drive loyalty program customers who consistently book direct and have higher lifetime values, justifying higher upfront marketing acquisition costs. This makes large-scale businesses better able to compete with booking sites in performance marketing. Plus, with growing name recognition they can invest in brand marketing which drives new customers and makes performance spend more effective.

Consolidated suppliers also have more leverage to negotiate lower commissions with travel agents, both online and offline. Finally, with larger balance sheets comes the ability to control exclusive and/or scarce resources that can only be sold through exclusive first-party channels. By this we mean sources of unique supply like national park permits, private islands, or wholly owned hotels and resorts, which are very expensive to acquire or develop.

3) The Boutique Route: For many, competing on price and volume is a race to the bottom that only the biggest can win. Like with the boutique hotel movement, we think there is a great opportunity for tour operators to de-commoditize their product by providing very high service or specializing in a very specific niche.

The niche for these ‘boutique’ tour operators can be anything from a specific region, a type of tour (e.g., mountaineering or biking), an affinity group (e.g., photography or cooking) or a style of travel (e.g., train travel or sailing). But the key is that it needs to be something where the operator can be differentiated and best in class. By committing to a niche, it precludes growing to a large size, but it means that you can be the world leader in your particular area and attract direct bookings looking for this unique offering. Even better, because fewer other operators commit to any given niche there will be less competition and these boutique businesses can have stronger pricing power.

A good example of this is MT Sobek which has a 53 year pedigree in mountaineering and adventure travel that started in Nepal. Massimo Prioreschi, its CEO, told us that, “[adventure travel is] a tough business to scale… It’s hard to manufacture deep knowledge and excellence in guides.” He explains, “I’ve been at companies before that were very scale driven. And [MT Sobek] isn’t, it’s quality driven, it’s connection driven, it’s relationship driven. And that really, I think that’s why we’re still here.” Prioreschi has turned the slow process of grooming a mountain guide into a competitive moat for his business by embracing the boutique nature of their organization. As a result MT Sobek sees 90% direct traffic and 75% of their business comes from repeat guests or word of mouth. 

4) Embrace The Complexity of B2B: In response to an increasingly competitive B2C market, some may drop it altogether and pursue the still largely offline B2B market. Coltur Peru , a local DMC is an example of this. As a result of COVID it reorganized to drop its lower-end consumer offerings. Now Coltur focuses largely on complex custom group tours and special interest itineraries. 

“There’s this mass hysteria that everybody has to be with one foot in B2B and one foot in B2C and if you’re not in B2C, then you’re going to die,” says Coltur’s Chief Commercial Officer Enrique Velasco Jr. Dismissing this conventional wisdom, he says that the company is, “trying to focus in market segments that do need the middleman. That segment … might, as a percentage of the whole industry… become smaller. But it’s not going to die.” Velasco sees the challenges incumbent in planning a custom itinerary as a competitive moat, telling us, “the more complex what you’re looking for, the more we stand apart from our competition, that’s what we believe.” 

This is akin to the strategies pursued by business travel agencies which, up until COVID-19 hit, had continued to grow by providing high-touch service to large organizations while leisure offline travel agencies shrunk in the face of D2C challengers. There is still a lot of value to be had in planning high-value and complex tours. The addressable market may be smaller than the mass-market D2C opportunity, but those that can successfully hang onto their slice of the pie will be rewarded with stable cash flows. 

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9 niche travel agency examples

Updated Jul 09, 2024 • 10 min read

In this article

Benefits of choosing a niche

Niches for travel agencies to specialize in, final thoughts.

The tourism market is huge, but fiercely competitive. The leading names are established tourist agencies that have been operating for decades with thousands of clients, so it can feel daunting to even enter the field. The good thing is that you don’t have to squeeze your shoulders to fit in, and can instead reach a different market by starting a niche travel agency.

Specializing in a certain niche can give you an advantage. It allows you to carve a space for yourself in the industry and puts you in a good position to attract clients. It allows you to avoid competing with the giants, while still appearing as a worthy service provider. Here’s how it works.

Credibility. As with every narrow specialization, travel niche operators have the advantage of expertise: specialists know everything about organizing niche tours while regular travel agents take a much broader and less detailed approach. Chances are, you will know much more about your specialism than your big competitors, and you can pitch yourself as a trusted and experienced provider.

Deep expertise. In other words, this narrow expertise helps establish your reputation. When looking for a very specific type of experience, tourists are likely to search for the best niche travel agency for their needs — the one that has provided that perfect experience regularly, for many years. Deep expertise gives you the upper hand in comparison to big travel companies.

Loyal audience. Needless to say, as a niche travel company, your audience will be smaller, but it will also be much more loyal and invested in your tours. This will allow you to take a personalized approach, which will increase customer loyalty even further. You may wish to target the Gen Z travelers, cater to female audiences, or focus on older travelers — more focus means more attention to details big travel companies might overlook.

Higher returns. Specialization and customer loyalty can also allow you to earn more money: travelers who are looking for a niche experience are often willing to pay more for exactly what they need — and your company may be the only one able to offer them that.

Now, if you find yourself wondering how to choose a niche for a travel agency, check out the next section!

There are so many possible niches that you could explore, but we’re going to look at our favorite travel agency niche ideas — the ones we think are most promising.

Nearly all of us are concerned about the environment, and ecotourism is on the rise. It’s no wonder that ecotourism is one of the most promising travel niche trends. The global market for ecotourism was estimated around 181 billion U.S. dollars in 2019, and, according to Statista, will grow more than 80% in 2027. This niche certainly has good prospects, but it also requires a lot of research and constant attention to detail.

Ecotourism is about sustainability — exploring untouched places, being in nature with minimal impact, and often taking part in conservation activities. When it comes to organizing tours, it is your duty to ensure that those principles are respected — you should strive to minimize the possible negative environmental impacts of any tour.

Provide eco-friendly transportation and accomodation options, and prioritize recycling and renewable energy sources — this is where new travel agency software like mobile apps can help you. Beyond your offerings, you should show that your company cares deeply about the environment through its brand and values.

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Gastro tourism

Trying local food and beverages is one of the most exciting parts of any adventure, but for some niched travelers this is their entire reason for a tour. Countries like France, India and Italy are well known for their cuisines, and many tourists are willing to travel far to try famous foods right where they are made.

There are lots of ways to make gastro tours memorable and unique: they can include cooking classes, food and beverage festivals, traditional dining ceremonies and so on. There are also plenty of sub-niches within the niche: you could focus on dessert discovery trips, beer tours, native cuisine adventures — the list goes on and on.

Your main concerns here are health and safety and dietary requirements. When you organize any food tour, you need to make sure you understand where the food has come from and that it’s safe for all your customers to eat.

Wedding tourism

Wedding tourism is one of our favorite travel niche ideas. Weddings nowadays are serious business, with lots of couples seeking unique venues and experiences for their special day to help them create unforgettable memories with their loved ones. You can make a business out of providing them with memorable trips and beautiful ceremonies, and introducing them to local customs as well.

This niche might require flexibility from you, since couples can have unusual and very personal requests — from wanting a limo or helicopter to pick them up, to holding the ceremony on a remote island! You’ll need to find ways to make it work, often by establishing a network of small, local, niche suppliers and providers.

Remember, couples want their wedding to be absolutely impeccable, so you’re going to have to operate to high standards. Before starting a travel business in this niche, ensure that you can make couples’ dreams come true and focus on providing full, 24/7 customer support.

Music tourism

Organizing tours themed around music is one of our most interesting niche tourism examples, and it’s a great idea for multiple reasons. First of all, the sheer number of music events around the world means you’ll always have a focus for your tours, and there are plenty of music-lovers willing to visit them without wanting to organize the trip themselves.

Plus, music tours are highly marketable. It’s easy to market a trip to a festival or concert when your customers are already fond of the musician or performer.

Finally, this type of niche allows for a huge variety: almost everyone enjoys at least one type of music, and you have multiple opportunities to grow your target audience by expanding on your tour offering.

By the way, here at Zoftify we have experience in developing apps for music lovers. Our recent project, Festivalio, is designed to track upcoming music events and book accommodation, flights and festival passes.

Looking for a digital solution for your travel company?

Any niche, any app, any time. Contact our team and we will share our expertise with you.

Local tourism

One of the most sustainable niche travel examples is local tourism. Some clients are curious about their own country’s history and culture, and helping them discover it is also a smart business opportunity.

There are a lot of advantages to this niche. It is usually much cheaper and easier to organize local tours than international tours. You are also much more in control of your customers’ experiences when, for example, you can personally drive to them in case of any emergency.

And of course, you’re operating within the rules and regulations of a country you’re familiar with, so you won’t have to spend extra time studying different countries’ laws to avoid any unpleasant bureaucratic surprises.

When starting a business in this niche, you need to learn enough about your country’s history in advance, in order to organize meaningful and exciting tours. Even a simple field or street might be interesting to visit if it has historical significance — perhaps it was the site of a huge battle, or a famous person’s birthplace. So do your research and then use this knowledge to attract tourists.

