Visibility - The six places tourism operators actually get found in 2026 | Sarah Colgate

Part 2 of 2 on visibility for tourism operators

In Part 1 I said the reason most tourism operators are not getting booked is not a marketing problem. It is a visibility problem. Marketing shouts. Visibility gets you found.

This is the follow-up. Six places where tourism operators actually get found in 2026, in the order they pay you back. I want you to hear that. In the order they pay you back. Not the order a marketing person would sell you.

Most operators want to start with the sexy stuff. New website. Social overhaul. A brand refresh. I have to be honest about this one. That is not where the money is fastest. The money is fastest at the point where a person who has already found you decides whether to book, and where the guest who booked decides whether to come back.

Here we go, in the order I would work on them tomorrow morning.

1. Fix the booking path first

This is the fastest money in the business, because it works on traffic you have already paid for.

You have a website. People are landing on it. Some percentage of them try to book. And then somewhere between them clicking "book now" and putting in their credit card, a chunk of them leave.

Every one of those people cost you something to get there. An ad, a post, a Google listing, someone's time. Losing them at checkout is the most expensive kind of loss you have. And the fix is usually not a website rebuild. The fix is usually four or five small things on the pages that already exist. A confusing calendar. A form that asks for too much. A price that shows up as a surprise. A payment screen that does not work well on a phone.

I suggest you sit down on your own phone this weekend and try to book your own tour, as a first-time customer. Time yourself. Count how many taps. Look at what makes you hesitate. Then fix those things first.

2. Then the email lifecycle nobody sends

Two emails, and most tourism businesses send neither of them properly.

The first is the pre-arrival email. Sent the day before or two days before the experience. What to bring. What to wear. Where exactly to meet, with a map link, not a paragraph. Who they will meet by name. How to reach you if something goes wrong.

That email cuts no-shows. It lifts reviews. Because nobody has ever been disappointed by an experience they understood before they got there.

The second is the post-experience email. Thank you. A review link that goes straight to Google. A referral offer for a friend. And a return incentive that is not a discount, it is a reason. Come back for the sunset run. Come back with the kids. Come back in shoulder season for the quieter version. Reasons work. Discounts train guests to wait.

Example: I built pre-arrival and post-experience emails into Aquaduck early. Review count grew. No-shows dropped. Repeat bookings from Gold Coast locals became a small but real revenue line that had not existed at all before. Not a campaign. Two emails, sent on time, every time.

3. Google Business Profile, because an OTA cannot hold one

This is the one most operators leave to the intern.

Your Google Business Profile is the first thing a person sees when they search your name, and often the first thing they see when they search a category near a location. "Things to do Gold Coast." "Whale watching Mooloolaba." "Wine tour Sunshine Coast." It shows your hours, your photos, your reviews and a book button, right there.

And here is what an OTA cannot do. They cannot hold your Google profile. Only you and someone you trust can. If you put nothing into it, Google decides what to show, and Google's default is not flattering.

Ranking takes a few weeks of steady work. But the fixes that convert the person who has already found you convert straight away. Photos that show the actual thing. Answers to the questions people are already asking in the Q&A. A booking link that goes to your own site.

4. Then the OTA listings, because they are still a channel that works

I want to say this properly. I am not anti-OTA. Nobody who has ever run a tourism business at scale is anti-OTA. They are a channel and a good one, when they are one channel in a proper mix.

But the operators I meet do the same thing every time. They set up a Viator listing four years ago, uploaded three photos, wrote two paragraphs of description, and never looked at it again. Meanwhile the algorithm has changed six times, the top listings in their category have twelve photos, video, an updated inclusions list, and a review count in the hundreds.

Better placement on the OTA. Better conversion when a guest lands on the listing. And, if you have done the email lifecycle work in point 2, more of those guests come back the second time as a direct booking. That is the trick. The OTA brings the guest once. Your systems bring them back.

5. Reviews, on repeat, forever

The compounding one. Review generation and response takes 60 to 90 days of consistent volume before it moves anything visible, so switch it on early and let it build while the faster work above pays.

You need reviews coming in on a rhythm. Not a burst. Not a beg. A rhythm. Which is why the post-experience email in point 2 exists. And you need to be responding to every one of them, especially the difficult ones, in a way that shows a future guest how you handle yourself.

Example: my team at Colgate & Co has been building organic social and content systems for Hot Air Balloon across Brisbane, Gold Coast, Cairns and Port Douglas. Organic only, no paid promotion. Over seven months, the website click-through from social lifted 39%. Same team, same product, same balloons. Better visibility infrastructure, running on repeat. Compound interest is the closest thing tourism has to magic.

Another one. Oceania Tours, Spanish and Italian language tours through Phillip Island and the Great Ocean Road, owner Sebastian. Before we started, they were posting when they remembered, mostly product shots, relying on OTAs and word of mouth. We rebuilt the organic content around who Sebastian is and what makes the product different. Inside 60 days, two $6,000 private bookings landed. $12,000 of business. And a 40% lift in direct booking enquiries. Organic social only, no paid. The product was always good enough to command those bookings. The socials were the thing standing between the product and the people who wanted it.

6. AI search visibility. Slowest to pay. Biggest in two years.

Last on the list because it is slowest to pay. First in your mind, because in two years it will matter more than the OTAs.

More and more travellers are typing questions into ChatGPT and Perplexity and Google's AI overview, not into Google's classic search box. They are asking, "what's a good half-day tour near Surfers Paradise for a family with teenagers?" and getting three recommendations back. If your business does not show up as one of those three, you are invisible in that conversation.

The work is different. Structured data on your site. Content that answers the actual questions guests ask, not the ones you wish they would ask. Clean, consistent business information across the web. It is a slow build. Nobody should sell it to you as a quick win. But if you start now, you will be in the answers when your competitors are still trying to work out what happened.

The order matters more than the list

The six above are not equal, and they are not optional. Start with 1. Build up. Do not lead with the AI search work because it is exciting. Do not lead with a website rebuild because it feels like progress. The money is at the booking path and the emails, and you can be moving on those next week.

For me, the whole point of this work is doing the right things in the right order, so that the marketing you are already paying for starts pulling its weight, and so the OTAs stop being the only shelf your product sits on.

Get found. Get booked. Get on with running the business you actually wanted.

If you want to sit down and work out which of the six you should fix first for your business, book a Growth Gap Call with me. No pitch, just a proper conversation about where you're stuck and whether I'm the right fit.

Book a Growth Gap Call: exceptionalexperiences.com.au/growth-gap-call