The Financial Fix: Bookkeeping Tips to Keep Tour Operators Profitable (w/ Purple Sapphire Business Solutions)

When Kirstin Reeder’s first-ever bookkeeping client turned out to be a tour operator, she didn’t expect it to change the course of her business. But that relationship revealed how often tour operators are misunderstood by traditional accountants. Today, Kirstin and her teammate Amber Call run Purple Sapphire Business Solutions, a firm focused entirely on the unique financial needs of the tour and activity industry.This episode is packed with real-world guidance on how to set up your books, track profitability, avoid fraud, and prepare for seasonality. Whether you are just getting started or running a multi-day operation, Kirstin and Amber share the habits and systems that help operators build financially healthy businesses and reduce stress at tax time.And if you're attending TourWeek 2025, you can come meet Kirstin in person!Download their free expense audit calculator

As part of our Growth series, recorded live in Berlin at GetYourGuide's 2025 Unlocked Summit, we now turn to Naples, Italy. Tourpreneur host Mitch Bach talks with Jasmine Palmieri, Commercial & Product Director for World Tours Italy.World Tours has scaled by keeping everything in-house—from their fleet of vehicles to employed tour guides—allowing them to maintain strict quality control as they grow. Jasmine explains their strategy of offering small group tours in multiple languages daily, staying ahead of competitors through constant innovation, and creating unique experiences like a Roman-era dining experience paired with archaeological tours. She emphasizes the importance of personal connection, having guides proactively reach out to clients and serve as local advisors throughout their stay, turning tourists into enthusiastic advocates who spread the word to friends and family.Episode sponsored by GetYourGuide. Join Tourpreneur in November for TourWeek 2025 in Charleston, South Carolina!

Welcome to the Growth Series! Tourpreneur hosts Peter Syme and Mitch Bach attended GetYourGuide's Unlocked event in Berlin in September, and recorded several conversations with tour operators who have scaled their businesses to tens and hundreds of thousands of travelers. They share their insights and secrets in this series.In this conversation, Peter talks with Arzu Tutuk, Founder and Managing Director of Walks in Europe. She shares her journey from being a solo tour guide in Istanbul to running a scaled operation across multiple cities in Europe. They talk about the importance of delegation, leveraging technology, understanding pricing strategies, managing cash flow, and enhancing customer communication. Arzu highlights the need for small operators to expand their partner networks and adapt to market trends, particularly the growing demand for personalized and private tours.Key takeawaysDelegation is crucial for scaling a business.Your time as a business owner is more valuable than guiding.Invest in customer service to free up your time.Utilize technology to streamline operations and bookings.Pricing strategies should be dynamic and responsive to market demand.Cash flow management is essential for business sustainability.Effective communication with customers can increase bookings.Private and customized tours are becoming increasingly popular.Expanding your partner network can accelerate growth.Diversifying sales channels is key to reaching more customers.More on tourpreneur.com

Today Tourpreneur host Mitch Bach goes to Budapest!When a video game designer accidentally lands on MasterChef thanks to his partner’s prank, he doesn’t expect it to change his life. But that twist launched Joseph Szakács into founding Foodapest, one of Budapest’s most unique food experiences. In this episode, Joseph shares how he turned a surprise phone call into a purpose-driven business built around cooking, culture, and human connection.The (Hungarian) meat of this conversation focuses on Emotion Design. Joseph reveals how his background in video game development taught him to craft emotional journeys, not just itineraries. We dive deep into his ideas on “vibe guiding,” emotional storytelling, and why frustration and delight both belong on a tour.Visit FoodapestJoin Tourpreneur for TourWeek 2025 in November!

Good tour design doesn't just help create memorable experiences, it's also a way to build a defensive moat around your business that protects against competitors, copycats, and even AI disruption.In today's episode, TP hosts Mitch Bach and Peter Syme dismantle the traditional information-based approach to tour guiding and argue for a shift in thinking towards emotional design. They explore how customers drowning in content and knowledge need tours that create feelings rather than deliver facts, introducing frameworks like the "connection triangle" (guide-guest-place), the peak-end rule for memory formation, and the psychology of surprise as a core human emotion. The discussion reveals why designing around emotions like awe, connection, and surprise creates experiences that can't be replicated by competitors or generated by AI.Mitch and Pete dive into how tour operators can build defensible businesses through unique access, authentic personal stories, and continuous iteration rather than relying on replicable scripts or famous landmarks. Using examples from speakeasy-style walking tours in New York to bonfire dinners with base jumpers in the mountains, they demonstrate how value-based pricing comes from designing experiences that surprise and transform rather than simply meeting expectations.For more on tour design, join us at our annual conference TourWeek, November 10-13, 2025 in Charleston, SC!

