Episodes

  • What Do You Stand For? Why Taking a Position Is Good Business

    What Do You Stand For? Why Taking a Position Is Good Business
    Mar 30 2026
    Most tour operators know they need to stand out. Very few are willing to say something specific enough to actually do it.Yulia Denisyuk has been running trips to Jordan for a decade — longer than the industry standard, slower than most, and deliberately missing a few of the highlights that appear on every other operator's itinerary. She's also a journalist, a content creator, and someone who has watched the travel industry cheerfully market itself through some genuinely difficult years. She and Mitch don't spend much time on tactics. They spend most of this conversation on the harder question: what does it actually mean to build a travel business around something you believe, and what does that require you to give up?The conversation covers the rise of creator-led trips and why personal trust has effectively replaced brand trust for a significant share of travelers. Yulia makes a practical case for why a narrow, specific position — one that tells potential travelers what you won't do as clearly as what you will — is a more durable marketing strategy than chasing broader appeal. She also shares a framework for pitching your business to media that has nothing to do with your destination and everything to do with the larger conversation your trips are part of. By the end, the episode lands somewhere most travel business podcasts don't: the question of whether the goal is a five-star review from a self-actualized traveler, or something that actually changes the relationship between the people on your trip and the communities they're visiting.Top TakeawaysYour trips should reflect your personal lens on a destination, not the consensus itinerary. 6:23 – 8:32 Yulia doesn't bring her Jordan groups to Jerash — one of the most recognized ancient Roman sites in the region — because she personally didn't connect with it, and the trip is built around what she can honestly advocate for. This creates a natural filter: you're not trying to reach everyone, you're reaching people who share your specific way of seeing a place. Operators who copy the standard itinerary end up competing on price and social media polish, and that's a fight most small operators lose.Slow, longer trips are a competitive position — not an apology. 5:44 – 6:22 Yulia's Jordan trips run longer than the industry standard for that destination, by design, because real connection with local people takes time. Most group tours to Jordan are built for efficiency; hers is built for depth, which draws a traveler who isn't cross-shopping on price. If your trip length is determined by what the market seems to expect rather than what the experience actually requires, that's worth revisiting.The creator-led trip works because personal trust has replaced brand trust. 8:32 – 9:57 Younger travelers have largely stopped trusting institutional brands and marketing, and they're redirecting that trust toward people whose worldview they already follow. An operator who has built any kind of content presence around a clear point of view can convert that trust directly into bookings, without the credibility-building work that larger brands spend years establishing. The itinerary becomes secondary. People are buying the person and the lens.Cutting standard highlights from your itinerary can be more compelling than adding them. 9:30 – 9:57 Yulia tells prospective travelers that her groups experience Petra differently than 98% of group tours — rejecting the Indiana Jones angle that most operators default to because pop culture and Instagram demand it. Telling someone what you won't do, and why, signals that you've thought harder about the experience than operators who simply include everything on the standard list. That editorial curation communicates expertise faster than any feature list.Distrust in mainstream media is spilling directly into how people choose travel operators. 11:06 – 12:09 The same collapse of credibility that has sidelined legacy publications is operating in the tour space: people want to travel with someone who stands for something, not a company whose primary message is "great experiences await." Yulia draws a direct line between the rise of independent journalists and the rise of creator-led trips, framing both as responses to the same cultural shift. Operators who communicate a consistent worldview — even a narrow or unfashionable one — are building the kind of trust that no ad spend can manufacture."Authenticity" is a dead word. A specific point of view is not. 13:00 – 13:22 Yulia's argument is that the word authenticity has been so thoroughly absorbed by marketing copy that it now means nothing, and that what people actually want is someone willing to say what they believe. For a tour operator, that means your website and social content should state a specific stance on travel — not just that you care about local culture, but what you think is broken about how most people experience it and what you're doing ...
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    45 mins
  • Be Weird, Be Personal: Storytelling as a Competitive Advantage in the Age of AI

    Be Weird, Be Personal: Storytelling as a Competitive Advantage in the Age of AI
    Mar 17 2026

    When AI bots can generate endless facts and flawless narratives, what’s left for human tour guides? This week Mitch Bach sits down with VoiceMap founder Iain Manley to explore the future of storytelling in travel, from his perspective as a journalist and developer of a self-guided audio tour app powered by human creators. We dive into the power of personal perspective and the new risks of playing it safe with stale, objective facts but no humanity. This episode challenges tour operators to rethink what makes an experience truly unforgettable in 2026—and why being more human, more vulnerable, and even more imperfect might be your competitive advantage.

