Introduction
This is a quick guide of what you can implement in your existing website. This is not a guarantee of tricks to improve your Google search rankings, but these features can definitely help you improve your ranking when people search words correlated to your offer. How?
Implementing some of these tips, can improve the longevity of people staying on your website. The longer they stay, the higher the chances of reserving a ticket through your website. This is the goal, you want to achieve. The more you are independent of websites such as GetYourGuide, CheckYeti and other, the more your business can grow. Why?
Even though, the mentioned websites have a ton of visitors, which you can benefit from and you are probably benefiting from, they take a big provision cut. More than 15% minimum, which is a lot of profits taken from you. They have the infrastructure and the traffic, so it is justified.
This is where this guide comes in. Since we specialize only in helping BOAT TOUR OPEARATORS achieve more, we can surely help you. Our experience of +3 years of helping private boat tour operators grow, we have decided to give some of our knowledge away in order to spread our word.
Flowchart for Each Tour
A frustrated or uninformed visitors always results as a lost sale. When visitors come to your website, they want simplicity. They are or will be on vacation in your city, so the last thing they want to do is think. Flowcharts of each tour you offer, is the simplest way you can explain where the tour takes them, what they will see and what they can expect. Few words, few symbols, few numbers and good design can paint a picture of a thousand words. Here is one example:
Use Google My Maps
Google Maps is an incredibly SEO-friendly tool. Embedding a custom map with descriptions for each stop and location increases your website's relevance and authority. Search engines love content tied to specific geographic areas, and a detailed map tied to your tours does just that. As visitors explore the map, their engagement signals (like time spent on the page) boost your site's performance in search rankings.
By adding keywords to map descriptions and utilizing Google’s ecosystem, you improve local search visibility, ensuring your business appears more prominently when tourists search for activities in your city.
Interactive Google Maps also enhance trust and user experience. Vacationers want assurance about what they are booking, and a well-designed map offers transparency that static images or plain text can’t provide. Visitors can imagine themselves on the tour, envisioning each destination, and feeling like they’ve already started the journey.
This emotional connection is a game-changer for conversion, as visitors who trust you are more likely to book with you—and even share the map with their friends or on social media, driving even more traffic to your website.
P.S. Each map you create, make sure to make it publicly available. You never truly know, how people find you but create as many channels to be found out.
Tailor design to your guests persona
This is pretty straight forward. You know who your guests are, what their habits are, where they are from etc... Why am I mentioning this?
Use this information to adapt your words - keywords and designs to them. If your guests are mostly young family, make your words and website fun! Especially if your tour is fun. If you target guests are more elderly or you want more of team building events or wedding events on your boat, make your website more elegant. You know what this means, don’t complicate.
Perhaps, this tip is not directly correlated to people finding you but when right people visit your website and you match their feeling, their persona – they will book!
QR Codes
Quick-Read codes can help you in all areas of your business. From growing your Google reviews number and rating to partnering with locals to book more seats.
They are the simplest hack you can implement right now to improve your website ranking. And have more than 100 bookers work for you 24/7?! Here is scenario of how that is possible:
Imagine you print out stickers with a QR code generated from Tournée. And each QR code you have generated within Tournée you have assigned a Location category.
You go to the Valley Beach which has 100s of umbrellas and locations where you can stick your stickers with generated QR code. Now you have QR codes working for you 24/7!
Disclaimer: we are not encouraging you to vandalize or ruin someone's property or valuable things, there are public places where stickers/flyers/posters are allowed.
Not only that, you can easily track performance and reservations made from each location using Tournée analytics feature.
QR codes can be used in a lot of ways. Anything you want to track, use Tournée QR codes. From tracking your email open rate, social media bookings, locations, referrals, partners, bookers, reviews and more. All seamlessly integrated in Tournée.
Ask for Feedback & Get Reviews
No matter how good your offer is or how fun your trips are, there is always room for improvement. And asking for feedback is crucial for your business to stay at the top of what your place can offer.
There is a fine line between begging for a 4+ star review on Google Maps and between asking for feedback.
This is the 2 components recipe for success:
Feedback
Improving your service and offer can be done through surveys. Ask for feedback and reward them for answering – taking the time to help you. How can you ask for feedback:
1. Write on paper the questions
On the return of the trip, take time to approach as many guests as possible and ask them to answer your questions. Write each response down. That's it!
If it is possible, reward them with a manually written discount for next trip.
2. Use Tournée surveys
Inside Tournée we have developed a Surveys feature which you can manually take or you can implement on your existing website.
If it is possible, reward them with a manually written discount for next trip.
Here is how easy you can create surveys.
And that's it! You can either embed your survey on your page, manually take the answers or you can take it a step further and generate a QR code which your guests can scan on your boat and which will take them to this survey.
You can also view the survey's results in analytics.
Reviews
You should never beg for a review. You can ask your guests for feedback. If the feedback is more than positive, you can then ask them for a review on Google maps because now your ask is backed up by their very positive opinion.
Tournée cannot replace you. And that is good. Tournée is a tool which can help you delegate and ease processes like this. We cannot directly speak to your guests, but we can send them a mail which can ask for a review or anything you want.
This is not only use of emails; we encourage you to ask for review via email but we also encourage you to just thank them for being present on your tour. It is important in business to not be greedy and to put your guests first. Without them, this wouldn’t be possible.
But first, we need an email script which will contain our goal. Our goal is to ask for a positive public comment. Inside our web application, you can design easily email scripts, which can take them to your Google Map review section.
All you have to do, is choose a date (recommended - today after the tour is finished) and a script. And with click of a button, you have sent 5 emails automatically. Here is the result, of what the guests gets in their inbox:
