Babylon Tours: Scaling a Lean Walking Tour Company

Tourpreneur Tour Business Podcast

English - November 22, 2022 17:23 - 40 minutes - 46.6 MB - ★★★★★ - 38 ratings
Entrepreneurship Business Marketing travel activities experiences tourpreneurs tours travelindustry Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed

Previous Episode: The Challenge of Building a Water Sports Operation in Florida

Next Episode: Chris’ Top 8 Strategies to Marketing to the Luxury Consumer

In this episode, Mitch converses with Arnaud Azoulay, CEO of Babylon Tours, a walking tour company specializing in museum tours across Europe.Arnaud is a maverick and an outlier. He’s one of the rare walking tour companies that has scaled its brand into nearly a dozen cities. And he’s done it on a lean team and budget, by focusing on the basics: a quality tour and quality guides. He’s not distracted by all the tech talk, and he sells primarily through OTAs.In this episode, we’ll discuss:

Arnaud’s success story from a 30-something Paris guide to scaling a tour business to 10 cities.His organic and gradual approach to growthThe importance of combo products, and how he sells themWhy he still offers a personal human touch despite using automationsWhy he firmly believes in using OTAs as his main sales channel, and his experience with Viator AccelerateHis focus on the quality of experienceWhat’s been working for his OTA listingsHow he gets repeat customers as a day tour operatorWhat he’s learned from In N Out Burger in California

As always, much more exclusive members-only content available on tourpreneur.com/plus

Mentioned in this episode: