Travel Trends with Dan Christian
#1 B2B Travel Podcast. If you are looking to stay ahead in the travel industry, this new podcast hits all the highlights! The Travel Trends Podcast is where industry leaders converge to share & shape the future. Whether you're an emerging entrepreneur, a seasoned industry executive, or a dedicated travel professional, you’ll be able to stay ahead in a rapidly evolving landscape.
Uncover valuable insights, innovative strategies, and meaningful connections that will elevate your travel business or career to new heights.
Travel Trends with Dan Christian
Spotlight Episode: Tour Amigo with Murray Decker, CEO
In this spotlight episode, Murray Decker, CEO and founder of Tour Amigo, shares how his innovative technology platform is transforming the multi-day tour industry by equipping operators with cutting-edge reservation systems and seamless distribution capabilities.
Murray’s journey began as a Contiki tour guide in 2008, where he gained firsthand insight into the travel industry. By 2016, he founded Tour Amigo to address a glaring gap in travel technology: while day tours, accommodations, and flights had embraced digital solutions, multi-day tours remained stuck in the analog era.
The statistics Murray reveals are both surprising and inspiring. The multi-day tour market is expanding at an impressive 8-9% annually, even in the wake of COVID-19. Travelers are now spending $4,500-$5,000 per trip—nearly double the pre-pandemic average of $2,500. Yet, when Tour Amigo first introduced the concept of APIs to tour operators, the response was often, "What is an API?" This disconnect highlighted a massive opportunity in what Murray estimates to be a $300 billion global market.
Whether you're a tour operator seeking to modernize, an investor exploring the next big travel tech innovation, or simply someone intrigued by the evolution of the travel industry, this episode is packed with invaluable insights. Murray’s vision for the future of multi-day tours is not just about technology - it’s about unlocking the full potential of an industry poised for extraordinary growth.
Tune in to discover how Tour Amigo is leading the charge in this remarkable transformation. Thank you for sharing your journey with us, Murray!
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I think the industry although you know people say, oh, are people still doing tours? It is. The stats are showing that it is growing 8 to 9% year on year, even after COVID, and that's not just a rebound. It was growing at that sort of pace beforehand. I think we could go into the different trends. You know like people want to get off the beaten path and then once they get off the beaten path, that area is no longer off the beaten path and there's adventure travel, there's hiking, there's health and wellness is obviously on the rise there as well, but it's maybe we might see some digital detoxing tours coming up soon where you can't have Wi-Fi or phones or laptops.
Speaker 2:I would love to do hello everyone and welcome to a special spotlight edition of travel trends. This is your host, dan christian, and today we're going to be speaking to murray decker, the ceo and founder of tour amigo. Now, as you'll hear in the conversation, murray and I have known each other for a number of years. We both worked at the travel corporation. He started as a tour guide with brands like Contiki, so he really understands the multi-day tour space and he's actually gone on to build this successful company, tour Amigo, given his understanding of multi-day tour and the opportunity that exists to create a marketplace and a platform so that companies like WeRoad, one of the companies I'm an advisor for, can make their trips bookable with third parties all over the world.
Speaker 2:And that's only part of the Tour Amigos story. So I wanted to bring Murray on today to showcase the growth around multi-day, their platform and what they're working on, and then also how it relates to cruise and river cruise some of the topics we've talked about on this podcast as they've moved into those categories as well. So there's very few people that are as well versed in the multi-day tour space as Murray and I really wanted to bring him on Travel Trends to be able to have this conversation. So, murray, great to have you on Travel Trends. Thanks so much for joining us.
Speaker 1:Thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 2:For sure. I've so enjoyed getting to see you over the past year. Obviously, you and I work together and we have some quite a few common connections, and you've built this incredibly successful company, tour Amigo, that we're going to talk more about. But I'd love for all of our listeners to get a bit more of an understanding of your journey within the travel industry, because you were in many ways ahead of the curve with being in the touring space, and now you've built a touring technology company that is really poised for great success over the next five to 10 years, and I want to get your take on that as well, of course, but tell everyone a little bit about your background, murray and how you got into the travel industry.
Speaker 1:Yeah well, my background was not heading down the travel industry path originally. I was studying marketing and accounting at university, finished that, went into banking and that lasted about six months and then I flew over to the UK because I'm originally from Australia and poured beers at the pubs and lived and worked above them and it just so happened that the travel corporation at one of the pubs lived two doors down and I started to get to know them on a Friday afternoon and eventually walked in and asked for see if they had a job. That was available and that job was being a tour guide all through Europe. So I actually started my career with Busabout and Katiki, a tour guide all over Europe. I then specialised in Greece and Spain and I did that for about five to six seasons. I toured, guided for two and then went into operations for the other three.
Speaker 1:I then moved to Asia and expanded Busabout into Asia and all the different products there, and then, lastly, I got poached by GeoAdventures and worked for GeoAdventures as their operations manager in Australia. So that was sort of my journey in the touring space. I also went into Flight Centre and did procurement and corporate and along that journey I obviously had a lot of passengers that I knew, friends and family that were all traveling, and I seem to be the go-to person for them to ask which operator should they be traveling with, based on their demographic, based on their budgets, etc. And I found that I had templates saved, like set templates, say, for different areas, for different age groups, for different operators, operators. And what that prompted was the first iteration of Tour Amigo, in that I built an affiliate website similar to like an OTA, to aggregate and normalize the information, because I thought the biggest problem in the industry was that there wasn't an online resource at that time for travelers to go to and look at the different results and find just friendly advice, and hence where Tour Amigo, tour Friend, came from, it's just friendly advice. That isn't sort of as a travel agent.
