As a tour guide in Berlin, especially in Berlin that deals in walking tours, you can bet early parts of the year or winter season is tough. Given that there are fewer tourists, and thus fewer tours, the business needs to be ready for such a time. In this blog post I will share with you a number of useful recommendations and effective practices to become a successful Berlin walking tour guide during low season.
1. Diversify Your Services
There are also various other observations which have been seen that off season the shop or café needs to offer more services which may cater new type of customers. It may also be useful to suggest to narrow the offered tours according their topics or themes. For instance, you can offer a themed tour of the city’s graffiti or explore the role of street art in East and West during the Cold War period or try the Berlin food tour.
If you diversify your tours you will find that there are people who are interested in other areas and can interest locals who are residents of the city. To name a few, you can create a collaboration with nearby companies or establishments and propose a bundle, for example, a walking tour and a cooking lesson, a museum visit.
2. Market to Locals
While there might not be so many tourists visiting the certain city during the off season there will always be many people interested in the history of their city. Change your marketing approach to local market by advertising your tours on local web pages, group pages and local functions.
Since it is for the people in Berlin, there should be some offer or some freebie that offers the people the attention that the tour gives. Further, about promoting through affiliated sites or blogs, think about offering special discounts for acommodation to those who travel in cooperating hotels or hostels. This can help the particular company to managed to attract tourists, who are visiting the point of interest in the off season, but who want to have memorable experience.
3. Create Customizable Tours
Sometimes, generally during the off-season, you may find that you are just dealing with a few people or even an individual. Allow them the freedom to select ride duration and which attractions it would include, any other side attractions that they would wish to visit.
That way, you can let your customers have a one-on-one interaction with you, or simply pay more attention to their needs and preferences if they are a group because they will get a more personalized experience that most likely other tours would not offer. It can also cause positive user feedback which will go a long way in marketing the business especially during off peak times.
4. Focus on Customer Experience
For any tour guide, delivering the best customer experience is always key especially when people are few in theIMAL region during the off seasons. This means that for a given establishment, with relatively less tourists than usual, every single customer is a treasure.
Always ensure you do all you can do to show your customers that they are valued. Make them understand the history of the city, respond to their questions, and prove how interested in the city one is. Ask them to pen down their experience and put it up online so that you can get more people coming in.
5. Collaborate with Other Guides
That is why it is possible to cooperate with other guides in Berlin in the off-season. It vertically aligned because by working together you can provide combined tours or give your customers the contact details of the other guide in cases where your schedules clash or when a certain tour is much more suited to another guide’s area of specialism.
Where the form of cooperation is possible, it can also mean more professional development and shared exchange of experience. It may be also useful to have a set of meetups or workshops within which participants may share experiences, discuss problems, and come up with new ideas for increasing the effectiveness of the services they provide.
Conclusion
It can be very hard for Berlin walking tour guides as you are during the off-season, but you do not have to suffer through this period but make a success out of it. Expanding your service offering, marketing to the local people, designing flexible tours, directly addressing the client needs and partnering with other guides will help you find new customers, increase sales, and gain recognition as a reliable Berlin tour guide.
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