Adventure and sports tourism

Hiking, surfing, diving — there are so many activities associated with certain destinations, and they can absolutely drive their own tourism niche. Selling curated tours for avid mountain climbers, kayakers, or skiers can be a solid business model if you know how to provide the exact type of experience they are looking for.

Just remember that sports and similar activities are associated with risk and possible injuries. If you’re going to start a business in this niche, you need to establish robust safety measures and 24/7 customer support to keep your travelers informed and connected. If an accident happens, customers should know that your company is there to help them.

Female-only tourism

Solo female tourism is becoming more and more popular, so understanding this niche would be a sensible idea. Women nowadays feel much more empowered and independent, so solo traveling is only natural.

In order to work in this field, you need to understand your female customers, so that you can provide the services they really want instead of the services you think they want. Everyone is different: some women may like hiking trips, while others prefer staying in luxurious hotels. It is your duty to ensure their expectations are met and that they feel comfortable at all times.

Another important issue is safety — female tourists need to feel secure and confident, especially if they are traveling alone. You have to ensure that everything about the trip is predetermined, safe and inclusive.

Bicycle tourism

Bike riding is a hobby shared by people of all ages and backgrounds, so providing people with an opportunity to explore completely new landscapes while doing their favorite activity is an attractive prospect that your travel company could tap into.

Cycling is an eco-friendly and active way of traveling which means you can provide a very rich and unique experience for your customers. Reaching a certain landmark with other like-minded people can be a profound feeling which makes your trip much more memorable and special.

When working in this niche you need to focus on creating remarkable routes and providing suitable means of access to them — your clients might prefer to take their own bicycle instead of renting one from you. Another concern is your customers’ health — consider your customers’ fitness levels and access to healthcare in case of emergencies.

Dark tourism

This one might sound unusual, but in reality there are a lot of people willing to visit places associated with catastrophic events or dark and intriguing stories. The popularity of Pompeii and the Catacombs of Paris speaks for itself.

However, choosing to work in the sphere of dark tourism requires additional preparation. You need to always keep in mind that your tour may touch on extremely sensitive issues, which have to be taken seriously. Irresponsible marketing may lead to colossal reputational damage, so pay close attention to how you frame your tours.

It is most fitting for tourism of this kind to focus on history and education, so you’ll need to do some research before taking tourists to any unusual locations: the dark and mysterious allure is the main reason for their travel, after all.

The market for tourism is huge, but it’s also filled with established tour operators, so for a new business it would be a good idea to focus on a specific niche instead of trying to compete with the big players. There are many reasons that people travel: be it for food, culture, music, nature or history. Finding a niche for a travel agency requires thorough market research, but can result in a prosperous and well-respected business.

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Founder & CEO

Alex loves travel and tech and founded Zoftify to help travel companies use technology more effectively. Before this, he worked in tech consulting, where he led international mobile development teams.

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What is a niche in the travel industry?

Travel niches focus on the unique and specific reasons that people travel. There are so many reasons why people travel and why there are so many niches within the industry: tourists may fly somewhere to learn more about a certain culture, or to try their hobby in a new location, or to get a taste of a world-famous cuisine. Understanding the specific attributes of travel niches is important when you start a business focusing on one of them.

What are the different tourism niches?

Niche travel markets are so varied that it would be difficult to name them all. For example, there is ecotourism, gastro tourism, music tourism, local tourism, and even dark tourism. Learning more about all of them and thinking about the best niche for your business would be a sensible place to start.

Why is niche tourism popular?

The popularity of niche tourism is explained by its nature. Many people want a very specific type of experience, which a large agency often won’t provide because they take a generalized approach. Start by exploring different travel agent niches to see where you can add value.

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The Essence of 5 Niche Tourism Keys to Travel Market Success

Last Updated on May 31, 2024 by The Digital Travel Expert

In the vast landscape of tourism, where every destination offers its unique charm, catering to niche markets has become a key strategy for businesses aiming to stand out and succeed. But what exactly does “niche” mean in the realm of travel? And what does it take for a niche market tourism business to thrive?

Let’s embark on a journey to explore these questions and unravel the essence of niche tour businesses.

Deciphering Niche Tourism: Unveiling the Secrets of Travel Market Success

Understanding the Essence of Niche in Tourism

Choosing to study a particular subject often stems from a deep-seated passion or interest. Similarly, delving into the travel niche requires a profound understanding of what makes a destination or experience special and appealing to a specific group of travelers.

At its core, a niche in tourism refers to a specialized segment within the broader travel industry. It’s about carving out a distinctive space that caters to the unique preferences, interests, and needs of a particular demographic or market segment.

Whether it’s eco-tourism, adventure travel, culinary tours, or wellness retreats, niche travel and tourism businesses thrive on offering tailored experiences that resonate deeply with travelers seeking something beyond the conventional.

Niche Tourism Opportunities: What Sets It Apart

In the tourism industry, the true meaning of a niche travel business lies in its ability to offer authenticity, exclusivity, and personalized experiences that mainstream tourism often lacks. It’s about immersing oneself in the culture, heritage, and essence of a destination in a way that feels meaningful and memorable.

For instance, examples of niche tourism products and services include a boutique wildlife safari company that specializes in small-group expeditions to a certain African destination. Their niche lies in providing personalized and small-sized encounters with wildlife, guided by expert naturalists while prioritizing conservation and sustainable practices.

This unique selling proposition sets them apart from larger, mass-market tour operators and appeals to travelers seeking immersive, off-the-beaten-path experiences.

5 Key Ingredients for Success in Niche Tourism Markets

While identifying niche tourism trends is crucial, success in niche travel and hospitality businesses requires more than just pinpointing a target market. It demands a combination of creativity, innovation, and strategic planning to effectively engage and delight discerning travelers.

Here are some essential ingredients for success:

1. Authenticity and Exclusivity : Tourism thrives on authenticity. Whether it’s offering access to hidden gems, forging genuine connections with local communities, or showcasing unique cultural traditions, authenticity is key to captivating travelers seeking genuine experiences.

2. Specialized Expertise : To excel in any type of niche tourism you choose to go for, businesses must possess specialized expertise and knowledge relevant to their niche. Whether it’s expertise in wildlife conservation, culinary arts, or adventure sports, having a team of passionate professionals adds value and credibility to the experience.

3. Personalization and Customization : Niche travelers crave personalized experiences tailored to their interests and preferences. From customized itineraries to personalized service, offering flexibility and attention to detail can elevate the overall experience and foster lasting connections with customers.

4. Sustainability and Responsible Tourism : In today’s environmentally conscious world, sustainability is no longer a luxury but a necessity. Whether it is a micro niche tourism activities must prioritize sustainable practices, minimize their environmental footprint, and contribute positively to local communities and conservation efforts.

5. Effective Marketing and Branding: Building a strong brand identity and effectively marketing to the target audience is essential for the success of niche travel businesses. From leveraging social media and digital platforms to partnering with influencers and niche publications, strategic marketing efforts can help amplify visibility and attract the right clientele.

FAQs on Niche Travel and Hospitality Businesses

What is an example of a niche market in the tourism industry?

Niche tourism examples for luxury travelers could include immersive experiences that go beyond traditional tourist offerings and “private island retreats.” Those exclusive destinations offer ultra-luxurious accommodations, personalized services, and secluded settings, catering to affluent travelers seeking ultimate privacy and indulgence. Activities such as private yacht excursions, gourmet dining experiences, and bespoke spa treatments further enhance the luxurious appeal of these niche destinations.

Why is niche travel and tourism on trend?

Niche travel and tourism businesses are on trend because they cater to the growing demand for specialized activities and experiences among travelers. It goes beyond fleeting trends by addressing specific traveler needs and interests, allowing businesses to establish themselves as go-to sources for memorable and authentic experiences. By focusing on unique offerings, niche travel brands can create lasting connections with customers seeking more than just mainstream attractions.

What is the difference between niche and mass tourism?

Niche travel companies focus on specialized interests or segments within the travel industry, offering tailored experiences to specific demographics like eco-tourism or adventure travel. Mass tourism, on the other hand, caters to a broader audience and typically involves large-scale, standardized offerings aimed at accommodating a wide range of travelers without emphasizing unique or specialized experiences. In essence, niche travel and tourism markets prioritize authenticity, exclusivity, and personalized experiences, while mass tourism tends to focus on volume and accessibility.

What are the branches of niche travel and tourism?

Niche travel and tourism encompass various specialized branches catering to specific interests and preferences. These include eco-tourism, focusing on sustainable practices and conservation efforts, adventure travel, offering adrenaline-pumping experiences like hiking, rafting, and safaris, and cultural tourism, immersing travelers in the heritage, traditions, and local way of life of a destination. Each branch offers unique experiences tailored to niche markets, attracting travelers seeking authenticity, exclusivity, and meaningful connections with their surroundings.