Speaker 1:However, as we progress with that, I also found that when we were sort of saying to the tour operators, can you send us through your API as opposed to Excel spreadsheet, the response at that stage was what is an API? Yeah, exactly, and we realized that, although it was a very big problem and there's been many great companies that have come up since then to solve the business-to-consumer front end that there was a big gap in the market and exploring why that was a big gap in the market for tour operators to have booking and reservation software and consequently distribution APIs. So while I was sort of building that, I also created my own tour company. That was private groups and corporate groups throughout Greece. So I had firsthand experience of the spreadsheets, the budgeting sheets, the supplier pain points and creating your own sort of bespoke quote itineraries.
Speaker 2:Very cool. Now let's put it in context for a bit of a timeline, for all of our listeners too, given that you have such relevant experience. And again, that's where our listeners obviously will hear the points of connectivity between us with the Travel Corporation, with Contiki and Busaboot, and then G Adventures as well, and, of course, flight Center has been a big partner and sponsor of our show, and I've worked with Flight Center for many years, so you are someone that really gets this industry, understands this space, and that's why I wanted to have you as part of this discussion about touring and the incredible rise of this category and what's projected over the next decade, which is why we're seeing a lot of private equity and VC firms investing in these companies. Obviously, you've recently taken on a round of investment, which is incredibly exciting and certainly reflects where this industry is headed. But just in terms of breaking down some of the timing, when you first took up the job at Contiki, what year are we referring to here?
Speaker 1:Trying to show my age here. No, I started in 2008. 2008 is when I first started. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's it, Okay, cool. Now the reason I wanted to share that with our listeners is because many people, including myself to a large extent obviously you want to get ahead quickly and you want to put in your, but you need to put in your time and effort, and I certainly have learned that, and clearly you have as well. And so you know, an overnight success with Tour Amigo actually goes all the way back to 2008 with actually learning how a business like Contiki operates, because you wouldn't have understood the pain points of tour operators, you wouldn't have understood that they're behind in their technology and the concept of API. So, yeah, so you started with Contiki in 2008. And then let's let's take a big jump forward to when you actually founded Tor Amigo. What year was that?
Speaker 1:So it would have been around 2016, 17, when it was the first online travel agency model, like as an affiliate model. The ideation came around 2014 or 15, and that was on a plane. I wrote the business plan on the back of an airplane sick bag, which I've still got. It's gobbledygook, it doesn't look like anything, but I was going to revolutionize the in-flight magazines, and then by the time the plane landed I realized I had no idea as to how to write a magazine, or the airline industry or the budget to do it. But I did realize that a part of that concept map was tours, and so that's when it sort of really started, and I think in the last three to four years is when we've really become that B2B distribution as well as the software.
Speaker 2:Well, and that's great, because that's the other thing. So, knowing that 2016, here we are in 2025. So we're really nine years and all of a sudden, people are now hearing and talking about Tour Amigo. You're at every event. Finally, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:I tried to wear the loudest shirt to get the answers out there, but it didn't seem to work. But my aggressive salmon shirt is doing its trick now, I think.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's awesome. Well, hopefully, those people who are listening to this on audio on their streaming platform of choice will check out some of the clips on our YouTube channel, instagram, as well, because you can see Murray's amazing salmon colored shirt, which, literally, as Murray knows, I walked into World Travel Market last year and he was the first person I saw, because I instantly spotted him. I was like, oh, where's Waldo? But it's actually like you stood out like a sore thumb and we had a great catch up. You were just free for a meeting and we had about 20 minutes to catch up and it was. It was lovely to see you and to catch up with you right away, but, yeah, I'd never would have seen you. So I'm actually thinking you know I wear these black t-shirts. I'm thinking next year might be the year of color for travel trends.
Speaker 1:Maybe I need bright red. It's starting to spread. Yeah, I'm seeing a lot more color now.
Speaker 2:It used to be blue black and red Nice. And obviously you know from Busabout too, because that was always bright orange right there was, you know brands yeah. G Adventures is purple. Brands have their color and they in the color, and you've developed brand equity. I would absolutely say in tour amigo with the salmon, because if anyone else is wearing a salmon shirt, I think people are going to rush up to them.
Speaker 1:Be murray, is that you and uh yeah, is it one of your teams expanding, expanding drastically? You know, yeah, exactly okay, cool.
Speaker 2:So the other thing I wanted to chat about was as part of the genesis story. Uh, it's understandable that many businesses go through pivots and evolve and adapt as you get product and market fit, which you now have, and that's obviously why the investment and why you're scaling the business. Obviously, you've got an impressive CTO you've brought on board, but let's talk about the business plan. You put on the back of a sick bag. So remind us again I know you talked about Tor Amigo being like your friend, so tell us what the original vision was and then how you've evolved that to what it's become today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the original business plan was a business-to-consumer website that people could go on to. They could type in multiple different destinations and put in multiple filters and find the tour that suited their budgets, needs, dates, times, duration, and then, if they wanted to book it, they would be redirected as an affiliate onto the tour operators platform. So we were actually quite successful with that in the early days because we focused on sort of off the beaten path areas before off the beaten path became a thing. But it was great for SEO and it was great for the traction that we had from there and that was built on.
Speaker 1:I built that off a WordPress website, so it was just. It was a very basic site. I wouldn't want to share what it looks like now because you look back on those things and get a little bit embarrassed as to look, but it worked. And then we turned it into a online travel agency. We got some government grant from Australia and then we turned it into a online travel agency. Uh, we got some uh government grant, um, from australia and we actually turned it into a booking engine, which is when we faced a lot of the. We saw a lot of the pain points for the, the operators um that were sending through the products cool.
