Ciao a tutti! 👋

Siamo studenti di Ingegneria Gestionale dell’Università di Bologna e stiamo conducendo una ricerca su come agenzie di viaggio e tour operator gestiscono imprevisti, cancellazioni e problemi operativi.

Ci dareste una mano compilando un breve questionario di 3 minuti? È esclusivamente per fini universitari, non commerciali.

📋 https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScMVWgtJap-i5S05IMQLtsdcPHDBT_hGCtfrss297Yar5rxCA/viewform?usp=publish-editor

Grazie mille a chi ci aiuterà! 🙏

We have founded regenerative tourism company - a platform based in Europe but will be selling tours globally and actively looking for tour guides and operators who offer tours that bring benefit to environment/ local community or help in reviving cultural heritage. If anyone offers this type of tours and willing to collaborate. Our platform name is The amazing tourist

I help run a small kayak tour business and we've been thinking about listing our tours on more booking platforms. only problem is we're still tracking availability through spreadsheets and our own booking system, and i'm worried about getting double bookings.

we already had a situation where someone forgot to block off a date for a private group and we almost accepted another booking for the same time. summer gets pretty busy for us and i really don't wanna be checking 3 different calendars every time someone books anyone here running tours on multiple platforms?

Welcome to Tajikistan 🇹🇯

Are you dreaming of discovering breathtaking mountains, beautiful lakes, ancient cities, authentic local culture, and the warm hospitality of the Tajik people?

Let me help you explore the beauty of Tajikistan through personalized travel experiences designed around your interests, schedule, and travel style.

My goal is to help every visitor discover Tajikistan comfortably, safely, and authentically, creating unforgettable memories along the way.

Whether you are traveling alone, with your partner, with your family, with friends, or as part of a large group, you are welcome!

✅OUR TOURISM SERVICES

1.🏇Private Tours in Tajikistan

Discover Tajikistan at your own pace with a private tour tailored to your preferences. Enjoy a more personal travel experience, with flexibility in your itinerary and opportunities to explore destinations that interest you most.

Private tours are suitable for solo travelers, couples, families, small groups, and private parties.

2.👩‍❤️‍👨Family Tours

Travel with your family and discover the country's natural beauty, history, culture, and traditions.

Our family tour itineraries can be adapted to your family's interests, preferred pace, and travel arrangements, helping you enjoy a comfortable and memorable holiday together.

3.🤼Group Tours

Planning a trip with friends, colleagues, a travel club, or an organized tourist group?

We welcome group inquiries and can discuss suitable itineraries, transportation, accommodation, meals, sightseeing, and other arrangements according to your group's needs and budget.

4.🚵Solo Travelers and Individual Guests

Traveling alone does not mean you have to miss the beauty of Tajikistan. Individual travelers are welcome to explore the country's landscapes, cultural heritage, and local life through a personalized travel experience.

Whether you prefer a short excursion or a multi-day journey, we can discuss an itinerary that suits your interests and travel plans.

5.👑Cultural and Historical Tours

Discover Tajikistan's rich history, cultural heritage, and traditional way of life.

Depending on your itinerary, you may explore:

Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan.

Hisor Fortress and its historical surroundings.

Ancient Panjakent and the Rudaki Museum.

Sarazm Ancient Settlement, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Traditional bazaars, local communities, and cultural landmarks.

Istaravshan and Khujand, known for their historical significance.

6.🏔️Mountain and Nature Tours

Experience the spectacular landscapes that make Tajikistan special.

Possible destinations include:

Iskandarkul Lake and the Fann Mountains.

The Seven Lakes of the Shing Valley.

Saratog and its beautiful mountain surroundings.

Safed Dara and its mountain scenery.

Norak Reservoir and its impressive landscapes.

The Varzob Valley, Pamir highway and other beautiful natural destinations.

Tour routes depend on the season, road conditions, accessibility, and your preferences.

7.📦Customized Multi-Day Tour Packages

Looking for a complete travel experience rather than arranging everything yourself?

I can help organize private multi-day tour packages combining destinations, transportation, accommodation, meals, sightseeing, and local experiences according to the agreed itinerary.

Packages can be discussed for different travel durations, group sizes, interests, and budgets.

8.🧳Airport Transfers and Transportation Arrangements

Transportation can be arranged as part of a tour package or discussed separately, depending on availability and your requirements.

Please contact me in advance so we can discuss your travel dates, destinations, and transportation needs.

✅ PARTNERSHIP AND BUSINESS COOPERATION

I am also interested in building long-term professional relationships with international travel companies and tourism professionals.

I welcome cooperation inquiries from:

Travel agencies and tour operators.

International tourism companies.

Group travel organizers.

Family and leisure travel specialists.

Independent travel planners.

Tourism influencers and travel content creators.

Companies looking for a local tourism partner in Tajikistan.

✅How Can We Work Together?

We can discuss cooperation opportunities such as:

Creating and promoting Tajikistan tour packages for your clients.

Developing customized itineraries for your market.

Arranging private tours for your customers.

Coordinating group tours, subject to availability.

Sharing travel packages and tourism information.

Developing long-term cooperation for upcoming travel seasons.