Why is it important to specialize in a travel blog niche

Specializing in a travel blog niche is important because it allows you to establish yourself as an expert in a specific area, making your content more valuable and trustworthy to your audience. It helps you stand out in a crowded market, attracting a loyal following of readers who are interested in the unique experiences and insights you provide. By focusing on a niche, you can also collaborate with brands and businesses relevant to your niche, opening up opportunities for partnerships and monetization.

Is travel a good niche for blogging?

Travel is a fantastic niche for blogging due to its universal appeal and endless opportunities for content creation. With a vast array of destinations, cultures, experiences, and tips to share, travel bloggers can attract a diverse audience and monetize through affiliate marketing, sponsored content, and partnerships. However, success requires dedication, creativity, and consistency in producing engaging, informative, and visually captivating content that resonates with readers and inspires them to explore the world.

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, niche tourism types embody the art of specialization and customization in the travel industry. By understanding the unique needs and desires of a specific market segment and delivering authentic, immersive experiences, tourism businesses can not only survive but thrive in an increasingly competitive landscape. So, whether you’re a wildlife enthusiast, a foodie, or an adventure seeker, there’s a niche in the world of travel waiting to be explored and experienced.

What is your niche? Have you had any challenges in finding your safe spot?

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The importance of entering a niche market.

• January 1, 2021
• One Comment

• Delivering outstanding value

Even though the tourism industry is on hold for now, it will be back on its feet someday. And when that happens, every tour operator should be ready for business. There are thousands of tour operators worldwide and the competition is high. So, ask yourself:

• How does my business stand out?
• What is unique about my tours that makes travellers favour me?

Every tour operator should be the best in what they do, without trying to target all their experiences to everyone. To run a successful business is no longer only about delivering standard value to all customers. It’s about delivering outstanding value to specific customers.

“Through your niche market, you will add value”

In this article

Entering a niche market, the importance of having a niche, benefits of entering a niche market, 4 steps to enter a niche market, start adding more value.

The concept of added value is very important for a successful tour operator . It’s not only standing out from competitors. It’s about providing that something extra to customers, employees , and the world. Added value provides you with means to charge higher prices for your experiences, which leads to a higher revenue.

Entering a niche market helps you add value to your business . Basically, a niche market is a segment of a larger market that is defined by its own unique, specific needs and identity that makes it different.

Niche markets can be defined based on the following aspects:

• Price (luxury of budget)
• Demographics (age or gender)
• Geographics (in a specific region)
• Psychographics (values and interests)

To show you why niche markets are important, let me give an example. In Kenya, there are over 3000 tour operators offering safaris . At least half of them also offer safaris in the Masai Mara. To stand out, safari operators need to think about unique features that address their customer’s needs. To have something that other safari operators don’t have.

A customer who is looking for a safari in Kenya, is searching for an experience. He or she shall therefore select the business the offer that fits their needs. Besides wanting to see wildlife , a customer might be passionate about food, into yoga or wanting to learn more about how to conserve wildlife.

Operators can make combinations to create added value that makes them stand out from the thousands of safari offerings. For example, combine safaris with:

• Culinary lunches and dinners
• Yoga classes for sunset
• Following the work of park rangers
• Silent electrical vehicles

Besides adding value to your customers, tour operators who focus on a special niche also have the following benefits as they:

• Stand out from the rest with their own identity
• Have less competition as there are less operators offering the same experience
• Are able to target their marketing very specifically and personal to their ideal target group
• Will claim their expert status and therefore attract more interested customers

Finding your niche is not difficult but definitely requires some thinking and making choices for the future of your business. The four following tips will guide you in finding your own niche.

1. Don’t be afraid to niche

Some tour operators are afraid to stand-out and to move to a specific niche market. Don’t be, as in the end you want to be the go-to tour operator for your experiences. You’ll attract your ideal customer plus other travellers, who might not fit your ideal audience profile but are still interested. The more specific your niche, the more your target groups feels connected to your business.

2. Think back to your business purpose

Your business purpose is why you started your business. Why does the business exist and what does it stand for? What is your mission? Then move towards experiences and think about which fits your purpose. Would you like to show customers the beauty of your destination? Or perhaps meet the local culture or just to relax? Focus on this purpose and make it your niche!

3. Define how you want to be seen

This aspect is connected to your business purpose. You have to think about what you want to be known for, the go-to tour operator for what? Is it for your unique community encounters or the fact that you offer adventure trips for women only? Define the core concept of your business and promote it as such to attract your ideal customer.

4. Focus on your ideal target group

In the end, your niche is tailored to your ideal customer or it attracts your ideal customer. What do your ideal customers want? What is special to them and what value are they looking for? How does this translate into your business purpose and experiences you offer?

Entering a niche market enables you to focus more on details and develop experiences that fit the needs of your ideal customer 100%. Become the go-to tour operator for your niche and position yourself as such. Stand out from the crowd and write appealing travel content , create impact within the travel experience , and specifically market your business to your ideal target group in a personal way.

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Anne de Jong

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What’s Trending in Niche Travel Tours?

Puglia, Italy, one of the trending destinations for Explore Worldwide. Photo: Shutterstock.com

There’s a niche tour and itinerary for every traveler—birdwatching, hiking, heritage, culinary, wine, photography, solo, female, architecture, cheese, wellness, bucket list, polar bears—even sloths. Here is a sampling of some of the most popular tours trending.

Intrepid Travel Intrepid has always been somewhat niche–it’s known as the world’s largest small-group adventure travel company, and over 65 percent of its travelers are solo females.

“We are seeing a lot of niche travel around climate action and responsible travel with citizen scientist programs,” says Matt Berna, Intrepid Travel President, North America. Intrepid is the only global tour operator with verified science-based carbon reduction targets (a climate scientist is on staff), he says.

“The fragile environment that props up the global tourism industry is facing an existential crisis and travel itself is perpetuating the problem,” says Berna. “To help address this, we have launched our first-ever Citizen Science program in Antarctica.”

Citizen Science is voluntary research collected through public participation—travelers share and contribute data they observe to a variety of projects. There are five programs ranging from the NASA Globe Observer, which observes cloud movements in concert with NASA satellite flyovers to Seabird Survey where travelers record wildlife viewings to help scientists better understand seabird migrations in the Southern Ocean.

“One of our most exciting onboard Citizen Science projects is the Happywhale project,” says Berna. Guests are encouraged to take photos of whale sightings and upload them online, after which scientists can identify them by their unique markings and track them around the globe.

While the five programs will be available on all Intrepid Antarctic sailings, Intrepid will also be running two exclusive departures next year in partnership with WWF Australia, in which travelers will be joined onboard by scientists from WWF and the University of California Santa Cruz. The 14-day WWF Journey to the Circle and the 11-day WWF Giants of Antarctica will host a team of marine biologists conducting scientific research on Antarctica’s great whales to better understand their ecology and migration corridors under changing climates. Chris Johnson, Global Lead of WWF’s Protecting Whales & Dolphins Initiative will travel on both of these  Intrepid sailings with guest researchers from UCSC, including renowned whale ecologist Dr. Ari Friedlander.

Intrepid also recently relaunched its Real Food Adventures tours. Following a pandemic-induced hiatus, the reimagined tours now include 21 plant-based experiences with favorites like Mexico, India, and Vietnam, as well as newer itineraries in South Korea, The Balkans, Israel, and Palestine.

While the new journeys still feature signature meals with traditional meat and fish dishes, the trips have been redesigned to show the importance of balance and moderation when it comes to making small but significant changes toward a more climate-friendly lifestyle, says Etti.

One example: the South Korea Real Food Adventure, where travelers visit South Korea’s slow food capital in Jeonju, dive deep into seafood in Busan, and experience the labyrinthian Gwangjang Market in Seoul, famously featured in the Netflix series On day four, travelers will immerse themselves in the plant-based experience during a temple stay in Gyeongju, which includes a plant-based dinner with chanting meditation and an optional martial arts class.

Oldways Heritage culinary travel is popular with travelers wanting to connect with traditional recipes that have been handed down for generations.

Boston-based Oldways is a nonprofit food and nutrition organization, hosts overseas and domestic culinary heritage trips—and there’s always at least one chef traveling along. Upcoming trips include a Naples and Amalfi trip in October, with Chef Michael Lombardi of Boston’s SRV Restaurant. Expect visits to producers of mozzarella, San Marzano tomatoes, pasta, and limoncello; pizza-making and other cooking demonstrations; winery visits, and town-by-town tours of the Amalfi Coast and Naples.

Trips to Turkey, Costa Rica, and Switzerland are scheduled for next year.

Oceania Cruises Sustainability, conservation, and rehabilitation are at the heart of Oceania ’s 150 Go Green tours worldwide—travelers engage with residents and businesses to learn about their initiatives to help conserve and sustain their environments.

