Agents urge touring operators to boost marketing and agent education

Agents have urged touring and adventure companies to invest in education and marketing to help dispel misconceptions about the sector among the trade and consumers.

 

Trade partners from luxury, retail and cruise backgrounds shared their tips for selling the sector and made the case for operators to shift their training focus, among other pleas.

 

Speaking at the Atas Summit in 2026, Darren Bien, head of sales and commercial at Designer Travel, said there was “big scope” to include more details of “what a tour looks like” day-to-day to help demystify the sector for agents and boost sales.

 

He said: “I’ve been in travel for 32 years and in training they didn’t teach you what a tour was about. They taught you what a cruise was and what ski was, but when has anybody sat down to explain what a tour looks like with the timings, the hotels and the excursions? I’ve never had that.”

 

He added online booking platforms, flexibility to add flight or hotel upgrades and shorter, engaging video content for social media were also areas for improvement.

“If some of the touring operators were to come out with a 30-second sexy video of what this tour includes with a price, that would be really engaging for our clients,” he said, adding that some lift-and-shift content was too long to use.

 

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He said Designer Travel had put a focus on touring and adventure under the umbrella of “beyond the beach” after seeing success with growing cruise over the last five years to make up 15% to 20% of the business.

 

Bien said the luxury agency focused on three or four operators to begin with, and each saw average growth of 75% last year, with one up 350%.

 

He said: “We have got one partner who is at £1.2 million [in sales], and five years ago we probably didn’t do that across the whole lot, so touring is huge for us.”

 

Bien said the business would work with 10 operators going forward and had seen success with setting up exclusive group tours, bringing down the average age of their touring customers, leaning into the family market and creating comparisons for land-based hotels to encourage new touring clients.

 

Ian Gilder, managing director at Adore Holidays, said there needed to be “two-fold” education for the trade and consumers.

 

“We don’t see touring shows or TV on the level of investment like cruise has done,” he said. “We need answers to the questions like why you are going on a tour and what are the different types of tours?”

 

He said often objections from customers were that they did not want to be “herded around with a load of people” as they do not know there are small-group and self-guided options.

 

Gilder encouraged the trade to sell the sector “in a different way” and operators to introduce two-night, two-day fam trip testers in a short-haul destination.

 

He said: “It’s a bit like a ship visit in essence where people can go and create some good content and maybe get some of the younger generation in as well.”

Gilder said he was focusing on touring by packaging escorted tours with cruises under the agency’s own Atol.

 

Ashley Phillips, director at Travel Chaps, echoed these points as he said there was not “clarity” about touring and adventure definitions, leading agents to “sit in bewildered confusion” and “avoid” the sector entirely.

 

He said there were still “myths” about touring that needed to be debunked and urged the sector to adopt a similar approach that cruise has taken in tackling those head-on over the last five years.

 

“When I came into the industry, I thought cruise was for old people and you were going to be stuck on a boat, but the cruise industry has done amazing work to debunk that,” he said. “Whereas, touring still holds that a little bit that we are going to have backpacks on, trekking around southeast Asia, sleeping in hostels or sleeping bags. I have to debunk that with customers all the time.”

 

Phillips said the agency often added one or two touring experiences to customers’ fly-and-flop trips to introduce them to the sector.

 

He said: “We encourage touring and adventure across every booking, and it is those small steps that change the perception of the customer.”

 

He urged operators to offer more “genuine real-life” client experiences on their social media platforms, rather than be driven by the hashtag or trending audio of the moment or making posts “too polished”.

 

“That does not necessarily perform on social media because people do not buy corporate,” he said.

 

He said sharing customers’ own reviews and experiences of trips had “performed better” on social media platforms.

 

Phillips added: “When a client experience goes online, that is real. They are not buying from a brochure; they are buying from other people going and doing it, so that social proofing is key.”