Speaker 2:That's super helpful, and I'm just going to pull up the way back machine just to see exactly what tour amigo looked like in 2016 2017 oh um, but tell all of our listeners, uh, where you're from, where you're based, obviously, um, I think that's interesting for people to know, especially now that you are really you've become more of a global nomad, given the way that, uh, I know you're in new york today for this conversation. But, yeah, just tell everyone, uh, where you're based, where you're're from and where you live now, which is pretty global. I know Greece is one of your bases.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so my home base and where I was born was actually Brisbane, australia, queensland. So I do have a base there, but I do spend about five months on the road and a lot of that is over in Europe and UK where we're growing quite substantially, and now at the end of the year I'm always over here in the US so I do sort of it's mainly centered around the big travel trade shows like USTOA coming up in the US this week and World Travel Market and Travel Tech Show in the UK. That's sort of our main for NITV potentially Got it Okay, cool.
Speaker 2:Awesome, and I have used the Wayback Machine and I do have an image. And I have used the Wayback Machine and I do have an image. I'll have to share it afterwards Because it's I always find it so fascinating for all of us going on these journeys, because our lives evolve and change, businesses evolve and change and you can see where you started, where you've come to. But awesome, okay, so now you're in New York, you're headed to USTOAA. Tell us a little bit about how you've structured the business for 2025. And tell us a bit more about this particular investment that you had to really scale the business. You've got some Singapore-based investors, but, yeah, tell us how you were successfully able to get funding.
Speaker 1:Well with the current investors. They were probably the first ones actually that wanted to talk to our team to find out the expertise and understand the gap in the market. It's a hard gap to show to people because, primarily, a lot of the bookings and these tour operator products have been completely offline. So the travel agencies know how lucrative it is and how many bookings are being made per year and how it's rising 9% year on year, but that's not visible to the rest of the market. What was visible was day-to-day activities, which was getting hundreds of millions of dollars put into them. It was the accommodations before that, it was the flights before that to digitalize it.
Speaker 1:So this really is sort of that last tourism vertical. And that's where these current investors saw a significant gap in the market for a true SAS model, a cloud-based solution, and also saw that there wasn't that many competitors in the market. So they really backed our team. Is where they've was what compelled them to. But, granted, I would have spoken to about 500 investors before that over the four or five years. Uh, and these are the ones that, um, luckily saw what we're seeing and can sort of see where the industry is going to be going in that next sort of two to three years that's very exciting.
Speaker 2:And of course there's tour amigo, and one of the things we should chat about too is cruise amigo, given that you have just like, actually, with our season four, we did kind of deep dive into adventure, which is related to touring, and obviously this is part of our season five touring series, but we also did a series on cruise and really there's a lot of similarities, and you know this as well that a lot of tour operators own river cruise lines.
Speaker 2:That sort of was a kind of a natural extension, and you're seeing river cruise lines that was a kind of a natural extension, and you're seeing river cruise companies even now move into touring, and so there's a lot of crossover between those two, not in terms of the travelers and the guest experience, but also the operator. So we'll come to that in a minute. But let's talk a bit about the multi-day tour like tour operators and I know you work with DMCs as well, destination management companies and so tell us a little bit about the Tour Amigo platform that you built, customized really for tour operators, knowing that there was this challenge with technology in the marketplace, and there's quite a bit of functionality you've built into the platform. So walk us through. For the tour operators that are listening to this to try and wrap their head around is Tour Amigo for them? Walk us through how you've evolved and rolled out the product and, I guess, where it stands today, in 2025, for companies looking to work with you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, look, the unique advantage we had is that we were able to start from a blank canvas. So we started from scratch with a system that we thought would suit the industry. So we started from scratch with a system that we thought would suit the industry and it was coincidentally around COVID time when we were sort of building out the blueprint and infrastructure. And how we've done it is that we do like a digital blueprint that people can actually use and demo. And we provided that to many, many different tour operators at the time who had a bit of spare time on their hands from the very large international ones to DMCs, to private bespoke operators, to your mum and pa operators and got them to test it and play with the whole system. And that actually proved to be incredibly successful because we could actually change a lot of things around and a lot of functionalities around, a lot of the design around, to suit that sort of feedback. And then we started actually putting code to paper. That was a significant advantage to us from what was in market at the time and still probably is that.
Speaker 1:There's some terrific companies out there. A lot of it is custom built solutions for the larger businesses and we thought there should be a platform that can cover all sizes of businesses and scale with them, similar to your other SaaS softwares like you know, your accounting systems that you can do a one person business operation all out to hundreds and thousands of different employees in the one system. And that's what we've been able to create and then, along the way we've always always, when we develop something for clients or any sort of requests, it is made available. We have that. That's the advantage of the community, the SaaS community. So it's not like we're producing a customized feature that is a paid upgrade. You don't have to pay for reports or anything like that. It's just one fee and it includes everything, with all the upgrades as well as new features and functionalities, and that allows us to move incredibly quick to get to the same functionality that others might have had over 15 to 20 years. We've been able to do in a year.
Speaker 2:Well, I know a number of tour operators that work with you because they want to leverage the platform for distributing their product, and so I have mentioned. It's interesting when I'm speaking to other tour operators and they mentioned, oh, we work with Tour Am, tour amigo, and they're excited to mention it because they're like we, we're bookable. Now we're, uh, we're. So, yeah, tell us maybe the two or three reasons why you're seeing tour operators choose the platform and if you wouldn't mind to break down some of the the costs involved, if you wouldn't mind just to give kind of tour operators an idea, because you do work with quite a range like small and medium-sized operators. So, yeah, tell us a bit more about that, because I'm I'm always intrigued when I hear companies that are working with you, and so I've, uh, as we're chatting today, trying to wrap my head around and share with our listeners the reasons why they would, uh, they would, they are choosing tour, yeah so, look, there's three main reasons.