Experiences include visiting a sustainable vineyard in Almeria, Spain; learning aspects of hydroponic farming in the rainforests of St. Kitts; discovering the world of eco-conscious art in Buenos Aires, Argentina; and imbibing zero-emission rum in the world’s only carbon-free distillery in Dartmouth, United Kingdom.

And, then, there’s the unique sloth sanctuary trip in Costa Rica—travelers visit the sanctuary that is a home for sloths, orphaned, injured or displaced because their habitat was lost due to deforestation. Guests have a close-up look at the animals as they are rehabilitated in hopes of returning them to the wild. Deforestation is one of the biggest threats to sloths, so to help their cause, travelers also have an opportunity to plant a tree in a nearby forest reserve.

Trafalgar “Offering niche itineraries that cater to a specific group of people or hobby helps to drive more interest and create an inclusive dynamic for any type of traveler that may want to take a guided vacation,” says Melissa DaSilva, President of Trafalgar, North America . “Beyond religious expeditions or family travel, niche travel experiences can be specific to a demographic or special interests.”

This year, Trafalgar launched 12 women-only trips. It was a decision driven by the rise in women’s travel as a way to empower and lift other women up, says DaSilva. “It was important to make sure we offered ways for women to feel truly comfortable in their travel experience and meet women trailblazers from all over the world that they can relate to and learn from. Our new, women’s only trips have proven to be a success with plans for more women’s only departures in 2023.”

History lovers immerse themselves in ancient and 20th-century warfare on itineraries in Turkey for insight into the feats of the Ottoman Empire and the ancient battles of the Trojans. Or, for recent historical perspectives, the WWI and WWII Battlefields itinerary brings guests to the frontlines of Europe with battlefield tours through the countryside of Britain, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands.

Trafalgar also satiates insatiable desires for travelers looking for multi-gen tours to the jungles of Costa Rica and foodie and sip indulgences to Cali wine country.

Cheese Journeys Say cheese! Cheese-centric tours are offered by Cheese Journeys , the brainchild of Anna Juhl—travelers are immersed in the world of artisan cheese, on farms and in creameries of world-renowned cheesemakers to gain insight into the cheese’s history, the importance of terroir and the process and the history of cheesemaking.

A popular experience takes travelers to Cheddar in Somerset, England (where  cheddar cheese originated in the 12th century.) They travel side-by-side with Jamie Montgomery, whose family’s namesake Montgomery Cheddar has been served by the British royal family for years; this trip is part of Cheese Journeys’ “British Cheese Odyssey.” Guests meet and learn from ten-plus British cheese, beer, and cider producers and also stay at North Cadbury Court, the Montgomery family’s restored estate—with games of snooker in the parlor and dancing in the manor’s private disco.

Next year, Cheese Journeys debuts its Château de Courances and Paris trip, visiting the French countryside and City of Lights—with celebrated Madame Fromage.

Gondwana Ecotours “The pandemic put the entire tour industry on hold and customer interest and behavior have all changed during what can only be described as a rebound,” says Eric Segalstad, Vice President of Gondwana Ecotours .

As such, new niches were created—last-minute touring and bucket list trips.

“Last summer guests were eagerly booking and traveling within the United States,” says Segalstad. “Where travelers in the past would often book our multi-day tours months in advance, many reached out asking to travel ‘next week.’”

Demand for domestic travel continues this year, says Segalstad. “We’ve seen a surging interest for bucket-list tours such as seeing the Northern Lights, safely experiencing grizzly bears up close, and being awed by Denali by train, foot, and on scenic flights.”

And, he says, international destinations are also on the radar. “We have sold-out safaris coming up this winter where our guests get to witness the Great Migration in Tanzania and increased demand from our travelers who wish to check off Argentina’s Patagonia and Mendoza from their bucket lists as well.”

AmaWaterways Epicurean and heritage cruises are specialties of river cruise line AmaWaterways.

And, wine is a big hit. Shocker.

AmaWaterways offers 60-plus Celebration of Wine River Cruises each year; popular regions include Austria’s Wachau Valley and France’s Bordeaux region. Wine experts share their passion and knowledge for the local wines, rich traditions, and the history of European winemaking. There are also onshore tasting events, seasonal wine festival visits, celebratory meals, tastings, seminars, private cellar tours, and iconic vineyard visits. 

And, last year, AmaWaterways entered into a partnership with Ancestry®. The collaboration gives travelers an opportunity to discover details pertaining to their unique family histories while journeying on a river cruise experience. The first cruise in the series, Heritage on the River: Your Personalized Ancestry® Experience, departed this summer, onboard the 156-guest . Two additional departures are already announced for 2023 . 

Explore Worldwide Solo travel and culinary escapes are on the radar of Explore Worldwide —the company offers popular tours to desirable destinations.

For example, the company’s A Taste of Italy—Walking in Puglia tour invites travelers to sample the region’s celebrated cuisine and learn about how local cheese, bread, olive oil, and wine is made, along with rambles in landscapes, and exploration of spots like the ancient Sassi quarter and gorge of Matera, the conical Trulli houses of the Itria Valley.

And, on many travelers’ bucket lists, is a safari—The Botswana Wildlife Safari solo journeys track through Botswana’s remote wilderness to witness Africa’s wildlife and experience outdoor adventures.

Aurora Expeditions This popular Australian-owned polar expedition company hosts small group tours to regions in Antarctica.

Founded by Greg and Margaret Mortimer in 1991, travelers experience Antarctica’s unique activities like polar scuba diving and ski touring. Many of Aurora’s expedition team members are experts in various fields of science including glaciers, marine biology, and more, and have been visiting Antarctica for decades.

Aurora Expeditions design intimate 10-to-26-day expeditions; travelers choose the desired region, the amount of time they’ve got, and what activities that interest them. They can focus on one destination or combine back-to-back trips. They’re accompanied by seasoned expedition specialists.

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Thriving Tourism Niches That Travel Agencies Should Embrace in 2018

The infinite list of different motives that drive people to travel shaped special interest tourism, also known as niche tourism and alternative tourism. Basically, tourism niches arose because of the mass tourism’s inability to satisfy people’s craving for new experiences. Instead of being a passive observer, today’s tourist wants to dive into the experience; taste; feel and relate to local customs, traditions, and cuisine.

Here are the tourism niches that will be trending in 2018:

1. Gastro-Tourism

As I said, often is not enough to see a monument and hear its history. Many travelers enjoy romantic walks to the fridge and the only way they are interested to get to know a new place is through their plate. Recent research shows that 93% of travelers can be considered as a ‘food traveler’.

There’s a bit of chemistry behind the whole thing. By breaking down certain foods, our bodies produce uplifting chemicals, known as phenethylamines and endorphins. As phenethylamine causes excitement, quickens the pulse rate and makes people happy, it was named ‘the love drug’.

Discovering new flavors and exploring the local culture by tasting their local cuisine is fun! Even the people who are afraid of trying new foods will find a courage to taste something local – if not food, then drinks! Beer tourism brews up across the world, showing no signs of slowing and pub crawl tours are booming. Every big city appears to have at least one tour operator specialized in seducing your taste buds. Flavors of food tours , beer or wine tastings blow tourists’ minds and leave them wanting more.

2. Health or Medical Tourism

Medical tourism dates back to 4000 BC, when the Sumerians constructed the earliest known health complexes that were built around hot springs.

As the world population is aging, this market grows. Patients are traveling abroad to receive medical treatment either to save money or to avoid long waits for treatment. Patients Beyond Borders estimate the global medical tourism market ranges from $40 to $60 billion with 12 to 14 million travelers taking medical travels each year. They also estimated the worldwide medical tourism market is growing at a rate of 15-25% and that’s more than a good rate, don’t you think so?

Dental tourism has to be mentioned here because dental treatments are the most common reason for medical tourism. If searching for a dentist in a foreign country, you will see that many of them wrote call-to-action descriptions in English where they explicitly invite foreigners and expats.

Finally, how a travel agency can benefit from medical or dental tourism?

Glad you asked! Best practices are to partner with doctors and dental clinics and offer an all-in-one-place package where travelers can fix their medical problem and explore the city they are staying in. Usually, they have time for a short walk through the town, and that’s where your travel agency comes in. Needless to say – when partnering with them it’s in your common interest to promote your an all-in-one-place package. Meaning, a travel agency will gain new marketplace, additional social and websites where its offer is pinned. Pretty awesome, right?

3. Religious and Spiritual Tourism

Spirituality is becoming an important motive to travel. People are increasingly looking to develop their own spirituality and to discover that of others. It’s no wonder that this niche tourism that is on the rise.

Faith-based tourism is estimated at a value of US$18 billion and it’s usually less affected by trends and economic crisis. Hence, it represents low-risk growth of a tour business. To cash in, travel agencies can offer pilgrim tours and spiritual travels that include meditation classes, prayers, yoga rituals, etc. Partnerships with yoga schools in sacred places can benefit local communities and encourage their sustainable development.