    In this episode we cover:

    1. Why AI is forcing tour guides to rethink their role
    2. The difference between information and true storytelling
    3. How “personal” stories can reshape how people see a place
    4. Why generic, fact-based tours are becoming obsolete
    5. The surprising way AI is already hurting mediocre tours
    6. How to create experiences AI can’t replicate
    7. The power of subjectivity, emotion, and lived experience
    8. Why taking creative risks is now essential for tour businesses
    9. The hidden danger of optimizing for 5-star reviews
    10. What great storytelling looks like in the age of AI

    As always, show notes and more resources on tourpreneur.com
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    1 hr and 9 mins
  • Understanding DMOs: How Tour Operators Can Build Real Destination Partnerships

    Understanding DMOs: How Tour Operators Can Build Real Destination Partnerships
    Mar 9 2026
    Mitch Bach talks with Jenn Barbee, co-founder of Destination Innovate, about the real inner workings of DMOs, those three letters that every tour operator has an opinion about but few actually understand. Jenn has spent 30 years inside destination marketing, from a shoestring US Department of Commerce team trying to promote America on a $50,000 budget to her current work closing the gap between DMOs and the small businesses they are supposed to serve. The conversation covers how DMOs get funded, why they sit on valuable visitor data, and what tour operators can actually do to get beyond the dead-end website listing.It goes further than the typical "how to work with your tourism board" advice. Jenn and Mitch get into the identity crisis hitting tour operators and DMOs at the same time: both are losing ground to OTA platforms, both need direct guest relationships, and neither is building enough local partnerships to fight back. They talk short-term rental hosts as untapped referral channels, guerrilla marketing tactics that cost almost nothing, and the hard truth about inbound tourism to the US heading into World Cup and the 250th anniversary.Key TakeawaysYour DMO has expensive visitor data that could sharpen your product, pricing, and ads, but they will not hand it over unless you ask. 06:14 – 07:19 DMOs invest in data about visitor appetite, competing markets, and traveler clusters by neighborhood and interest type. That information rarely trickles down to small tour businesses because DMOs feel pressure to contextualize it or fear judgment on their numbers. Frame your ask around strengthening the destination's tourism product, not just helping your business, and you stand a real chance of getting access to insights you could never afford on your own.The single best first move with your DMO is to find the community manager and introduce yourself with specific visitor language, not a sales pitch. 11:48 – 12:58 Audit your tour product against what the destination website is promoting in terms of itineraries or themes, then reach out where you see a match or a gap. Lead with collaboration. Once you have that baseline, you can inch toward higher-value asks like data sharing or co-promotion, but only after you have earned the relationship through showing up and being useful.Survey your customers about whether they booked the experience before the hotel, then bring that data to the DMO. 56:29 – 56:39 If you can show a DMO that your tour attracted bed nights, you are speaking their only real language: occupancy and bed tax justification. Most tour operators never collect this data, and most DMOs have never seen it from a small business. It positions you as a strategic asset rather than another name on a listings page.DMOs are shifting from marketing organizations to stewardship organizations, and that tension is something you can use. 08:50 – 09:59 Many DMOs now describe themselves as "destination management" or "stewardship" organizations, moving toward what is right for their communities. Their boards and bed tax collectors still want heads-in-beds KPIs. If your tour disperses visitors into underserved neighborhoods, supports local businesses, or tells a more honest destination story, you become the kind of partner that helps a DMO justify its new direction to the people holding the purse strings.Getting listed on the DMO website is a win. Stop underestimating it. 13:10 – 13:45 Many operators treat a listing as table stakes, but some DMOs do not even offer that without a paid membership. If you are listed, follow up by tagging the DMO constantly on social media and feeding them content they can reshare within their brand guidelines. The social media managers have more flexibility than the executive staff and will amplify content that feels fresh or on-brand.If your local DMO is stuck promoting only the marquee attractions, skip them and go to the state level. 17:38 – 18:32 A DMO locked into bread-and-butter promotion is usually in protection mode, worried about occupancy numbers. State tourism offices have embraced experience-driven programming and are more open to working with operators who tell a broader story. For most small tour businesses, the state governor's conference on tourism is where accessible DMO relationships start.Short-term rental hosts are closer to the guest than any DMO, and tour operators should be building direct relationships with them now. 24:31 – 26:00 Short-term rentals nationally overtook hotels in occupancy as of September 2025. Those hosts talk directly to guests about what to do in town. A recommendation from a local Airbnb host is warmer than any OTA listing and costs zero commission. Finding them is manual (social media DMs, local searches), but the payoff is a direct referral channel with no middleman.Stop chasing first-time visitors. Loyal, repeat visitors spend more, stay longer, and sustain the businesses that matter. 32:49 – 33:32 DMOs and operators both ...
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    59 mins
  • Embracing Your Inner Pirate: How to Build a Passion-First Business