Speaker 1:The first one is that we provide them with a bookable API. When I say bookable, I mean a two-way API, so when a booking is made on someone else's platform, the passenger's details automatically fall into their reservation system. That is a significant difference to most other companies that's all most competitors out there just because they can connect into their own platform, their own website, the Tour Operators website, but we can actually connect them into hundreds of different travel agencies, online travel agencies at their request or in our community already. So we're probably the only company operating company that can increase their bookings because of that distribution network and that this bookable API can be part of our ecosystem. The second thing is the true SaaS sort of model, so, and that sort of ties into the pricing as well. So this is you can be off the shelf, you can be set up in days on this platform. For a small operator, we're just launching a self-signup, which we will call like the Tour Amigo Lite version, which is basically for connectivity, for enabling them to be bookable on their own website, enabling them to be distributed out to other online travel agencies and travel agencies, or simply allowing agents to use their B2B agent portal that they can log into and make the bookings. So it's just to drive more efficiency and bookings for them. And the last part of that SaaS is the community.
Speaker 1:So what I was just mentioning before, that it's a constantly upgrading and evolving system. So we are releasing new features of budgeting, like projecting costs to actual costs, automating supplier communications, actually having supplier portals, their vendors, payment solutions to pay their own. Everyone focuses on payment gateways for B2C. It's a huge pain point because you might have 20 different vendors or components on one trip that you need to pay as an operator, and that could be the accommodation, that could be your transfers, it could be your guides on the ground. So we have put in payment solutions and payment functionalities for that. So it's those sort of features that really attract operators of all different sizes, and those pricing models can start from as little as like $175 USD a month and that can be up to five users as the light version, and then it can always go all the way up to the pro, which is you're looking around your $400 per user per month and, depending on how many users you have, that's where it goes. Very rarely do we have upfront fees, unless it is some customized work or integrations.
Speaker 2:That's great. I appreciate you sharing that because I think it's really helpful context for our listeners, especially to kind of quickly cut through and see if it's right for them, because I know you do have a number of smaller operators, and that makes sense, given how affordable, flexible but also highly specialized the tech is for exactly what their needs are. And there's so many smaller operators out there, as you well know. And that's where I think it's going to be really exciting over the next five or 10 years, as there's going to be more consolidation in the marketplace. We're going to see more new entrants scaling rapidly, being acquired. It's going to be a fun, exciting time for both of us. I think this is, I'm convinced, this is going to be the most exciting time of both of our careers as we track this space over the next decade, given the demographic factors in particular that are at play, as more people are coming into the multi-day touring category and also younger travelers are also choosing it as well.
Speaker 2:Obviously, you're based in Australia. You know these brands Intrepid being a great example, of course, of multi-day tour, small group adventures that their business is set to double in the next five years. So let's talk a little bit about Cruise because I'm keen to know how that came into the mix. I mean, cruise is not a background or specialty for me. Obviously, you didn't grow up on the Cruise side of the business either. So how and when did you decide to add Cruise, and how different is that to what you had built for tour operators?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So look, we see cruising as pretty much touring, but on the sea or on the river. It's still a multi-day package, it's still got different components in it and it's just the mode of transport. So we have companies not just in cruise but on rail. They can be on bicycle, it doesn't have to be a traditional 30-seater, 50-seater coach with it.
Speaker 1:We got into cruise by demand. We had people coming to us and saying, look, if you can do it, this, can you actually help us out? And the most complex part of it is the cabin, the cabin selections and the cabin layouts and whatnot. Fortunately for us, our CTO came from 30 to 40 years at TravelTech and a cruise background, and a lot of our different developers have a cruise and touring API background as well. So we always built this with the mindset of the API first and then building it backwards, because we had that luxury, whereas a lot of people have built the products and now trying to tack on an API on top of it, whereas a lot of people have built the products and now trying to tack on an API on top of it. So that was a huge, significant advantage because a lot of the.
Speaker 1:That's why I think a lot of people went through some of the major cruise companies, like TravelTech, because it was so difficult for them to build an API, whereas what they can do now is actually put their ships into our system. They can actually set up all their cabins. We can have cabin rules, like in terms of if there's a mixed room or a single gender room, and you can actually automatically allocate some into those different cabins. You can view the cabins, which basically puts them as bookable online on their own website as well as through other selling partners. And that's been the main attraction, and we've seen some really significant growth in the river cruising operators that we have.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's such a smart decision, not only to bring in Stuart Chesterton, who I got a chance to meet at World Travel Market as well, and subsequently a number of people have mentioned him to me about his background. So this is where your team, as you've built out the business, obviously you've expanded the team and their expertise in new markets. So the thing I'd also like to ask you when I you know, I know a number of these customers of yours, but I would love if you wouldn't mind sharing, just to kind of point out what would be, I guess, some best-in-class examples of clients that use your Tor product. I know you're global, so you have customers in Greece and New Zealand and Australia and Asia, but who would you kind of call out as one or two examples of clients that have been leveraging Tor Amigo on the Tor operator side, and where are you today on the cruise side? Is it just getting started or have you already actually established some larger accounts?
Speaker 1:No, we've actually already established accounts. So, like great examples and sort of early adopters, of us was Active Adventures, based in New Zealand, but they also have their Austin Adventures. So we've had a terrific partnership with them. They're a fantastic product and that's been testament for their patience with us. But then also, um, also changing a lot of their processes and systems to adopt to a standard way of operating and also getting themselves online and expanded out to other selling partners as well.
Speaker 1:Um, kiwi rail and great journeys in new zealand. Um, so they're doing tours on the rail. So we actually have that whole sort of system connected with the rail system. Um, that allows them to put all those packages together. Uh, then there's also murray river paddle steamers. Ironically enough, could you believe, our first proving company had my name in it. But uh, craig's been fantastic there. Like uh from murray river paddle steamers, who has has several ships that go up and down the Murray River and that's a classic example. He's got a three-day, five-day and seven-day trips. He's building new ships as well to go up the paddle steamer, should I say up the river, and it's really expanded his business.
