Have you ever had the mayonnaise split when you are whisking up what could potentially be a quick delicious home made treat to go with fresh prawns or if you’re lucky and eat like a Parisian freshly boiled eggs? Well I felt like split mayonnaise this morning. You know, that strange effect of lumpy yellow egg yolk floating in a bath of oil. That was me, broken and floating in oil. A runny mess that is certainly something that you can rescue, but I knew it would take a whole lot of elbow grease to whip myself back into shape.
I realised this after a few minutes of silence as I sipped my coffee on the terrace. My parisian ladies had left the house for work and school after our long weekend of eating and laughing. I was alon and felt like split mayo. In the silence, I asked myself and realised as the rain started to fall. Despite the huge amount of efforts I have put into this blog and website, and the wins of getting some OK traffic over the last few weeks. I was frustrated because I still hadn’t gotten any food tour bookings for April or May.
Starting a small business is tough, I’ve been through this before. I also know that you have to take the hit and look for quick wins. So, despite my aversion to online travel agencies that take 30% booking fee’s I thought I would bite the bullet and post my first food tour on Get Your Guide.
Book Eat Like a Parisian Food Tour on Get Your Guide Today
If you want to book a Food Tour with me on Get Your Guide and learn to Eat Like A Parisian, check out my booking page.
The dilemma is that I know that online travel agents – OTA’s – like Viator, Get Your Guide and others are the primary reason why most of the food tours in Paris are terrible. OTA’s dominant position in the industry coupled with what I guess is our fickle nature as humans to put all of our trust into names we know (and maybe trust) when it comes to spending money when we travel. Mean that when you spent €100 on a food tour the guide only ends up with 20 euro and you will be lucky to get 20 euro’s worth of food to taste.
Why I chose Get Your Guide for My First Food Tour?
I spent a few hours researching tour hosting platforms. Diving into rabbit holes of other tactics or techniques that may somehow promise to lead the way when it comes to selling food tours. I do understand that marketing and technology need to be paid for. So I know that 30% is not such an unreasonable amount for these platfroms to ask for when they have access to literally millions of people. But I also know how much profit they are making too. Why did I choose Get Your Guide? You may ask me.
Well, I chose Get Your Guide as a starting point because it is actually a website I have used before. On top of that, it’s a European business that is ranked as number 2 in it’s Category according to similar web. I am always one to go for the underdog. With 20 million visitors a month, when I jumped in and looked at the comparison of it’s statistics on similar web to those of viator’s I found that they are not only getting 7% more direct traffic (which tells me their brand is more powerful) but they seem to be running far more succesfull paid search campaigns. Either way, I have an affinity because of their sustainable, local, eco tourism positioning.
There is also another fact that I am very keen on. It seems like their reviews are far harder to game than those of tripadvisor (viator). They don’t seem to allow tour companies to switch out tour content, locations etc but keep the same listing going for 8 years. Or at least thats how it seems to be for now. My “Eat Like A Parisian” tour went live this evening before I went to pick up my little one from school.
As a small business operator trying to win clients in a global market dominated by players with massive teams. I understand that I have to play smart. I am hoping that testing and trying tours on platfroms like this will be able to help me gain data and insights as well as meet some amazing guests who will come and explore Paris with me!
The setup process was easy. I don’t need to bore you with the details but having been writing solidly for weeks now, I was able to whip up a winning recepie nice and quickly. If it works, I hope that I will get a chance to meet some really interesting guests that want to take tours with me here in Paris.
The data and insights I will get from having my writing being seen by the potential millions of others coming to paris has me gnawing at my fingers as if they are a the bone of a cote de boeuf. Whatever happens, I am going to get a chance to see what converts on their site.
I believe in building in public and when I look around at food tour businesses I realise that a lot of the information surrounding it is highly guarded. I haven’t managed to find another tour guide posting their honest experience about what it’s like to post your own tours on get your guide or any of the other online travel agencies. So as this can only support other small businesses like myself I wanted to share the learnings on here.
The photo’s prooved to be a bit of a struggle. Clearly I still have a lot to do to improve the photography that I have available on my website for food tours. Nothing there yet really screams eat like a parisian or eat like the french. Maybe the sun will be out tomorrow and I will get a chance to take a few more pics?
You can go take a look at my first food tour really let out there in public. “Eat Like a Parisian – Delicious Chef Guided Market Experience” its really like doing my self-guided market tour in real life with me, plus some tastings and bubbles of course!
Tell me if you prefer the booking process via get your guide rather than just sending me and email or giving me a call. I am guessing there is something to be said for all the guarantees they offer guests when it comes to payment plans and easy canceling.
I have another hack in the back of my mind that I will try and put into play shortly to see if there are more real world way’s to get people to come and do my tours. The difficulty I have is that actually my April and May are also filled up with my own travels. So while, yes I’m taking bookings. I can’t really open up the flood gates yet.
Either way, I miss doing tours and I really hope I can get back into the swing of things soon. Doing this on one’s own is tough. I hope that Get Your Guide will help me find plenty more people to bring on amazing culinary adventures in Paris soon!
Please come back soon to check out what’s going on and if I’m getting any bookings. Or head over there now and let me know what you think. If you want to book a tour like this, of course, I will give you the 30% off if you book it directly on an email to me. Just get in touch on tours@eatlikethefrench.com