You're a tour guide and you've polished your guided tour offering — but the hardest part is still ahead: selling them! You're right in the thick of it, because you now need to find clients to fill as many of your time slots as possible, all year round. It's no easy task, especially when you're up against competing guides who are offering their own tours. The good news is that the internet is going to be your best ally! Here are our 5 tips for boosting sales of your guided tours.
1/ Use a booking system on your website
Hard to believe, but it's true: in 2026, there are still tour guides who make do with a simple contact form on their website instead of a proper booking system.Visitors land on the website, see the offer, are convinced and want to join the tour — but they can't book directly. And according to that well-known principle of the internet, "laziness always wins": they won't send an email and will simply look elsewhere for a guided tour they can book on the spot.Having a booking system on your website is essential in 2026 if you want to increase your guided tour sales. Clients can be fully self-sufficient, booking your tours directly without having to contact you and without waiting hours or days for a reply.
This matters all the more because travel is increasingly becoming a last-minute affair.In 2023,Quotidien du tourismecited a study showing that 43% of French customers book their trip within the 15 days before departure...A trend that grows stronger every year! For guided tours, this translates into clients booking just a few days before their visit, sometimes the day before or even the morning of. You simply can't capture these clients if you're handling requests by email with no integrated booking system on your site.
To sell your guided tours directly on your website with a professional booking system, welcome to Explorates! Ourbooking system for guided toursinstalls on your website in just a few minutes, with no hassle.With Explorates, your clients can book your guided tours day or night, without any intervention from you, based on the availability of each time slot.A powerful tool that will save you a great deal of time and win you far more sales!
2/ Sell your tours on specialist platforms
Selling your tours on your own website is a good start, but it's not enough. Year after year, clients have grown accustomed to booking their activities and guided tours on platforms that bring together the entire offering for each destination. That's the case withGet Your Guide, which has now overtaken the pioneerViator.Specialist activity distribution platforms allow you to reach a very wide audience and bring in a significant volume of clients.Some guides work almost exclusively with Get Your Guide and Viator, filling nearly all their time slots through these two platforms alone.
But there's a catch... To sell your guided tours on activity platforms, you'll need to keep a close daily eye on the availability of your time slots. As soon as a sale goes through on your website or on Viator, you'll need to immediately remove the corresponding capacity on Get Your Guide. If you don't, you risk being penalised for a cancelled sale due to outdated availability. And if it happens repeatedly, the platform may simply remove you.
The solution? Use Explorates!Our booking system comes with a built-in Channel Manager — a tool that lets you centralise all your online sales, whatever the platform.How does it work in practice? Instead of manually tracking your availability platform by platform, Explorates' technology handles it all automatically. For example: you've sold 2 spots for a guided tour tomorrow — Explorates instantly removes those 2 spots from sale on Get Your Guide and Viator. The two spots get cancelled? Explorates immediately puts them back on sale on Get Your Guide and Viator. Explorates takes care of everything!
3/ Make some noise on social media
Now that your guided tours are on sale on your website and on the main activity platforms, it's time to get on social media and raise your profile. In 2026, trying to sell guided tours without promoting yourself on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok is simply not an option.In fact, according to theExpedia Traveler Value Index 2025, "61% of travellers now find their travel inspiration via social media, compared with 35% in 2022."You should therefore regularly update your Facebook, Instagram and TikTok accounts, introducing yourself and giving people a reason to want to join your guided tours.One easy tip that can pay off big: take a selfie or a short video just before your guided tour begins.You'll be in the moment and can give a real feel for the atmosphere of the upcoming tour.
Don't hesitate to reach out to influencers by inviting them to try out your guided tour.They can then share your tour with their community — and that's far from negligible. Still according to the Expedia Traveler Value Index 2025, "73% of travellers say they have been influenced by recommendations from content creators and influencers when booking a trip or a component of a trip."
Another tip: don't overlookLinkedIn.This well-known professional network will help you reach the B2B market — whether that's travel agencies or corporate clients. These contacts can prove invaluable if you want to complement your B2C activity, particularly out of season.
4/ Work on your website's search engine optimisation
Just like social media, SEO (search engine optimisation) is something you should always have in mind when looking to improve sales on your website.You should absolutely monitor your website's ranking in Google for the keywords that matter to you.Offering guided tours in Nice? Regularly type "guided tours Nice" into Google and see where you come up. Then compare yourself with your competitors.If your ranking isn't where you'd like it to be, you'll need to rework your page so that the keyword appears far more prominently for search engines.This also means adding images, to show search engines that you are a legitimate authority on the subject and the best site to feature.
Organic search is all the more important because it drives direct traffic and therefore direct sales.You'll avoid the hefty commissions charged by activity platforms and maximise your margins.
Good SEO will also help your site appear prominently in AI-generated answers, including from ChatGPT and European AI tools like Mistral AI. Traditional SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is gradually evolving into GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation). The name of the game is simple: become the answer generated by AI.
5/ Make the most of local word of mouth
After 4 tips highlighting the power of the internet to boost sales of your guided tours, here's one final piece of advice that requires no technology at all!Don't hesitate to make yourself known to the tourist offices and hoteliers in your area.They can then recommend you to their visitors and guests.And this is far from trivial. Many clients book their activities once they've already arrived at their destination, from their hotel. You'll often see them planning the next day in the evening over dinner, or even at breakfast in "so, what shall we do today?" mode. A tip from the hotel receptionist or concierge can send clients straight to your guided tours.It's up to you to have a booking system like Explorates that will let you automatically accept last-minute bookings!
You could even consider a small incentive — for example, offering hoteliers a small commission or an exclusive perk. If your website or social media accounts attract a lot of traffic, you might even explore a visibility swap, whether through link exchanges or social media posts. Depending on your contacts, there will always be a way to arrange a win-win partnership. Let your creativity run wild!