Speaker 1:And then we've got heaps of DMCs over in Europe and we're finding that we always get recommended because we can accommodate for the different sizes. So we would have at least two or three referrals from each customer, which gives testament to the product, our team, but then also this will be other operators that they might be contracting like a DMC and they're like can you help us make that easier and help the DMC? And then we go to that DMC and then they go well, we want to also be connected into a travel agency and then that leads us into a new travel agency, a new client, and the travel agency says, well, can you get us more tour operators and DMCs? We want to have this product, this operator and this river cruising company. And then it just compounds.
Speaker 2:Very cool. And then the journey you're on now with enhancing the platform. I'm assuming that, given not only have you added cruise, but there's going to be continued pressure to build out the platform as you bring on more operators, one of the things that we both see, I'm sure, is that every business is different. They all have their. You know you mentioned Active Adventures and Austin Adventures. Those are great examples because I know EJ Gamboa, who works there. He worked with me at the Travel Corporation for a number of years and led our team in Australia, asia Pacific, and I know he's now the chief growth officer over there and they've been going from strength to strength and it kind of highlights exactly what we're discussing, which is that there is major growth in this space, exactly what we're discussing, which is that there is major growth in this space. So where are you seeing pressure from partners to build out the platform and what's sort of ahead in your roadmap for 2025 and beyond?
Speaker 1:So we're very happy where the products are at. We've made unbelievable progress over the last year and a lot of what we're doing now is tweaking and also enhancing, because I think you've got to. We're always innovating and putting new products in, but you've also got to remember to go back and keep everything up to date and all the different sections up to date and make sure that they're all still working as efficiently and optimal as possible. But we've got we can see a lot of demand for more private, bespoke quoting as well as groups, and we are updating that module as we speak and that will be released in the quarter one next year in about January, february and that is really advanced. So I mean, anyone can build itineraries, don't get me wrong and that's fantastic.
Speaker 1:The complication is when you want to tie it to costings and expenses and suppliers and vendors and you can't drag and drop at that stage because the vendor might not be available on day two if you drag him from day four to day two. So this is where we have a huge pricing and commercial model there, where it's basically they can actually cost out all of their projections, they can actually automate all of their supplier communications, so when they get a request in. You can narrow down which suppliers is going to be suitable. Send them out emails to confirm availability. More for that private bespoke area.
Speaker 2:Awesome. And then let's talk about where this industry is headed together. I think that's going to be interesting to our listeners and certainly I'd love to get your take on where you think touring is specifically headed. So oftentimes, when we're looking for investment, we're trying to make sure we have product market fit, which clearly you have, but one of the most important elements that investors are looking for is something that gets referred to as a TAM, which is many of our listeners may know this, but I always want to bring everyone along on the journey and never use acronyms that people aren't familiar with, but total, addressable market. And so when you look at the TAM for Tour, amigo, what sort of projections have you put around that and how do you see this industry, the touring industry specifically, growing globally over the next five to ten years?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a good question. The tam is, depending on your definition of it. Um, how people it's? It's very difficult to pinpoint a number because and and that's part of the reason why this is a gap it's a fragmented industry and it depends on what you tie into the industry. So we've estimated on our side, like that it would be $300 billion TAM and it's more based on what we would estimate, the revenue or the transactions that are going through in the industry and then looking at other parts of the industry.
Speaker 1:So where do you stop with this market? So, like travel agencies are putting together private bespoke packages, does that come under the multi-day tour? So we've sort of started using more of the term of complex itineraries because you can go into sporting events, you can go into, you know, religious travel, educational travel, festivals. You know like we have the Olympics coming up in Queensland in 2031 or two, and that's you know. Are we going to be working with the local council to produce a system that they can package? You know a three-night stay with a two-day entry with a. You know a one-night dinner with one of the athletes. That can also be categorised into this space. We're categorising in a lot of river and ocean cruising, but it doesn't actually just have to be these massive ships. It could be a three-day liveaboard scuba diving trip, it could be a two-day safari, african safari. It doesn't have to be. It could be with the family or it could be with a private group of someone turning 50. We just see that there's multiple verticals where our system can be adapted to without any sort of major iterations or changes, and that's why we see it as a very large growth model there.
Speaker 1:I think the industry although you know that people say, oh is it is? Are people still doing tours? It is the. The stats are showing that is growing eight to nine to 9% year on year, even after COVID, and that's not just a rebound. It was growing at that sort of pace beforehand. I think we could go into the different trends. You know like people want to get off the beaten path and then, once they get off the beaten path, that area is no longer an off the beaten path and there's adventure travel, there's hiking, there's health and wellness is obviously on the rise there as well, but it's uh, maybe we might see some digital detoxing tours coming up soon where you can't uh, can't have wi-fi or phones or or laptops, um which I would love to do it one stage, but yeah exactly well.
Speaker 2:Actually, when I spoke to uh shannon who runs uh adventure and Trade Association, he was highlighting the number of operators that they have that actually highlight the fact that you don't have Internet connectivity in your rooms. You may have it just in the main lodge, and part of the appeal is exactly what you described as people actually getting off the grid and actually being able to have a proper holiday, and so digital detox is a real thing for many people, including myself for sure. No-transcript. You know Travis and the team well, but I would highlight that as kind of one of the earlier examples of trying to raise awareness amongst investors about the size and potential of this industry, because it's exactly what you just described, which is that most people see it as a declining market and companies like the Travel Corporation, where I was for many years, saw that as they acquired other multi-day tour operators that there was an incredible sunset that has actually turned into a renaissance, I would say, in many ways, given demographics and also just changing customer behavior. So the $300 billion is a fascinating one, because certainly Shannon thinks that it's a trillion dollars or higher if you start to add in the other categories, but your number is very when you add up the number of companies and the size of, there's quite a few operators that are doing a billion dollars in multi-day tour, and so when you just add those up alone, you can realize that this is a massive space. And then you start looking at all the adjacent markets and it's um, so, yes, it's so.