I understand that every partner has different requirements. Therefore, I am happy to discuss your expectations, target market, group size, travel dates, and preferred cooperation model.

My goal is to build reliable partnerships that benefit both sides and introduce more international travelers to the beauty of Tajikistan.

✅ WHY DISCOVER TAJIKISTAN WITH A LOCAL TOUR PROVIDER?

Personalized travel experiences.

Flexible itineraries based on your interests.

Opportunities to discover local culture and traditions.

Beautiful mountain landscapes and spectacular lakes.

Historical and cultural sightseeing.

Options for individuals, families, couples, and groups.

Tour packages tailored to different travel plans and budgets.

Direct communication to discuss your requirements.

Every trip can be different because every traveler has a different idea of the perfect journey.

✅ LET'S PLAN YOUR TAJIKISTAN ADVENTURE!

Whether you are planning a short visit, a family holiday, a private adventure, a group tour, or a business partnership, I would be happy to discuss your plans.

Please share:

Your preferred travel dates.

The number of travelers.

The destinations you would like to visit.

The duration of your trip.

Your approximate budget.

Any special requirements.

I will be happy to discuss a suitable itinerary and the services available for your trip.

At the end my speech for travellers and business partners.

Let's explore Tajikistan together and create unforgettable travel experiences!

Tajikistan is calling you, grab your opportunity and explore Tajikistan through my eyes. For more details feel free to chat.

I started this year not as a tour guide.

As it's something I wanted to do, a few months ago I put together a walking tour (2 hours, city centre, mostly history). I created it as a product on Viator, and started getting some bookings.

I've had a really amazing (and surprising!) few months since then - lots of bookings, and consistent five-star reviews.

So (to my amazement) it seems that it's something I can do as a job. It's a bonus that it's something I love doing!

My question is - what's next? I have one product on Viator, and I do no other marketing at all.

To be honest I'm happy with the level of bookings I'm getting from Viator (and the commission they take, as they do all the marketing and fee handling) but as bookings are beginning to tail off a bit now we're out of summer, I was wondering how I can keep this up, and how I can grow.

If you have experience in this area, what would be your advice for my next step? I'm not really interested in starting my own business, but I was wondering what would be a good idea to get this going a bit more - e.g. create more tours, create the same tour on other platforms, do some marketing, and so on.

Any advice is greatly appreciated!

I paid 50% for travel to Egypt with Memphis tours, they sent the flight details. It has been more than a week and they will not confirm hotel reservation.

I've tried contacting the agent and they wont take my calls, or respond to emails.

What can be done?

I run a small walking tour and manage every booking myself, including direct messages, my website, and marketplace reservations. Yesterday I got a booking request for Saturday at 10am and put it into my calendar as Sunday at 10am. I have no idea how I managed that.

This morning I got a message from a family saying they were waiting at the meeting point. I checked the marketplace and there it was, Saturday, 10am, four guests confirmed. Then I checked my phone bookings and realized I had accepted another group for the same slot. TWO groups. Same tour. Same guide. Me.

I had to call the second group and explain that I had made a calendar mistake, then refund them and offer a different time. They were polite, which somehow made me feel worse. I feel so embarrassed and sick about this. My whole system is one spreadsheet and three tabs, so this was waiting to happen tbh. Anyone else had a booking disaster like this?

Hi! I'm Martin from Martin Meyer Safaris, a specialist safari company based in South Africa, and we’re looking to build relationships with a small number of travel advisors who would like to offer African safaris to their clients without needing to become Africa specialists themselves.

We’ve spent more than 20 years working on the ground in the safari industry, and our focus is very much on getting the safari right rather than simply putting together a list of nice lodges.

We design and operate safaris across Southern and East Africa, including South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda.

For advisors, the relationship is straightforward:

• You retain your relationship with your client. We are there to support you, not compete with you.

• We provide competitive commission structures and work with advisors commercially rather than treating every enquiry as a retail booking.

• We help with the complicated part. Routing, seasonality, camp selection, logistics, internal flights, private guiding and understanding which areas actually work well together.

• We provide ongoing destination and product training, so you can speak confidently to your clients about Africa.

• You have people based in Africa to call when you need advice, both during the planning process and while your clients are travelling.

• We can help with everything from privately guided bespoke safaris and honeymoons to families, small groups, photographic safaris and more complex multi-country itineraries.

Most importantly, we want our travel agent partners to look good in front of their clients. If something isn't the right choice, we'll say so. If there is a better way to structure an itinerary, we'll explain why.

We're not looking for hundreds of agents. I'd much rather build proper long-term relationships with advisors who want to sell Africa well and would value having experienced people on the ground behind them.

If you currently sell African safaris, or would like to start offering them but haven't felt confident enough with the destination, I'd be very happy to connect.

Feel free to comment or send me a message and I can share more about us, how we work with advisors, commissions, training and the destinations we cover.

Hey everyone! 🇱🇨

I run a small tour company in Saint Lucia and I'm looking to connect with other tour operators and guides across the Caribbean.

Nothing too serious, just wanna pick each other's brains, share what's working, what's not, how we get bookings, deal with customers, marketing, pricing and all the little challenges that come with running a tour business.

