Building The Best Tour With Your DMC
Having met hundreds of tour operators and seeing thousands of enquiries over the years, one of the things that separates great operators from good ones is the ability to communicate what they actually want from their DMC.
A surprising amount of enquiries are along the lines of ‘I want an X day tour of X country’. Enquiries like this suggest you’re cutting corners when it comes to product and doing a disservice to your own customers.
Of course, it’s absolutely fine not to know exactly what you want — you’re working with a DMC for their local expertise after all — but it’s critical that you understand what you’re looking for and can translate that to your DMC. Whether it’s referencing an itinerary you like that you’ve seen online, sharing information about your brand and its customers, or even an article you’ve seen online about a cool place, providing a framework for your enquiry is super helpful and leads to better products being built.
Your DMC wants to build the perfect tour for you, and the more guidance you can provide to illustrate what perfect looks like to you the more likely you are to get it, and you’ll save time by reducing laborious back and forth.
I looked across heaps of enquiry we received at PEAK DMC recently and curated the most common questions our local team replied with to help them clarify what the tour operator was looking for. You can see the outcome below, built into something of a tour request template.
You might not necessarily fill it all in, particularly for every product you build, but hopefully it helps you think more critically about product and level up the contracting process.