Speaker 2:The other thing you also mentioned was the eight to nine percent growth rate, and that's something that I obviously have found fascinating with some of the modeling is that it's actually compound growth and that, um, that it's.
Speaker 2:And some projections are even higher, you know, 10 or 15, as high as 20, depending on the category, like the exact niche within the multi-day tour category, like adventure, or that are seeing more significant growth and that is expected to continue at that pace for the next five or 10 years.
Speaker 2:So this is where you know I'm, I'm, I'm bullish on this sector and I think many, many more people are becoming so like, like yourself, and obviously investors that are kind of realizing that there is an opportunity here because, unlike VC investments, where you're relying on a 10x, 100x, 1000x type return, a lot of private equity have gotten into this space because if $1 can make two and two can make four and you can start to see the growth that compound interest. You know there is substantial returns to be made here as more and more people choose this sector, so I think that's fast. But you also mentioned some of the other trends that you're seeing, and I'd love to get your take on those too, murray. So obviously you've set the stage for the touring space, but what are some of the other developments that you're paying attention to as far as the trends for 2025, with what you're seeing from your partners or even from your own travels?
Speaker 1:Definitely a higher spend, like where pre-COVID would have been 2,500 USD per passenger. On average we're seeing it being around 4,500 to 5,000 USD. Sometimes that is a combination that they might be doing two trips at once. So we expect that to level out a little bit. But it has been a very much higher purchasing of either one product or multiple products. You know the value of spend.
Speaker 1:We're seeing quite a few day tour operators coming into the multi-day and I think they've been dabbling with it for some time but they've never had really a system where they could do both. And that's where we're working with quite a few of them so that they could actually manage both their multi-day and day tours in one system. And some of the operators might have, you know, 50 day tours% multi-day tours, which makes sense because if they can put the accommodation in, it's not too difficult for them to combine three one-day tours into one and then create an overall package. They usually see much better margins from it. But right now they've had to be operating on either two different systems or usually the multi-day tours was completely offline. So we've seen that.
Speaker 1:Uh, in terms of you know, I think everyone's been talking about the adventure travel for quite some time off the beaten um path travel. Uh, I we've seen quite a few people combining like a day, like a multi-day land tour with a either a river cruise or an ocean cruise. Uh, so it could be two different companies but combining those together and and yeah, we're just uh it's it's other sort of specialties of, uh, either cycling cycling's being huge, um, the cycling tours, and I think that's been around for a little bit now. Uh, what we're hoping, uh we're seeing in 2025 is a lot more private, bespoke packages, so we're just seeing a lot more demand for that. I know they've always been around, but we're just seeing a lot more demand for that. I think people are being very selective as to where they're traveling. When I say people, I mean the travelers, the passengers, where they're traveling and are happy to spend a higher amount for a really unique and valuable experience.
Speaker 2:That's interesting. The one other trend I was going to say, to just add to that, murray, that I'm keen to see is solo female travelers. Is that something that stands out in your platform or what you're seeing with guests as well? I know that. Get your Guide, for example, called that out recently, so, and a number of operators are seeing you know female travelers, but specifically, which is why they travel in, in in groups and group travel. So is that something that stood out to you as well?
Speaker 1:Um, somewhat, we we haven't noticed a huge changing trend behind it, but, um, it's not something that, uh, that we've actually fully noticed with it, but it's uh, uh, it could be also happening with a lot of different other operators, uh, depending on. It'd probably be better to see it through, get your guide, because they'll have a lot more of the consumer trends on or who's actually paying for it. Um, but I think with multi-day touring, it's always been, um, like there's a much higher percentage of of females that travel on multi-day tours and organized package tours than it is, um, males. Um, even when I was tour guiding, the groups were 70 to 80 females and it would be usually solo females or traveling in twos or threes as a group, but still going on the group tour got it.
Speaker 2:So I got a slightly different question then. Just it, which is what you just started to highlight just solo travelers in general in your analysis, if you will, because obviously you're seeing the booking activity, are you for most group tours? Uh, and I know this from experience with different brands in terms of like, if you model them based on, you know, one passenger, you know, when you're trying to look at the lifetime value of a customer at any multi-day tour brand, obviously you're trying to work out the lifetime value of a customer at any multi-day tour brand. Obviously you're trying to work out the average transaction value. So trying to figure out what is the basket size for each actual transaction and then what is your cost per acquisition to try and bring those people into the business, whether it's from B2B or B2C. B2b, obviously you have commissions. In B2C, you've got the full cost of marketing and trying to bring that customer in direct.
Speaker 2:So most companies are trying to figure out how do they add that into their pricing and one of the things I'm talking with the Tourpreneur team on season five about is exactly how tour operators can grow to become larger full-scale tour operators and there's so much intricacy to pricing foreign exchange, hedging currencies, interest as you get more complex pricing strategies, but also costing. I mean, as you scale, obviously you can reduce your costs by virtue of being able to have the buying power, and so there is a reason why the big get bigger and buy the smaller companies. And so, but yeah, I guess what I'd love to hear from you is that when I'm doing some of this modeling and trying to figure out the value of certain businesses and investing and um, I'm almost always looking at the average transaction value and then the likelihood of repeat rates, um, which I'm assuming um is something you would look at as well to try and help your partners, try and generate.