Spiritual practices I mentioned earlier belong to different religions so, it’s essential to do a market research and adjust your offer to your customers’ needs. Be aware of religious calendars and specific travel prohibition days such as fast days. Among the things to consider are the types of food served and types of music played. Tourists are joining pilgrim tours to find or maintain peace of mind and music in the bus should support that.

4. Adventure Tourism

As more people live in urban areas today, people get more distinct from nature and they gradually lose the feeling that they are an integral part of that nature. For this reason, there is a growing need for the return and discovery of nature in all its forms – from idyllic landscapes to the harshest forms on land and sea. Overcoming difficult natural obstacles have always been a challenge to humanity. Mountains, oceans, jungles, wilderness areas, deserts, islands, and icebergs are becoming a challenge for potential thrilling adventures that can sometimes be extremely demanding, even life-threatening.

Adventure tourism is defined by the Adventure Travel Trade Association as a trip that includes at least two of the following three elements: physical activity, natural environment, and cultural immersion. It’s among the fastest growing tourism niches.

There are two main types:

• Soft adventure (e.g. bird watching, hiking, horseback riding, rafting, sailing, etc.)
• Hard adventure (caving, mountain/rock/ice climbing, trekking, skydiving, parachuting, etc.)

Still, the adventure will always be a subjective term for travelers themselves, because it is related to one’s individual experience. For example, hiking may be an adventure for one traveler and the ordinary activity for the another.

Both hard and soft adventure activities are highly lucrative segments of the adventure tourism sector.

Volunteering Tourism or Voluntourism

Voluntourism is the practice of individuals going on a working holiday, volunteering their labor for worthy causes. It can be a soft adventure activity, depending on where you go and in what social environment you volunteer.

Sometimes, travelers even pay to volunteer. It is the latest western trend, which can be marked as the search for turtle nesting on white sandy beaches of a remote Thai island or participate in archaeological excavations in South America. This year western travel agencies offered thousands of holiday work arrangements around the world – from the Scottish mountains to the Borneo jungle. In the most cases, at least part of the money that such a special tourist pays for his holiday goes to the benefit of the project.

5. Political Tourism

Political tourism is a niche tourism for travelers who are passionate about politics and current affairs in the world. Such travels often involve travel to areas of conflict to meet the actors of both sides and to develop an understanding of the local history.

A sub-sector of political tourism of huge importance is the “red tourism”, in which tourists visit locations with historical significance to communism. Chinese tour operators organize red-themed tours to Russia, Germany, United Kingdom, Cuba and the former Yugoslavia, visiting locations connected to figures such as Marx, Engels, Lenin, Castro, and Tito.

Since the numbers of Chinese tourists participating in red-themed trips is growing fast, not embracing “red tourism” represents losing money. And that is worth thinking about.

Do you agree these are the five tourism niches to tap into in 2018 ? If there is another special interest tourism you think it will mark this year and I haven’t mentioned it, write it down in the comment section. I welcome any questions or comments you might have.

Liked the article? Share it with your colleagues and friends in the travel industry.

Don’t hesitate to contact us if we can be of further assistance.

ORIOLY on January 18, 2018

by Lidija Šomodi

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Travel Niche: What It Is, How to Leverage It, Case Studies & More

What is the Travel Niche

Identifying a travel niche, benefits and challenges, developing a niche-focused strategy, measuring success, case studies.

Niche travel is one of the few travel sectors that have maintained their pre-COVID market growth. By catering to specific traveler segments, niche travel developed products around adventure travel, eco-tourism, LGBTQ+ travel, and wellness retreats. Take adventure tourism as only one segment of the niche tourism market. 

In 2021, it reached 288 billion in size, and it’s projected to reach 2,824 billion by 2030 . The other niche travel subsectors follow similar growth and expansion trends. What does it mean? The niche travel demand is growing, and it’s an excellent opportunity for your travel brand to capitalize on this trend. 

Niche travel is a specific business methodology that travel brands can implement to reach new consumers and expand their revenue streams. It’s a simple concept to grasp – to be a niche travel agency, you must specialize in specific travel types and particular demographics. What does it mean precisely?

For instance, if you want to cater to a specific demographic, you can introduce packages and experiences catering to the needs of elderly consumers. Alternatively, you can focus on developing and offering products in a narrow category , such as adventure travel or a road trip. In either case, you are now considered a niche travel agency.

Why go through the trouble of doing it, though? As mentioned above, it’s an expanding market with many opportunities to pursue. It can help boost your revenue, expand your reach, and build a recognizable brand image. 

Now, if you find the travel niche an attractive business strategy, you must identify a travel niche to target. According to the reports from July 2023 , there are over ten travel niche segments currently popular among consumers. Eccentric eating and spiritual stay are the most popular, as 47% and 44% of survey respondents say they are most interested in these niche travel experiences.

Solo travel, for instance, is becoming more popular as we speak, and 80% of solo travelers are millennials . The other popular travel niche trips include health hiatus, silent retreat, wilderness survival school, extraterrestrial exploration, experimental wellness, virtual vacation, and transformation vacation.

How do you identify the niche market within your market of interest? You don’t do it on a hunch or copy/paste the competitors’ strategy. Instead, you need data to make informed business decisions; for data, you need thorough market research. Here is a blueprint to follow:

• Research different niche markets – make a list of the niche markets that interest you and learn as much as you can about them (who would be your competitors, what the competitors are doing, are they profitable, and who would your potential customers be);
• Evaluate your interests – you must be passionate about your niche travel strategy to succeed. That’s why you need to evaluate your interests and stick to travel niches that personally interest you;
• Market trends and demand – the next step is to analyze market trends such as supply and demand. It will help you better understand travelers’ behavior;
• Identify opportunities and challenges in travel niches – once you’ve narrowed down your options, try to identify all the opportunities and challenges for every travel niche;
• Make a decision – use all the data you’ve gathered to choose a niche tourism market to penetrate.

The best way to understand it is to closely examine one of the niche travel examples. One of the most popular luxury niche travel agencies out there is Scott Dunn. What you can learn from their strategy is that it’s ongoing research focusing on surveys and in-person interviews. 

The needs and expectations of luxurious niche travelers are constantly changing, and to deliver the products they want, you need to constantly re-discover their needs. This strategy can also work with other niche travel segments, given that all consumers, despite their paycheck, tend to change their niche travel preferences over time. 

Here are a few tools and methodologies to help you out with your research:

• Create a buyer persona – use tools such as the one Hubspot provides to create your buyer persona;
• Identify and research competition – tools such as Adthena can help you understand what your competition does to succeed; 
• Launch on-site intercept surveys – use your website to launch intercept surveys and collect the data from consumers with the intent to shop for niche travel products;
• Structure your dat a – once you have all the data, you can use tools such as Google Looker Studio to structure your findings;
• Travel and tourism market research firms – if you can do it internally, you can outsource your entire research to a reputable partner;
• Keyword research – discover keywords relevant to your target travel niche to use in content across your online presence (Google Adwords, Answer the Public, Semrush, and Agreft).

Many travel agents pursue niche tourism opportunities based only on the benefits they offer. While knowing the benefits is certainly important, learning about the challenges that await you down the road is also essential. Let’s see what benefits and challenges you should expect. 

Pursuing niche travel opportunities can help you unlock a range of benefits. The most noteworthy ones include the following:

• Targeting a more defined audience – build stronger connections and loyalty with customers because you offer personalized products and experiences;
• Competitive advantage – since you are going to focus on a niche, you can come up with a unique selling proposition and easily differentiate your brand from the competition;
• Improved bottom line – you will be able to execute a premium pricing strategy because you will be offering exclusive experiences;
• Become an industry expert – once you focus on a particular niche, your brand will develop expertise in a narrow area. You will build meaningful relationships with local communities, reflecting the experiences you sell and making them more authentic.

Here are the most noteworthy challenges that await you should you decide to stir your travel business toward niche travel:

• The market is smaller – instead of focusing on a broad market, you will be focused on a narrow market, which can prove challenging if you want to scale your business;
• Demand – some niche travel markets come with cyclical demand, which makes it hard to ensure repeat business throughout a year;
• Requirement for specialized knowledge – operating in a narrow market requires specialized knowledge, which calls for trained, knowledgeable, and experienced staff;
• Competition – some travel niches are overwhelmed by the competition. You will need to consistently adapt and shift strategies to attract consumers.

If you’ve decided to move towards a niche travel market, you will have to develop a niche-focused strategy. The one-size-fits-all strategy won’t work here because you are trying to cater to the specific needs, wants, and expectations of a smaller group of people. You must cast a narrower net, but it must be fail-proof. 

How do you achieve it? Develop your own strategies from scratch.

That’s where your market research data comes in handy. More specifically, the data about your target travelers. The foundation of your strategy should be based on their preferences and behaviors. You need to know where they like to travel, how they want to spend time at the destination, their expectations of transport and accommodation, etc.

