Presenters: Jenna Blumenfeld and Alex Kremer, Arival

The travel industry and its tours and activities sector have more than their fair share of jargon. And the distribution landscape – all of the different types of partners and resellers – is complex. This workshop will go through the basics, cover the key terms and definitions, and give you an essential overview of how distribution works. 

Level: Introductory
Duration: 45 minutes
Who’s this for? Tour, activity and attraction operators new to travel tech and distribution, or those who’d like a refresher course to enhance their Arival experience

There has been so much new tech coming into our sector. This is great for our industry, but with dozens of systems available, which one should you choose? How do you go about evaluating them? What features are most important? This workshop will help you build a plan for evaluating and implementing a technology platform to manage your tours and activities, your customer profiles, your bookings and more. Consider this a prep course to make the most out of the res tech company’s Demo Labs and the meetings you will have throughout the week. 

Level: Introductory
Duration: 45 minutes
Who’s this for? Tour, activity and attraction operators considering new reservation system.

An advanced partner workshop to “Working with OTAs,” this session is designed for operators that already work with OTAs. It will examine listing optimization strategies across the leading platforms to help operators improve their performance and outsmart the competition on this growing channel. 

Level: Advanced
Duration: 45 minutes
Who’s this for? Operators who have experience working with OTAs, and who seek to expand their OTA distribution, improve their ranking and grow their bookings through this channel. 

In this workshop, we’ll walk you through what it means to run and measure a multi-channel campaign that drives growth for your attraction. We’ll start by taking a traveler path to purchase across websites and devices and show how you could influence their buying decisions with different channels & different messages. We’ll walk you through things like audience selection, measurement, how to know when to shift budgets, and everything you need to know to feel like a programmatic pro.

Level: Advanced
Duration: 45 minutes
Who’s this for? Tour, activity and attraction operators engaged in multi-channel digital advertising

Most operators already have lots of data: bookings, customers, financials, marketing.  But making good use of that data and getting the insights that matter – this is what matters most. This workshop will walk through processes for leveraging data from your existing systems to understand your business performance and make key decisions to grow your direct sales. 

Level: Advanced
Duration: 105 minutes
Who’s this for? All tour and activity operators with reservation systems and experience working with their company data to make better business decisions

Facebook has become a growing ingredient in the digital operator’s marketing stack, but how travelers use it, and how tour and activity operators must approach it, stands apart from other marketing channels. This workshop will walk through the traveler journey through Facebook and give tour and activity operators a rounded overview of Facebook advertising and acquiring customers through the platform. 

Who’s this for? All tour and activity operators

A companion workshop to Facebook Funnel Part I, this workshop will delve into more advanced tactics such as audience targeting, custom audiences, content strategies, and use live examples from attendees to dissect the user journey on Facebook and help tour and activity operators develop specific action plans.

Who’s this for? All tour and activity operators

Any good business will understand their financial performance overall, but how well do you know the profitability of each tour you offer, and even of specific departures? This workshop will review financial analysis strategies for understanding profit margins for tours, examine pricing and cost-management strategies, and explore approaches to improve profitability.

Who’s this for? Tour and activity operators

Dynamic pricing and revenue management—making frequent pricing changes to optimize revenue and bookings—have been a mainstay of other travel sectors for years. Now, it’s beginning to take hold in tours, activities, and attractions. This workshop, geared for ticketed attractions as well as larger tour and activity operators, walks through the fundamentals of revenue management, how to think about applying revenue management relative to the unique attributes of your business and how you can grow your sales, profits, and predictability for your operation.

Who’s it for: Larger tour and attraction operators interested in dynamic pricing. 

This workshop provides a practical overview of the Global Sustainable Tourism Council (GSTC) standards, and walks through how tour and activity operators can align their business practices to globally accepted standards with practical, real-world examples. 

Level: Introductory
Duration: 45 minutes
Who’s it for: Tour and activity operators seeking to understand and implement sustainable tourism best practices.