    Embracing Your Inner Pirate: How to Build a Passion-First Business
    Mar 2 2026

    How do you scale a company without losing your soul or passion?

    Mitch Bach talks this week with Paul Whitten, founder of Nashville Adventures, about how a former combat veteran, Peace Corps volunteer, UK Parliamentary Fellow, and Amazon project manager translated the learnings from his winding life path into a fast-growing tour company built at the intersection of passion, profitability, and public history.

    Paul identified a “Paul-shaped hole” in Nashville’s bachelorette-heavy market by blending deep historical knowledge with an approachable, beer-in-hand delivery style. We discuss why he rejects over-scripted tours in favor of hiring obsessively passionate subject-matter nerds (bourbon, ghosts, coffee, Civil War) and giving them ownership; how early growth came from soft-launching, the power of relentless relationship-building with distilleries, chambers of commerce, concierges, and DMCs (and the power of simply responding to emails!). And why enthusiasm, not hacks or ad tricks, is the true differentiator.

    The conversation dives into scaling without losing soul, balancing founder-led guiding with team development, leveraging community partnerships and veteran identity, experimenting with new formats like coffee crawls and XR-enhanced tours, and using books and potential city expansion as strategic next steps. We also tackle the harder edge of the job: the tour guide’s role as a public historian in polarized times, handling contentious Civil War and civil rights narratives responsibly, creating space for civil discourse on tour, and embracing risk, naivety, and “pirate” rule-breaking as essential traits for entrepreneurial success in the tours and activities industry.

    1. Connect with Paul on LinkedIn
    2. Nashville Adventures Home Page
    3. See Reality XR tours mentioned
    4. More show notes and takeaways on tourpreneur.com
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    1 hr
  • Tour Guiding in Contentious Times: Designing Conversations, Not Just Commentary

    Tour Guiding in Contentious Times: Designing Conversations, Not Just Commentary
    Feb 16 2026

    This is an episode all about the hard stuff. Politics. Disagreement on tour. Tour sites where the truth itself is in debate. Confronting places with complicated, dark histories.

    Most of the advice out there is: avoid this stuff at all costs. People just want to have fun, they're on vacation. Guides should stick to the script and make sure they don't say something that upsets the guests. I'm not here as a tour guide to shove my opinions down everyone's throats. Can't we all just get along? Can't we just keep the discourse civil?

    Our guest this week, Mike Fishback, is a middle-school humanities educator and curriculum designer who thinks this instinct is exactly the problem. "Civil discourse" isn't about keeping things polite — it's about strategies for engaging with and managing disagreement and difficulty in learning situations, like a tour. Mike learned through experience that it's unwise to sit back, cross your fingers, and hope you don't upset a guest. That there are powerful ways to lean into difficult topics that make the whole experience more meaningful — intentionally creating dialogue through artful questioning and participatory techniques. And he has the educational frameworks and two decades of lived experience to back every word of it up.

    Mike also happens to have spent years as a client of mine — I was the tour guide for his group of middle schoolers on trips to New York and DC, and I saw firsthand how he engaged his students with really meaty, difficult topics in a way that didn't shut them down but fired them up.

    The lessons here aren't for kids. They're for everyone. And if you've ever told yourself that your job is just to deliver the facts and keep things light, this conversation might be the most useful hour you spend all week.

    More takeaways and show notes on tourpreneur.com
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    1 hr and 7 mins
  • Invisible No More: Busting Myths About the 50+ Woman Traveler with Carolyn Ray

    Invisible No More: Busting Myths About the 50+ Woman Traveler with Carolyn Ray
    Feb 10 2026

    What if the most powerful segment in travel has been hiding in plain sight for decades?