Speaker 1:It's about 2.3. Yeah, 2.3 is the average number of guests on a booking. That's what we found. Um oh no. When I say that, I mean average return guests.
Speaker 1:So they will that's the average lifetime value. So they do about 2.3 on average trips where they'll be reoccurring, like they'll come back as as loyalty. So I don't know why someone hasn't done it yet, but we don't see a loyalty program in our sort of space. Every other part hotels, you know, flights all have loyalty programs and you do get a lot of loyalty from these passengers on these trips and you do get a lot of referrals, like if someone goes on a trip, has an amazing time, they're like you have to go on this trip, you know, or with this company, because they're the best at it, even if they haven't experienced any others. That's your spokesperson there. So it's something that should be um capitalized on, I think, from a lot of the operators.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure, and I really appreciate you sharing that because that is a meaningful stat, especially from someone like you that has the vantage of looking across multiple brands. I guess the other one, just to come back to what's the average uh people within a booking. Is it something between one and two Like? Do you kind of use a 1.5? Is that kind of a formula for?
Speaker 1:for us. Yeah, it's been around like, if you want to get really specific, it's been around that 1.7. Um, but generally speaking, um, you would, you would, if you want to average it out, go 1.5. Um, a lot, of, a lot of people, either couples or friends, would go together, um and uh, that is um brought down by a lot of, uh, solo travelers. So that's where you get that average of that 1.5 or 1.7 that we're seeing.
Speaker 2:Very cool. The other thing I want to ask you just given you always have so much energy and you are clearly optimistic and you're still a young guy and you've got lots of potential to grow this business over the long term I would love to know what excites you most. What is it that's getting you out of the bed in the morning to grow this business over the long term? I would love to know what excites you most Like. What is it that's getting you out of the bed in the morning to grow this business, build out the team, expand the number of partners? What really excites you about this industry, this category?
Speaker 1:Yeah, look, I suppose you can go internal here. What excites me is like we have a very passionate team, so that always gets you out of bed because you've got fellow colleagues that are highly experienced and can see we're on the same sort of mission here. And goal um for the effects that we have on um operators, um and their business is just like just the change in that industry, like with people um bringing their businesses online. Uh, we've got some startups that have just started new concepts. We've got people that have to reset and restart over again and we can actually help them with that. So that's very rewarding to see those sort of success stories.
Speaker 1:Where we want to be, we've got like some really exciting ideas as to where we want to take the industry, but we want to be the industry standard, Like we want to be that sort of industry name.
Speaker 1:So when people go, what should we, what system should we do, Well, it should be us, and you know a couple of others that are the name that pops into their head and obviously we'd prefer it if it was just ours. But we've got to be realistic and that's something that we could actually start, you know, helping them with training and having sort of an academy that will help upskill these operators without having them to not only invest in new technology but invest in people that can use the technology efficiently and effectively. We see a huge area of. I think there is difficulties with companies growing their business with the capital cash flow, so there might be other areas that we can provide help with that allows them to scale at pace and with a structure of dangers which I'm sure most operators have felt when they've left off a zero of one of the spreadsheets or forgot to update one spreadsheet and not the other.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and one other thing I want to ask you. This is on behalf of our listeners, because I do hear a lot of great feedback from our listeners. They post comments and I actually get emails or text messages. I think it's really wonderful that I do so. Please continue that for all the listeners out there that decide to reach out to me after they've listened to a particularly interesting episode. They'll reach out to me and I've shown friends.
Speaker 2:I'm just like hey, you get to interact with the host. How cool is that? You just you know there's a live chat functionality after you've listened to an episode and people are listening to them out of sync, right? So I get a random text message or a random email to be like oh, I was just listening to Rob Ransom from bookingcom and his talk about AI and like what do you think about? And I love that. So the question I wanted to ask you was that, for those young entrepreneurs out there or for those people who are entering the travel industry, given your success and your track record, what would be one piece of advice that you would love to give to your younger self or to someone else listening to this show that is going to likely act on that advice. So what recommendation would you have for them to either get into this industry or to build a successful career or a successful business?
Speaker 1:I definitely think we need a huge influx of entrepreneurial innovators into our industry. We welcome it. I think it will have a huge impact on the business and I would highly encourage a lot of the operators to be hiring in different generations of people with new ideas and actually following those ideas. The most dangerous statement you can make is that we're doing it this way because that's the way we've always done it. If you're saying that there is something that you should be changing, it's a very dangerous statement to be made because that's if we could list off multiple companies inside our industry and outside the industry that thought the same until it came to a crashing end. So you've got to look at, you've got to be willing to change, and so having people that are looking at starting up their own business, I'd highly encourage it. They have to. As soon as someone says that's not the way we do it or we don't think that's impossible to do, that should be a note to go. This is a gap in the industry and this is what we're changing.
Speaker 1:I think there's a lot of companies that are all trying to solve a similar problem and that you should look at what your personal pain points are in travel or in tourism, whether that's in the operational space, whether that's on the customer space, and that is, if it's a personal problem that you see in an industry that you care about, then it makes it a lot easier to find that solution and a lot easier to keep pursuing, because it's resilience.
Speaker 1:You know, that's sort of the main part of it, that if it was easy, everyone would do it. And I know I'm throwing out a lot of cliche comments here, but it just rings true and those are the three main ones that it's just like, if you keep reminding yourself, if it was easy, everyone would do it. And that's why you should be struggling and and and really battling it out, because it will be a struggle in a battle, um, and that's all. I would investigate with it, to be honest, because sometimes if you knew all of the, the hardships that are coming, it could act as a deterrent. So you're better off going in a bit naive and working it out as you go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one other thing I would just pay you a compliment on, given that you have a successful business, but you obviously clearly take care of yourself as well, and I think that's actually an important point to highlight to our listeners.