I feel like we could learn a lot from each other, especially being from different islands but working in the same industry.

Whether you've been doing this for 20 years or just started, I'd love to connect and exchange some ideas.

Any fellow Caribbean tour operators or guides on here? What island are you representing?

So I'm a tour guide of 3 years working for a bike tour company but I'm not getting enough tours and also don't have creative control over routes.

I decided to start my own thing in a different niche, basically sightseeing walking tours only.

Instead of a company giving out tours to 8 different tour guides, all the tours and income will be mine.

Now I really feel like I should be doing this full time but has any of you decided to ever have another job to support yourself?

This is actually a thought that came to my mind working for this company because I just don't make enough, but then I wouldn't be available most of the week and a lot of tours happen or are requested during weekdays.

How do you manage your time? I already did a few tours on my own and there's a big difference in how much I make but I'm still building my website, Google business, seo and IG accounts

Thanks for your input

Hey everyone!

About a year ago, I started a small boat tour company in Lisbon, Portugal.

Our business model is pretty straightforward:

• Daytime: Private sailing experiences for couples, families, groups of friends, and corporate clients.

• Sunset: Shared sailing tours, where guests purchase individual tickets.

Here's the interesting part: Our sunset tours are consistently fully booked, but we're really struggling to sell private experiences.

Most of our sunset bookings come through platforms like GetYourGuide and Airbnb Experiences. They've been great for filling our sunset tours, but when it comes to private bookings, we've only received one or two through these platforms in an entire year.

And that's where I'm stuck.

Lisbon is an extremely competitive market for boat tours. There are plenty of operators, and most traditional sales channels have already been approached by everyone in the industry.

Hotels? Everyone works with hotels.

Travel agencies? Same story.

Online booking platforms? Crowded, competitive, and heavily commission-based.

I'm not looking for the usual advice about posting more on Instagram, running Facebook ads, or contacting hotel concierges. I'm aware of those options, and I'm already exploring some of them.

What I'm really looking for is a different way of thinking about customer acquisition.

For example:

• What types of businesses or professionals could become unexpected referral partners?

• How would you build a network of people who regularly recommend private experiences to their clients?

• Are there industries outside traditional tourism that could generate bookings?

• If you were starting from scratch in a saturated market, how would you approach partnerships and B2B sales?

I'm particularly interested in creative partnerships, unconventional distribution channels, and strategies that don't depend entirely on paid advertising.

We have the boats, the crew, the experience, and happy customers. What we're missing is a reliable way to reach people who want to book an entire boat rather than individual tickets.

If this were your business, what would you try?

I'd genuinely appreciate ideas, especially from people who've built businesses in tourism, hospitality, events, or other competitive service industries.

Thanks!

Upfront: I'm a solo developer building an app that narrates stories about places as you walk through a city. I'm not here to promote it (still you can check it out to see, it’s Guidera : ai tour guide. only in iOS), and I don't want to build something that pretends to be a replacement for you. I want to understand what real guides do that I can't and shouldn't try to copy.
A few questions for working guides:
What do your best guests say made the tour worth it? Was it the facts, or something else?
What do you do on a tour that you think AI genuinely can't replicate?
Are you worried about AI guides and audio apps, or do they bring you different customers?
What do apps and audio guides get wrong that annoys you?
Blunt answers welcome. I'd rather hear it now.

Has anyone successfully gotten their Klook package connected to their Bókun account?

We finally made the jump to Bókun, but when we tried to connect the API on the Klook end I discovered there was no option to connect to Bókun. The platform instructed to fill out a form with the product details and ID and they would connect it manually on their back end.

Frustratingly, this process also unpublished the entire product. Then radio silence for 4 weeks other than some kind of automated email response every time we emailed to follow up.

Yesterday, the product was published again and the booking confirmation has been reset to automatic through the Klook system. No API connection, no response to any email, nothing. Just a months worth of missed sales.

Has anyone else tried or managed to get it connected?

I understand that operators set dates, time slots, and group capacity in a booking system, then connect that inventory to places where the tour is listed. Where I get stuck is how a booking on one channel updates the others in real time, especially with 12 seats and only 3 left. Could someone explain it with a practical example?

I have been assigned (last minute) to escort a multi-day bus tour down the US coast between these cities, and have to give a bit of onboard commentary. (City guides are locals). I’m in a bit of a panic, as my time for research is short.

To help me focus my research, what are a few overarching topics/themes I should not omit?

I have been tour guiding in Dublin for 18 months now, and I have built up my reviews on several platforms to the point where I get quite a lot of bookings on a regular basis. I really love the interactions with tourists and it has been a great experience.
The one thing that has been missing is having interactions with other tour guides. When I am leading groups around the City, I see many guides all the time, but obviously we are all busy doing our tours so we can’t stop and chat.
I don’t know any other tour guides in the City, and I would love to chat to some about our shared experiences, things we’ve learned on the way, tips and good things to know, and maybe referring tourists on to other guides if I cannot accommodate them.
If there are any tour guides in Dublin that would like to reach out, please do, either in a comment below or by DM.
Thanks!