By Tom Carmichael, Class of 2007
(Note: This is a first of a two-part article about increasing CAC competitive advantages in the Chicago walking tour marketplace.)
The Chicago marketplace for walking tours is becoming increasingly competitive. In 2017 when a group of docents took a number of competitors’ tours, there were approximately 15 companies offering walking tours that directly competed with CAC. This year in 2019 there are over 20. To get a sense of how CAC tours stack up against competitors, CAC’s leadership organized an internal task force to observe competitors’ tours. The task force consisted of staff members from the Marketing, Education, Operations and Sales Department plus the co-chair of the Tour Committee. This group observed 22 tours, four of which were core CAC walking tours. Task force members looked at the entire tour experience (nose to tail) from finding a tour, reading about it on the company’s website, booking the tour, taking the tour and finally responding to the company’s post-tour follow up.
Key Findings
Web search: It’s easy to find a variety of walking tours in downtown Chicago. Multiple offerings pop up in a Google search. Many promote themselves as the “best” or the most-highly rated tours. CAC is just one of many.
Websites: Because all of our competitors offer a much more limited number of tours than CAC, their websites tend to be simple and easy to navigate. The path to purchasing a ticket is usually straightforward, involving fewer than 5 “clicks.” CAC’s website offers information about a much greater number of offerings. It can be challenging to find a specific walking tour and buy a ticket quickly.
Tour experience: Compared to guides for competitors, CAC docents have a depth and breadth of knowledge that competitors cannot match. The information CAC docents provide can be relied on to be fact-based. While competitors are getting better at sticking to the truth, some of them still promote urban myths and misinterpretations of the factual record. CAC tours are also more information-packed than competitors. CAC gets more into a 90-minute tour than some competitors offer in a two-to-three hour tour. As a result, competitors’ tours tend to be more leisurely in pace, allowing time for pauses for guests to sit down, take photos, and chat. Guides for competitors take advantage of their slower pace to spend time engaging guests with colorful stories, questions, and pointing out opportunities for the best photos.
Post-tour: Virtually all tour companies, CAC included, send an email to guests after the experience soliciting their feedback and offering other ways to get involved. CAC had previously requested feedback via a general survey, but is now prioritizing reviews on travel sites like TripAdvisor, which has a positive impact on the organization’s online profile.
Next Steps
The task force members presented their findings and recommendations to CAC staff and tour directors in November and December. In 2020, assuming budgets allow, staff members will focus on improving the CAC website so that it is easier to find tours and buy tickets, and examine pre and post tour communications strategies to solicit more feedback and reviews. On the docent-side, the CAC Tour Committee will work with tour directors to making the tour experience itself more engaging and focused on attracting 5-star reviews from our guests.
Next time: Engaging Walking Tour Guests
Fascinating! I’ve often wondered how we stack up, so this is really interesting to hear. Thanks for sharing.
It seems to me that CAC has only minimally tapped into its own River Cruise audience to get them to take other tours. Are there stats on how many RC tourees take any walking tours? Is there a break down of that by non-local tourists members vs. out of tourists, both members and non members?
Interesting that you note that most other tour companies have 2 -3 hour more leisurely tours. I always take walking tours when travelling around the world; they are typically 2-3 hours as well with opportunities to stop, relax, have a coffee. Tourees seem to enjoy these type of tours and pace, and never have I heard that the tour was too long. I never understood why we shortened ours to 90 minutes. Many of our docents have mentioned to me that they feel rushed, and they enjoyed giving the traditional 2 hour tour much more.
Many (actually most) of my Walk Through Time tours go beyond 90 minutes because of questions and comments along the way. If I see that the time is slipping by, I ask if anyone has a problem with going overtime a bit. No one has had a problem with that.
Interesting. I think it’s time to recognize that our tours create information overload. Most of our tours would benefit from reducing their content by about 25%. This means cutting at least two buildings from a tour and shortening the route. This would allow Docents the time to engage our audiences Could these simplified tours still tell a meaningful, truthful story? You bet!!!
CAC posts daily on FaceBook. Would it be possible to 1) include a list of the day’s tours and 2) provide a link to the website?