Don’t forget to research their behaviors, too. You need to know how often they travel and what activities they are interested in. Do they prefer knowledgeable guides, or do they like to explore destinations at their own pace and find out things by themselves? 

Once you have this data, you can craft unique and tailored experiences. What does it mean exactly? Well, your entire travel product, including transportation, should reflect your target market’s preferences and behaviors. 

Finally, you want to market your products . Your market research data should tell you where your target audience prefers to hang out. It can help you narrow down digital market channel options to relevant ones to maximize your reach, impressions, and conversion rates. You have several options here:

• Pay-per-click marketing – you can target relevant keywords with a PPC campaign to reach the right audience;
• Social media marketing – you can leverage social media platforms to spread the word to the target market;
• Influencer marketing – cooperating with an influencer your target audience follows on social media can net you new customers;
• Guides and inspiration – you can create and share guides regarding your travel products to inspire travelers with the intent to book their travels with you;
• Long-term SEO – you can target the relevant keywords and use them in your blog posts to execute a long-term SEO strategy and establish your travel brand as a leader in the chosen niche travel market.

You shouldn’t leave anything to chance as a serious contender in the chosen niche travel market. You should monitor your marketing efforts and measure success at every step of the way. The easiest way to do it is to use Google Analytics with your website.

While we won’t go in-depth with Google Analytics and how to use it, it’s essential to know the key performance indicators you should monitor:

• Users – this metric tells you the number of unique website visitors;
• Bounce rate – the bounce rate metric enables you to measure the percentage of visitors that decided to leave your website without interacting with a webpage they were viewing;
• Conversions – it tells you how many users complete a specific action (download brochure, sign up for email newsletter, or book a trip with you);
• Channels – this is probably the most important metric to check regularly, as it tells you where your visitors come from. It can help you gauge the success of every marketing effort. For instance, you can see exactly how many visitors came through the PPC campaign and how many of those that came converted.

There is no rule of thumb regarding niche metrics , as you will be tracking the metrics relevant to your business. For instance, if you are targeting solo female travelers, you want to track the number of solo female travelers served or track the number of student groups served if you target the segment of students.

Tracking a niche metric enables you to make sure your marketing strategy hits the sweet spot. If you see an increase in customers from a niche market, you are on the right track. Otherwise, you must revisit your strategy and discover why it fails to deliver.

If we are to talk about numbers, there is no better niche travel agency to take as an example than Black Tomato. Black Tomato specializes in offering unique and personalized travel experiences. Their strategy was to offer relevant content to potential customers. 

The brand focused on two categories – “to get lost” and “to disappear”. This strategy proved essential for Black Tomato’s success, enabling the company to capture 75% more sales the following year . They also used the funds to expand, launching Epic Tomato and Beach Tomato, the two additional niche travel agencies.

Besides Scott Dunn and Black Tomato niche travel agencies that are leaders in the sectors, there are other brands you can learn from and use as inspiration. Let’s name a few.

Exodus Travels

Many niche travelers think of Exodus Travel when they think of offbeat destinations. It’s a renowned niche travel brand focused on adventures that are planned in great detail. By staying so narrowly focused on unique adventurous experiences, Exodus Travel managed to get ahead of the competition and emerge as a leader in the field. 

The lesson that you can learn from Exodus Travel is that you should deliver what your target market expects of you. In their case, it’s expert itineraries and fostering a sense of community . Exodus Travels also excels at managing its presence in the media. Their recent earned media campaign got the brand widespread news coverage .

Intrepid Travel

Intrepid is another niche travel brand focusing on culturally immersive small-group travel. The two pillars of Intrepid Travels’ success are community engagement and responsible tourism . This brand truly shows what it means to be devoted to ethical tourism.

Intrepid Travel stands out from the crowd by enabling travelers to have authentic interactions with local cultures.

Audley Travel

Audley Travel is a luxury niche travel brand. The brand’s success lies in destination expertise and highly personalized service. Audley Travel’s personalization game is on another level. Yes, the company thrives on making personalized bespoke experiences. However, they even offer seamless payment journeys for their customers . 

The company has specialists that have direct communication with customers. This approach enables the brand to appear caring and trustworthy.

Now that you better understand the travel niche, you might consider targeting a niche market. The niche travel demand continues to grow month after month. As you can see, you can unlock many benefits, including getting a competitive advantage and improving the bottom line.

Identifying your target niche travel market and doing market research is crucial to success. Focusing on a market you are passionate about will help you navigate the challenges and offer travelers something unique.

Developing the right business and marketing strategies can help you navigate the competitive landscape and become one of the noteworthy niche travel brands.

If you want to differentiate your brand from the competitors within a niche, you should pursue one or the combination of the following strategies: offer specialized experiences and services, personalize offers to create bespoke experiences, deliver exceptional customer services, leverage storytelling to share compelling narratives, and leverage latest marketing trends.

Fortunately for the entire travel sector, the post-pandemic period is quite good in terms of market growth. Today’s emerging travel niches include sustainable travel, remote work travel, wellness tourism, and outdoor and adventure travel.

Niche travel agencies can leverage proven strategies to maintain a loyal customer base within a travel niche, including providing consistent quality, personalized engagement, and exclusive benefits. You should also have an ongoing feedback & improvement strategy to identify pain points and enhance your offer.

Search engine marketing is your go-to platform because it provides consistent results. However, since it takes time for your SEM strategy to deliver, you should focus on other platforms such as social media, specialized forums and blogs, and influencer partnerships.

Good collaboration with local communities starts with listening to their feedback. The niche travel experiences will be more authentic and delightful if you are on good terms with the locals. Sustainability practices can also help you minimize the negative impact on the local environment. You can also leverage relationships with the locals to create partnerships and foster involvement.

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Marc Truyols has a degree in Tourism from the University of the Balearic Islands. Marc has extensive experience in the leisure, travel and tourism industry. His skills in negotiation, hotel management, customer service, sales and hotel management make him a strong business development professional in the travel industry.

Mize is the leading hotel booking optimization solution in the world. With over 170 partners using our fintech products, Mize creates new extra profit for the hotel booking industry using its fully automated proprietary technology and has generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue across its suite of products for its partners. Mize was founded in 2016 with its headquarters in Tel Aviv and offices worldwide.

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Comprehensive Guide to Marketing a Tour Business

By Rezdy — 11 Sep 2023

1. The importance of sales and marketing for tour operators

2. the 7 p's of tourism marketing, 3. tour operator marketing channels, 4. devising your tour marketing plan, 5. tips for selling tours, 6. summary.

Whether you’ve been in the tourism industry for decades or just getting started, it’s likely that you’ve found yourself lost in the maze of marketing struggles. After all, tour marketing is notoriously difficult. It’s hard to stand out from the crowd when everyone else is vying for the attention of the same adventurous souls.

But that doesn’t mean effective tour operator marketing is impossible. With the right tour marketing strategies in place, you can attract the right audience to your business.

In this tour marketing guide, we’ll equip you with the tools and knowledge to conquer the challenges of marketing and marketing in the dynamic tourism industry.

1. The importance of sales and marketing for tour operators

In the competitive world of tourism, effective tour marketing and sales strategies are vital for the success of tour operators. While often used interchangeably, sales and marketing serve distinct roles in driving business growth and attracting customers.

Sales vs marketing

Sales and marketing are two complementary functions that work towards a common goal – generating revenue and increasing tour sales and customer engagement. However, they differ in their approaches and objectives.

Sales: Sales focus on the direct interaction with potential customers to convert leads into bookings or sales. Sales representatives are responsible for building relationships, addressing customer inquiries, negotiating, and ultimately closing the deal.

Marketing: Marketing, on the other hand, involves a broader set of activities aimed at creating brand awareness, attracting leads, and nurturing customer interest. Tour business marketing encompasses strategies and tactics for promoting products or services for tours, attractions or activities to a wider audience.

2. The 7 P's of tourism marketing

When it comes to marketing your tourism business , tour operators need to understand and implement the 7 P’s of marketing. These seven elements are essential for developing a comprehensive tour operator marketing strategy:

• Product: The core offering of the tour business, which includes the tours, experiences, and services provided. Creating unique and appealing products is crucial for attracting customers.
• Place: Refers to the distribution channels and locations where customers can purchase or access the tour services. A strong presence in the right locations can significantly impact a tour operator’s success.
• Price: Determining the right pricing strategy is vital to strike a balance between attracting customers and ensuring profitability. Pricing should reflect the value of the experience provided.
• Promotion: This element involves all the promotional activities aimed at raising awareness about the tour business, including advertising, public relations, and sales promotions.
• People: The personnel within the tour business play a critical role in customer interactions. Well-trained and customer-oriented staff can enhance the overall customer experience.
• Processes: Efficient processes ensure smooth operations, from booking and payment to tour execution. Streamlining processes can lead to increased customer satisfaction.
• Physical Evidence: This refers to the tangible aspects of the tour experience, such as brochures, website design, social media presence and overall branding. A strong visual identity can leave a lasting impression on potential customers and help you sell more tours .