    Tourpreneur's Mitch Bach talks with Carolyn Ray, CEO of Journey Woman, about her transformation from corporate executive to full-time traveler and advocate for the 50+ woman traveler—a demographic that represents half the world's population yet remains largely invisible to the travel industry.

    After a life-changing trip to Kenya at age 50, Carolyn sold everything and reinvented herself, eventually acquiring Journey Woman in 2019 and transforming it from a 1990s-era newsletter into a multifaceted platform that includes research, advocacy, a women's travel directory, and speakers bureau.

    Through her groundbreaking "Invisible No More" research, Carolyn became the first to quantify this market segment, revealing that operators who only market destinations are "doing half the job" because 50+ women travelers are looking for purposeful, intentional experiences beyond simple safety assurances.

    She challenges the industry's obsession paid media and influencer marketing, and urges women entrepreneurs to reject outdated rules, trust their intuition, and put themselves unapologetically in the spotlight—embodying her company's core value to "make your own rules."

    1. The "Invisible No More" study
    2. Article mentioned: Is it safe to travel to the US right now?
    3. The new Women's Travel Directory
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    55 mins
  • 15,000 Guests in Three Years: How Carlo Leverages Tech and Creativity to Grow

    15,000 Guests in Three Years: How Carlo Leverages Tech and Creativity to Grow
    Feb 2 2026

    This is a story of growth through creativity, experimentation, and using technology to stay lean.

    Carlo Pandian (LinkedIn) is the founder of Slow Travel Italia. Four years ago he started with a single wine tasting in Verona, and today runs 160 experiences across 12 Italian cities, serving 15,000 guests a year with a very small team.

    In this episode, he talks to TP host Mitch Bach about exactly how he did it: experimenting with neglected time slots (like 6pm) that competitors ignore, launching five tours at once instead of one to multiply his chances of finding a niche, using Airtable and automations to eliminate manual booking assignments and personalize communication at scale, and treating OTAs as a launchpad rather than a long-term home. Carlo shares how he identifies gaps in crowded markets by studying what's missing—not just in Italy but in places like Japan—and why he pulled out of Milan when the math didn't work. He explains his "requirements manifesto" for vetting partners, how he coaches food producers on storytelling for international audiences, and why the biggest trend he's seeing is travelers willing to spend half a day outside the city for a single product done deeply—visiting the olive grove, watching mozzarella pulled from boiling water, understanding one thing fully rather than tasting nine things superficially.

    As always, more info and takeaways on tourpreneur.com.
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    36 mins
  • An Ex-Human Rights Lawyer's Uncomfortable Questions for Adventure Tourism

    An Ex-Human Rights Lawyer's Uncomfortable Questions for Adventure Tourism
    Jan 19 2026

    In this episode Mitch Bach sits down with Marinel de Jesus, a former human rights lawyer turned tour operator.

    She is filled with questions about the adventure tour industry:

    Why do porters on the famous, touristy Inca Trail in Peru carry crushing loads for little pay and even less dignity? Why is it so difficult to find women adventure guides in so many parts of the world? What do indigenous communities actually want from tourism—and why doesn't anyone bother to ask them?

    These are just some of the uncomfortable questions and themes she's carried with her as she's lived and trekked around the world. Originally from the Philippines, she became a human rights lawyer in Washington D.C., spending 15 years prosecuting child protection and mental health cases. Then her mother passed away—and she never went back to the office. But Marinel didn't just start a tour company. She moved into indigenous communities. She lived with Quechua porters in Peru and learned the dark truths behind the picture-perfect Inca Trail. She spent nearly 300 days in Mongolia during Covid, co-creating a nomad camp that started with tea and a blank piece of paper—not a business plan. She walked 100 days across Nepal with Mingmar, a female guide she searched for over a year and a half to find, proving that women belong on the Great Himalaya Trail.

    This discussion challenges everything we assume about adventure tourism—the colonial narratives baked into our itineraries, the voices we never hear, the scripts we impose on communities who know how to welcome guests far better than we do. She makes the case for showing up with no agenda, listening before designing, and building something that matters more than scale.

    Marinel's organizations:

    1. Equity Global Treks (Brown Gal Trekker)
    2. The Porter Voice Collective
    3. Her vision for Himalayan Women Trail Leaders
    4. Her film KM82 on the Quechuan Porters of Peru
    5. The Khusvegi English & Nomadic Culture Camp she helped start in Mongolia

    More show notes and resources on tourpreneur.com
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    54 mins