Tourpreneur hosts Mitch Bach and Peter Syme come to you live from Berlin! They attended GetYourGuide's Unlocked conference, where over 300 of their tour, activity, and attraction partners gathered from around the world to have a day-long discussion that will shape the future of the platform, and our industry in part. (Last year's supplier discussions focused on the need for curation, leading directly to a major shift in the platform's direction.)Peter and Mitch spent most of the day speaking with tour operators there, but when end-of-day drinks happened, GetYourGuide's COO Tao Tao said "let's grab some beers and go have a chat!" And we couldn't resist the chance to pepper him with questions.In an age of carefully scripted, PR-focused corporate conversations, we appreciated Tao's candor and willingness to answer everything we threw at him. Our questions were a little wacky, a little philosophical and extremely eclectic. But he didn't shy away from anything. And the result really exposes GetYourGuide's vision (and bet) for how an experiences marketplace should look in 2025 and beyond.This conversation is wide-ranging to say the least, and a good follow-up after our podcast in January (which is also a must-listen).In this episode we cover a lot of terrain:Mitch gets a little wacky with social commentary: Are reviews actually good for our industry? Are we all better off experiencing travel through serendipity and wandering, rather than organized, booked experiences?Pete notices an end-of-day discussion on "moods" and asked Tao whether GetYourGuide should be developing mood and feeling filters!Tao shares why they created a conference to show up for their suppliers, even when there's tough love in the room.We ask how, 9 months later, the shift to a more curated marketplace is progressing. Are we nearing the end of the process, or just the beginning?We veer into a strange conversation around which movie or TV show best describes the current OTA situation, and how GetYourGuide thinks about what they're doing as an organization that partially sets the tone for what tours & activities are.Tao shares how in the age of AI, product differentiation and curation will only get more important.We all agree our industry needs to grow the pie. But how? In what direction?New AI reviews and filters point to a future possibility where the right tour is surfaced in a more personalized way, and quality is assessed beyond star ratings.Finally, we get Tao's advice for new businesses and how they should position themselves in the industry and the platform for best success.And GetYourGuide is a sponsor of TourWeek 2025, our global conference with 400 tour & activity industry players coming to Charleston, SC for more meaty, frothy conversations!More show notes and resources on tourpreneur.com

If there's one thing we at Tourpreneur have learned about running an online community, it's how important it is to have in-person gatherings to anchor the online conversations in the friendships that develop in-person.So far this year we've welcomed nearly 1,000 people to our small group "Shindigs" (meetups) held all around the world.And we're planning on more, plus launching a brand new style of conference for the whole industry, TourWeek.So in this special episode, Mitch, Peter and TP Head of Events Kyle Campbell sit down for a chat about the importance of tour operators meeting up together in-person and how we want YOU to join or host an in-person gathering!

How do we design experiences that use photography to enhance the guided experience, and not detract from feeling engaged and immersed? That's the question Mitch Bach posed in this Tourpreneur episode.Mikaela Toczek is the perfect person to answer that questions. She's the founder of More to Explore in Slovenia, which combines her background as a documentary photographer and photojournalism educator with her passion for guiding to create tours that explore Slovenia's lesser-known areas.Having moved to Slovenia with her family and launched her business three years ago, she deliberately focuses on areas without established tourism infrastructure, taking small groups of eight people to places that offer authentic connections with local hosts and providers.Her approach to tours integrates what she calls "conscious photography" - a philosophy rooted in her experience using medium format film cameras that have only 12 shots per roll, forcing intentional, reflective image-making rather than mindless smartphone snapping. This photographic mindfulness becomes woven throughout her tour experiences, helping guests balance capturing memories with being fully present in Slovenia's stunning natural landscapes.Don't forget to join us for TourWeek, Tourpreneur's global event for tour operators! More at tourweek.travel

**Don't forget to register for our upcoming conference: TourWeek, Nov 10-13!**The whole TP gang of Mitch, Peter, Chris and Kyle were in London together recently for a Tourpreneur party. And our friends at GetYourGuide emailed and said—hey, while you're in London, do you want to take a tour?We said, sure! When we asked what it was, they said: trust us, this is a good one.They weren't kidding.It was such an interesting experience that we surprised the owner-guide by asking him to record an impromptu podcast episode right after finishing his 3-hour tour of Afro-Carribean Foods of Brixton, London.Obi owns Gorgeous Tours UK, and operates African and Caribbean food tours in Brixton, London's historically black neighborhood, sharing deeply personal stories of his Nigerian family's immigration experience alongside the complex cultural evolution of the area.What began six years ago as a slow-starting venture inspired by his wife's suggestion during a Bangkok food tour has transformed into a thriving full-time business running twice daily, six days a week, thanks to an unexpected boost from Beyoncé's London concerts in May 2023 that brought thousands of American tourists seeking authentic cultural experiences.His tours combine eight to nine food tastings with intimate storytelling that doesn't shy away from difficult truths about gentrification, historical neglect, and community displacement, instead embracing honest narratives that guests appreciate for their authenticity. Operating as a solo entrepreneur, Obi faces the classic scaling challenges of managing all aspects of his business while maintaining the personal touch and local relationships that make his tours special.

There's no explaining this episode. It's rambling and angry and raw and weird, but probably a very useful episode to listen to.Mr. AI-is-the-future Peter Syme and Mr. Human-Connection-is-Everything Mitch Bach are joined by two brilliant guys who have made their living creating travel content. Stuart McDonald founded Travelfish to offer true expert insights into Southeast Asian travel destinations. And Matthew Barker is the founder of Horizon Guides, which helps tour operators sell tours by pairing their products with expert content.Both Matthew and Stuart have spent decades in the travel content business, and have a lot to say about what Google's content updates and the general shift to AI has done to the spirit of travel planning & discovery. But the conversation gets much broader, real quick. Mitch rants about the poverty of fast-food AI tour guide experiences and what it's doing to customer behavior, and Pete valiantly defends technology.Nothing is firmly decided, but the debate is definite informative for anyone struggling to figure out where we're headed as a tour industry.Timestamps00:00 Introduction to the Changing Landscape of Travel Content04:29 Understanding Google’s Evolving Algorithms08:35 Creating Quality Travel Content13:40 The Impact of AI on Travel Content18:17 The Role of Human Connection in Travel Experiences25:01 Navigating the Future of Travel and Content Creation44:22 The Impact of Digital Culture on Personal Identity46:15 The Illusion of Choice in a Digital World48:26 Mindless Travel: The Loss of Agency51:48 The Backlash Against Mindless Travel55:00 The Role of Authenticity in Travel Experiences58:48 The Importance of Connection in Guiding01:01:21 Creating Meaningful Content in Travel01:05:58 The Power of Personal Stories in Travel Marketing01:12:12 Designing Immersive Experiences Without Screens