3. Tour operator marketing channels

Tour operators have an array of marketing channels to reach their target audience. Leveraging the right mix of these channels is essential for improving your marketing strategy .

Social media

Social media has become an indispensable tour marketing platform for businesses to engage with customers and showcase their offerings. Through platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, tour operators can share stunning visuals, engaging videos, and valuable content to capture the interest of potential customers.

In the realm of social media marketing, there are three major types:

• Owned media , referring to the content and channels that the tour operator owns and controls, such as their website and social media profiles.
• Earned media , including mentions, shares, and reviews from customers or influencers.
• Paid media , involving sponsored posts or advertisements on social media platforms.

In the age of digital communication, email marketing continues to be a highly effective advertising tactic for tour operators to engage with their customers on a personal level. With its ability to deliver targeted messages directly to customers’ inboxes, email marketing plays a crucial role in nurturing customer relationships and encouraging repeat bookings.

Search engines

Harnessing the power of search engines is crucial for tour operators to be discoverable online.

• Organic SEO: Organic SEO is the process of optimizing a tour operator’s website and online presence to improve its ranking in the non-paid (organic) search results of search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. An SEO strategy is invaluable when it comes to getting quality traffic . When potential customers search for tour-related keywords, a well-optimized website is more likely to appear higher in the search engine results pages (SERPs), increasing the chances of attracting organic traffic.
• Paid search: Often implemented through platforms like Google Ads (formerly known as Google AdWords), Paid search is a form of online advertising where tour operators bid on specific keywords to have their ads displayed at the top of the search engine results pages. Unlike organic SEO, where ranking is achieved through optimization efforts, paid search allows businesses to instantly appear in prominent positions for selected keywords upon bidding.

Tour operators

Collaborating with other tour operators can be a mutually beneficial tour marketing strategy. Forming partnerships, promoting and selling other tour operators , or offering combined packages empowers tour operators to expand their reach and attract new customer segments.

Industry events

When it comes to marketing, tour and travel industry events provide an excellent platform for tour operators to showcase their services to a target audience. Industry events also provide valuable networking opportunities to connect with potential customers and industry partners.

Travel agents

Tour operators can benefit from partnering with travel agents and Online Travel Agencies (OTAs). These partnerships can expose the tour business to a broader audience, tapping into the agents’ or platforms’ existing customer base.

Establishing good relationships with suppliers, such as hotels and restaurants, can lead to referrals and collaborations. Satisfied suppliers are more likely to recommend a tour operator to their customers.

Happy customers can become the most effective tour operator marketing tools. Positive reviews, word-of-mouth referrals, and user-generated content on social media and review platforms can significantly influence potential customers’ decision-making.

Influencers

Partnering with influencers who have a significant following in the travel niche can amplify the tour operator’s reach. Influencers can create engaging content and reviews that resonate with their audience, generating interest in the tour services.

4. Devising your tour marketing plan

A solid tour marketing plan will form the foundation of any future tourism marketing ideas that your business may create in the future.

Define target audience

The first step in crafting an effective tour marketing plan is to define your target audience. Understanding who your ideal customers are will guide all subsequent marketing efforts. Consider factors such as demographics (age, gender, location), interests, travel preferences, and spending habits.

Honing in on your target audience allows you to tailor your tour business marketing messages and experiences to resonate with their specific needs and desires.

Research competition

To stand out in a crowded market, it’s crucial to research and analyze your competition. Identify other tour operators offering similar services and assess their strengths, weaknesses, and unique selling propositions. Understanding what sets your competitors apart can help you position your tour business effectively and identify areas where you can differentiate yourself.

Set marketing goals

Establish clear and measurable tour marketing goals to guide your efforts. These goals should be aligned with your overall business objectives and should be specific, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). Common tour operator marketing goals include increasing website traffic, generating leads, boosting bookings, enhancing customer engagement, and improving customer retention. Having well-defined goals will allow you to track progress and make data-driven decisions.

Choose marketing channels

With a diverse range of tour marketing channels available, it’s essential to select the ones that align with your target audience and marketing goals. Effective marketing channels for tour operators that you will want to consider include:

• Website and SEO: A well-optimized website is the foundation of your online presence. Implement search engine optimization (SEO) strategies to improve your website’s visibility in search results.
• Social Media: Leverage social media platforms to showcase your tours, engage with customers, and build a community. Choose platforms that align with your target audience’s preferences, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or YouTube.
• Email Marketing: Nurture customer relationships through personalized email campaigns, offering exclusive offers, updates, and valuable content to subscribers.
• Paid Advertising: Utilize paid search (Google Ads) and social media advertising to reach a broader audience and promote specific offers or tour packages.
• Content Marketing: Create compelling and informative content, such as blog posts, destination guides, videos, and visuals, to attract and engage potential customers.
• Partnerships and Collaborations: Forge partnerships with other tour operators, travel agencies, hotels, and local businesses to expand your reach and offer combined packages.

Create compelling content

Content is a powerful tool for tour operators to showcase their offerings and connect with customers. Develop high-quality and compelling content that tells a story, evokes emotions, and inspires travel. Use captivating visuals, engaging videos, and informative blog posts to highlight the unique experiences your tours offer. You can also incorporate user-generated content and customer testimonials to build trust and credibility.

Track results

Measuring the effectiveness of your marketing efforts is essential to understand what works and what needs improvement. Implement tools like Google Analytics to monitor website traffic, conversion rates, and user behavior. Track the performance of your email campaigns and social media engagement metrics. Regularly review and analyze data to identify trends, assess the success of your marketing initiatives, and make informed adjustments to optimize your marketing plan.

5. Tips for selling tours

Here are our top tips for selling tours that both you and your customers love.

Know your product

A deep understanding of your tours is essential for effective sales. Familiarize yourself with every aspect of the tours you offer, from the destinations and itineraries to the unique experiences and inclusions. Be prepared to answer questions and provide detailed information to potential customers.

When you know your product inside out, you instill confidence in your customers and can address their needs effectively.

Be passionate

Passion is contagious and can make a significant difference in selling tours. Show enthusiasm and genuine excitement when discussing your tours with potential customers. Share your own experiences and stories to evoke emotions and create a sense of adventure. Customers that sense your passion are more likely to connect with your offerings and trust your recommendations.

Know your target market

Tailor your approach to match the preferences and interests of your target market. Different customer segments may have varying motivations for traveling and unique requirements. Personalize your sales pitch and offerings based on their preferences, whether they are seeking adventure, relaxation, family-friendly experiences, or cultural immersion. Understanding your target market allows you to position your tours effectively and appeal to their specific desires.

Have an answer

Anticipate common questions and objections that potential customers may have and be ready with well-informed answers. Addressing concerns promptly and confidently helps build trust and demonstrates your expertise. Having a comprehensive knowledge of your tours and the destinations you offer can also help you upsell and cross-sell additional services or experiences.

Be persistent

In the world of sales, persistence is key. Not every potential customer will make an immediate decision to book a tour. Follow up with leads, stay engaged with interested customers, and provide additional information as needed. Being persistent while maintaining a friendly and non-intrusive approach can eventually lead to successful conversions.

Leverage social media

Social media platforms are valuable tools for tour operators to connect with their audience and showcase their offerings. Utilize platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube to share stunning visuals, engaging videos, and informative content about your tours.

Engage with followers, respond to comments, and participate in travel-related conversations to build a community around your brand. Social media also provides opportunities for user-generated content, which can be highly influential in attracting new customers.

Offer incentives

Attract potential customers with special incentives and promotions. Consider offering limited-time discounts, early bird offers, or exclusive perks for those who book early. Incentives can create a sense of urgency and motivate customers to take action. Loyalty programs and referral rewards can also encourage repeat bookings and word-of-mouth marketing.

Follow up after sale

The customer journey doesn’t end with the sale; it continues with excellent post-sale support. Follow up with customers after their tour experiences to gather feedback and address any concerns they may have. A personalized follow-up shows that you care about their experience and can lead to positive reviews and repeat business. Happy and satisfied customers are more likely to recommend your tours to others, contributing to your tour business’s growth.

A well-executed sales approach, coupled with effective marketing efforts, not only drives bookings but also fosters customer loyalty and positive word-of-mouth. As you incorporate the above tips into your sales and marketing strategies, you can elevate your tour business and create memorable experiences for your customers.

Ready to supercharge your tour business’s sales and marketing efforts? Rezdy is your all-in-one marketing channel manager for streamlining operations, reaching new customers, and boosting bookings. With Rezdy as your tour booking software , you can reach a wider audience through our integrated marketing tools and tailor your offerings to your target audience with ease.

Sign up now for our 21-day free tria l and experience the power of Rezdy firsthand.

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What is a Specialist Tour Operator?