Speaker 2:I know you work out like, you're very active, so you, when I saw you in a world travel, I'm like I think Murray's got I was going to got new muscles he's like, uh, like, so you're. You're not only wearing the salmon shirt, but like it's just like you know, um and so to To enhance the effect. But I'm assuming you put a certain amount of time and effort into like physical and mental health, given that, like, you radiate like positive energy and I think that that is, and you're obviously working harder than ever. You're like, but some people, you see they're just burning out and clearly there's something that you're doing differently. Some people, you see they're just burning out and clearly there's something that you're doing differently, so, uh, so anything else you'd add to that just in terms of actually taking care of yourself, um, mentally and physically, on that journey, because exactly what you highlighted, it takes a lot longer. You need to be resilient and part of that is actually taking care of yourself.
Speaker 1:Yeah and um, don't get me wrong, there's been times where I haven't taken care of myself and it's been a really dark spot. You know like it's been really hard times through it. So it's not all uh roses, but like when you can, um, it's great. It's very hard on the road to stay fit and whatnot. I find sports has helped me a lot. Like I play quite a bit of tennis and, um, although depending on my day, it reflects how I reflects how I play tennis, which can be not so great for tennis, but at least afterwards, if I run around after a yellow ball for an hour or two, that sort of takes your mind off things and can reset you a bit. So you need to find things that can take your mind off those.
Speaker 1:The day-to-day, so, the day-to-day operations, the day-to-day worries with it. So they need to find something that's there, but it doesn't have to be to an extreme. It doesn't mean you have to every day be doing something absolutely extreme because you've read in a book that that's what works. It's more what works for you personally. But it has to be a bit of a balance. Sometimes you've just got to to stop and let the body have a rest and other times you just got to keep going. So there's no right or wrong way of doing things. But yeah, that's my outlet and I might look like a crazy person on a tennis court, but I feel a lot better afterwards.
Speaker 2:Good for you and that's incredibly important. That's why I wanted just to call that out, because when I did a lot better afterwards, good for you and that's incredibly important. That's why I wanted just to call that out, because I did a podcast in our second season with Sharaf from Dharma and it's one of the things he highlighted, which is some of the mental health challenges of startup entrepreneurs. And so, as we're in 2025 and just kind of guess that whole self trying to make sure that we do address that, because clearly it's something you're mindful of, so I thought at least just call that out. But, murray, I want to make sure that all of our listeners can find a way to connect with you.
Speaker 2:After this, learn more about Tour Amigo. Obviously, I'm thrilled that our relationship continues. I think obviously very highly of you and the company that you've built. I'm excited for your future and potential. I look forward to seeing you throughout the year at many events, but tell everyone a little bit more about how they can connect with you or how they can find out more about Tour Amigo.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. We're actually just launching a new website, so it's touramigocom that you can go to and you'll find all the tour stuff, all the cruise stuff, all that's listed on there and also a lot of the information that we've been discussing through today. Everyone's free. Feel free to reach out to me as well. So it's just my full name, murray decker, with an a in there m-u-r-r-a-y-d-e-c-k-e-r at touramigocom. So if they do want to reach out, then then they can do that as well and we can connect up to some of our team, depending on where they're based. And if anyone's going to USTA, we'll probably see you there. Look out for the aggressive salmon shirt. But one thing I just actually wanted to highlight, dan I don't know if we sent it through beforehand a trend and where we think it's going to be very interesting going forwards, is that there is a lot of massive online travel agencies out there that cover a huge amount of content. Even the GDSs, like Sabre and Amadeus, cover a huge amount of content.
Speaker 1:But if you go to a regional spot in, say, one of these countries or Italy or something like that, a lot of those suppliers and vendors are missing.
Speaker 1:So we're actually in several chats and ones that we'll be able to announce in the near future with DMOs or destination management or marketing organizations whichever you're in the world, you call them but tourism boards, essentially, where we're going to introduce a new concept and maybe it's been done before but micro destination platforms, so we're calling it MDP, but that is where a local either OTA or tourism board or DMO can actually we can give them the infrastructure to load up all of their very local and off the beaten path experiences and tours and multi-day tours, even if it's river cruising as well, and we've just found that we've been approached by several tourism boards. To put this together, you could call it a marketplace, but I think from their perspective, the end result is having a destinational platform that really specifically focuses on their local products and services and experiences, which I think will be the future. I reckon over the next two or three years we're going to get a lot more of those platforms that are specifically focused on their particular region or area.
Speaker 2:That's fascinating. I'm glad you called that out because that's a good item to leave everyone in and obviously, following everything that's happening with you at Tour Amigo, people can see all those developments, but it's a really exciting time to be in this space. I've been so looking forward to having this conversation with you. We finally made it happen. We're definitely going to have you back on the show and be a part of some of the interesting panels that we're going to have. So thank you so much for making the time for this, murray. I wish you and the team every success in 25 and beyond and I look forward to keeping in touch. But take care of yourself out there on your travels. Keep fighting the good fight and I look forward to seeing your continued success.
Speaker 2:Thank you, thanks very much, dan. Thanks so much for joining us on the latest episode of Travel Trends. I hope you enjoyed the conversation today with Murray Decker, the founder and CEO of Tour Amigo. For more information, check out touramigocom and also find Murray Decker on LinkedIn. And if you've been intrigued by this episode about spotlights, I encourage you to check out traveltrendspodcastcom slash spotlights for fascinating conversations with executives, company spotlights, events and more. Our season six starts in September, and we will be featuring the captains of industry. So make sure you are subscribed on the streaming platform of your choice and don't forget to sign up for our monthly newsletter at Traveltrendspodcastcom. Thanks again for joining us today and until next time, safe travels.