A specialized tour operator provides unique and niche travel experiences. You can think of food tours, cooking classes, wine tastings, and hiking tours. Any tour provider that offers services in a niche is a specialized tour operator.

In recent years, there has been a rising interest in specialized tourism. For example, 2021 data shows that 68% of travelers are shifting towards sustainable tourism. Also, the Global Wellness Institute reports that 64% of travelers want wellness vacations. In addition to these, food tourism is constantly growing. In the U.S. alone, 95% are looking for 'some kind of unique food experience', and the numbers are growing globally.

In this blog, we'll learn more about specialized tour operations. If you are a travel agent or tour provider looking for a fresh marketing approach in 2024, this is for you. Below are 5 ideas on how to curate specialized travel experiences that meet travelers' demands.

1. Niche Expertise

Specialist tour operators have in-depth knowledge and expertise in specific travel niches or themes, such as adventure travel, wildlife safaris, cultural immersions, or culinary tours.

Did you know that some specialist tour operators specialize in niche markets like "dark tourism," offering tours to historically significant but often somber places such as battlefields, prisons, or disaster sites?

Tips for tour operators:

• Know Your Stuff : Really get to know everything about the special travel area you're focusing on, like history and interesting facts.
• Tell Great Stories : Make your tours interesting by telling cool stories. Work with local people who know a lot about the place to make it more real.
• Listen and Change : Pay attention to what your travelers like and don't like. Use their feedback to make your tours even better.

2. Customized Experiences

They often have travel agency to offer customized or tailor-made itineraries to cater to the unique interests and preferences of their target audience, allowing travelers to personalize their journeys.

Many specialist tour operators provide travelers with the opportunity to design their own itineraries, offering a level of personalization that can include specific activities, accommodations, travel arrangements, or even dietary preferences.

• Offer Tailor-Made Options : Give your travelers the chance to create their own itinerary. This could mean letting them pick specific activities, choose their own accommodation, or even request special meals.
• Ask for Preferences : Before the trip, ask your travelers about their interests, what they want to see and do, and any special needs they might have. Use this info to make their experience more personal.
• Flexible Scheduling : Allow some flexibility in your itinerary. This way, travelers can spend more time on the activities they enjoy most or explore additional sites that catch their interest during the tour.

3. Destination Specialization

Some specialist tour operators concentrate on specific destinations or regions, becoming experts in those areas and offering comprehensive experiences within them.

Other specialist tour operators focus exclusively on regions with unique natural wonders, like the Galápagos Islands, where they specialize in eco-friendly and sustainable travel experiences.

• Be a Local Expert : Learn everything about the specific region or destination you focus on, including its culture, history, and natural wonders. This knowledge will help you create in-depth, engaging tours.
• Highlight Unique Features : Showcase what makes your destination special, like unique natural attractions or cultural experiences. For example, if you specialize in the Galápagos Islands, emphasize eco-friendly tours that highlight the unique wildlife and ecosystems.
• Sustainable Practices : If your destination is known for its natural beauty, like the Galápagos, prioritize sustainable and eco-friendly travel practices to preserve the environment. This is not only good for the planet but also appeals to eco-conscious travelers.

4. Exclusive Access

They may provide package tours with exclusive access to attractions, accommodations, or activities that are not readily available to mass-market tour operators, enhancing the uniqueness of the tours.

Specialist tour operators might arrange exclusive access to archaeological sites before or after regular opening hours, allowing travelers to explore these historic treasures without the crowds.

• Arrange Special Visits : Work to get special access to popular sites, like arranging visits to archaeological sites outside of normal hours. This lets travelers enjoy these places without the usual crowds.
• Unique Experiences : Offer activities or experiences that aren't usually available to the general public. This could be anything from a private tour with a local expert to exclusive access to certain areas.
• Build Relationships : Develop good relationships with local attractions and accommodation providers. This can help you arrange special access or unique experiences for your travelers.

5. Passionate Guides

Specialist tour operators often employ passionate and knowledgeable tour guides who are experts in the niche or destination, ensuring travelers receive a high level of expertise and engagement during their journeys.

In the world of birdwatching tours, specialist operators often employ ornithologist guides who are not only experts in bird identification but also passionate advocates for bird conservation, enriching travelers' experiences with their deep knowledge and enthusiasm.

• Hire Expert Guides : Look for guides who are not just knowledgeable but also passionate about the niche. For example, in birdwatching tours, hire ornithologists who are experts in bird species and conservation.
• Train for Engagement : Ensure your guides are trained not only in factual knowledge but also in engaging storytelling and interaction with travelers. This enhances the overall experience.
• Focus on Special Interests : Match guides with specific interests or expertise to relevant tours. A guide's enthusiasm for their specialty, like bird conservation, can greatly enrich a traveler's experience.

Key Takeaways

As we wrap up our exploration of specialized tour operators, it's clear that this niche-focused approach in the tourism industry is not just a trend, but a growing sector meeting diverse traveler demands.

From the increasing interest in sustainable tourism and responsible travel, to the rise of wellness vacations and unique culinary experiences, the opportunities for specialized tour operators are vast and varied.

To stand out in this competitive market, here are three key actionable tips that you, as tour and activity providers, can implement:

• Embrace Your Niche : Whether it's eco-tourism, culinary experiences, or wellness retreats, dive deep into your niche. Know your audience and tailor your offerings to their specific interests and needs.
• Prioritize Authentic Experiences : Travelers are seeking genuine, immersive experiences. Collaborate with local communities and experts to offer authentic and unique tours that cannot be found elsewhere.
• Leverage Technology and Innovation : Utilize the latest technology, like AI for personalized itinerary planning or virtual reality previews of tours, to enhance the customer experience and streamline operations.

By focusing on these areas and continually adapting to the evolving desires of travelers, you can create memorable and distinctive experiences that not only meet but exceed the expectations of your clientele. Remember, in the world of specialized tourism, it's all about delivering uniqueness, authenticity, and quality.

Our Happy Specialized Tour Operators

TicketingHub has worked with specialized tour and activity providers for years now. Some of them are now renowned for their food tours, city tours, and special events. Read our case studies below and see what helped them succeed in this rising market.

• The Secret Food Tours
• Egypt's Sound and Light Show
• Belfast City Tours

People Also Ask:

1. why is online booking software helpful for specialist tour operators.

An online booking software is a game-changer for specialist tour operators. This type of software streamlines the booking process, making it easier for travelers to secure their spots on specialized tours.

For the operator, it simplifies managing reservations, tracks customer preferences, and automates tasks like sending confirmations and reminders.

Online booking systems offer efficiency and personalized service, particularly for specialist operators who deal with customized and niche travel packages. It saves money and time, both for the tour operator and the traveler, enhancing the overall experience.

2. What is a specialist tour operator?

Specialist tour operators are tour operators in the travel industry who focuses on offering specialized and niche travel experiences. Unlike mass market tour operators who cater to broad, general travel demands, specialist tour operators offer in-depth expertise in specific areas.

These can range from eco-tourism, adventure travel, cultural tours, to specific country or regional focuses. They provide tailored package holidays and tours that cater to specific interests and often offer more personalized service than other tour operators.

3. What is a specialized tour?

A specialized tour is a travel package designed to cater to specific interests or themes. Unlike general tour packages offered by many travel agencies, specialized tours delve deep into a particular area, offering unique experiences such as eco-tourism adventures, culinary tours in specific countries, or in-depth exploration of national parks.

These tours are usually crafted by specialist tour operators who possess deep knowledge and passion for the niche, ensuring an enriching and authentic experience for the traveler.

4. What are the main three types of tour operators?

The three main types of tour operators in the travel industry are inbound tour operators, outbound tour operators, and domestic tour operators.

• Inbound Tour Operators : These operators specialize in arranging tours and travel packages for travelers coming into a country. They work closely with hotels, airlines, and ground operators to provide a comprehensive travel experience in the destination country.
• Outbound Tour Operators : These receptive tour operators organize trips for travelers stepping out of their home country to visit other destinations worldwide. They often work with airlines, hotels, and travel operators in different countries to arrange all travel components.
• Domestic Tour Operators : They organize tours for domestic travelers within their own country. They specialize in knowing the best local spots and experiences that appeal to domestic travelers, including hotels, transport, and leisure travel activities.

Each type of tour operator plays a crucial role in the tourism ecosystem, catering to different segments of holidaymakers and travelers. It offers varied services like transport, accommodation, and travel packages.

5. What types of niche travel experiences do specialist tour operators offer?

Specialist tour operators offer a wide range of niche experiences, including wildlife safaris, cultural immersions, adventure travel, culinary tours, and more. They cater to specific interests and passions, providing travelers with unique and customized journeys.

6. Are specialist tour operators more expensive than regular tour companies?

Specialist tours can cost widely depending on niche and customization. While some specialist tours may have a premium price due to exclusive access or unique experiences, others can be competitively priced. It's essential to compare options and assess the value of all arrangements and experiences offered.

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