Adventure Travel with Angelo Carotenuto - LivTours

Angelo Carotenuto

Founder and Co-Owner
LivTours

Angelo Carotenuto, founder of LivTours, has been transforming travel since 2009 by creating intimate, unforgettable experiences across Europe. Starting as a tour guide and performer in his hometown of Rome, Angelo saw the demand for authentic, small-group and private tours and launched LivTours (formerly LivItaly Tours). A hands-on leader, he forges partnerships, trains expert guides, and supports a global team dedicated to delivering top-rated, hand-crafted travel moments.

summary
In this episode of the Big World Made Small Adventure Travel Podcast, Jason Elkins interviews Angelo Carotenuto, founder & Co-owner of LivTours. They discuss the vision behind LivTours, which aims to provide unique and memorable travel experiences in Italy and throughout Europe. Angelo shares his journey into the tourism industry, the art of tour guiding, and the connection between performance and guiding. They also touch on hiring practices in the tourism industry, memorable tour experiences, common tourist questions, sustainability in tourism, and advice for aspiring tour guides. The conversation highlights the importance of understanding oneself in the tourism industry and the challenges of mass tourism.

takeaways

• LivTours aims to exceed travelers' expectations.
• Angelo's background in performing arts enhances his guiding skills.
• Tour guiding is similar to performing arts in connecting with audiences.
• Hiring in tourism values experience in performance and problem-solving.
• Sustainability is crucial in the tourism industry.
• Mass tourism presents both challenges and opportunities.
• Local businesses must adapt to tourism influx for sustainability.
• Understanding client expectations is key to successful tours.
• Technology proficiency is essential for modern tour guides.
• The tourism industry is driven by people and their stories.

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Transcript

Jason Elkins (00:01.355)
Welcome back everybody to another episode of the Big World Made Small Adventure Travel Podcast. Today we've got Angelo Carotenuto, founder and owner and co-owner of LivTours. Angelo, did I say it right?

Angelo (00:14.083)
Yeah, you actually did, Jason. Yes, thank you. Perfect, perfect.

Jason Elkins (00:15.937)
pretty good. All right. Very cool. That's a fun name. I love Italian. It's just fun to say Italian words. So thank you so much for being here. Really, really happy to have you here.

Angelo (00:25.87)
Ha ha ha.

Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Jason Elkins (00:32.397)
Hey, before we, we're gonna dig into your story, because I think our listeners kind of want to know you. And, but before we do that, can you give kind of the 30 second, 60 second elevator pitch for what is LivTours?

Angelo (00:47.266)
LivTours is your dream enabler. When you dream of going into a new destination to travel, you're going through all sorts of emotions and you're having all sorts of expectations about what you're going to be experiencing when you finally get there. Sometimes it's anxiety, sometimes it's electric.

Emotion sometimes it's a little bit of scare and so forth. Yeah

Jason Elkins (01:15.413)
Angelo, Angelo, Angelo, pause for a second. This is a good time to stop and restart. I apologize. I realized as we got going that I've got a very low charge and if I don't plug in my computer, we're going to have an issue at some point. So I apologize for that. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna stop this recording. We're gonna come back. I'm gonna find a plug because I need to do that. And I didn't wanna distract the conversation while I was trying to do that. So hang on one second, I apologize.

Jason Elkins (01:58.829)
you

Angelo (02:06.638)
I'll be right back.

Angelo (02:23.372)
La chabrilla.

BAM!

Jason Elkins (02:42.285)
Man, you were on a roll. That was sounding good. I was listening to you as I was going through that and I was like, oh, but the plugs behind the desk and I had to move. OK, so we're just actually going to pick up with the 30 second elevator pitch and then I'll go back and I'll take this that little chunk out. I really apologize for that. That's. Out of 110 I've done so far, that's first time I forgot to plug in my computer before we started, so I apologize. So anyway, so I'm going to say the word edit, edit, edit, edit to help me bring me back to this point. Edit, edit, edit.

Angelo (02:55.854)
That's fine. Don't worry.

Jason Elkins (03:12.331)
So Angelo, before we go into your story, I'd love to, for our listeners, kind of hear that maybe the 30 second, 60 second elevator pitch for what is LivTours.

Angelo (03:22.498)
Jason, LivTours is your dream enabler. So when you're hoping to go to a new destination to travel to the moment you're actually planning and then finally getting on the eve of your trip, you're going through all sorts of emotions and expectations. The purpose, the North Star vision of LivTours and everybody that collaborates with Christine and I is to make sure we don't just meet those expectations, but we.

supersede that emotional involvement that you're hoping to experience when traveling.

Jason Elkins (03:58.327)
Very cool. You mentioned North Star Vision. I love that. That's great. That's kind of where the direction is, what kind of what your focus is. That's right. That's very cool. And specifically, what kind of experiences do your guests... I mean, just in a nutshell, what kind of experiences? What are we talking about?

Angelo (04:21.518)
Yeah, we have, I mean, that's not a 30 second answer, but I'll try.

Jason Elkins (04:25.869)
Okay, that's okay. can go longer than that, but I definitely want to make sure that we get back to your individual, your personal story as well. But I want the listeners kind of an idea of what do you do? And then they'll continue to listen and listen to your story and then we can come back and discuss that.

Angelo (04:32.898)
Yeah, no, of course.

Angelo (04:37.793)
Yeah.

Angelo (04:43.552)
Yeah, we sell tours, experiences, activities in 26 different destinations across Europe. We sell more than 400 types of tours, experiences, and activities. So I started thinking as Italy, because that was the very first country we were in, as the perfect playground. know, Jason, is Italy famous for? Italy's famous for wine, food, art, culture, soccer, football, depending on who's listening.

sports cars, fashion, Ferrari, hiking, volcanoes, amazing national parks and so forth, islands, oceans. And people have these stereotypes of Italy that they really wish to finally experience when they're on the ground. And I designed a vast variety of services that would make that dream, that expectation come true. So at the very embryonal stage of LivTours Italy,

before it was LivTours, could buy a Ferrari test drive on a F360 in Maranello, but on the same website, you can buy a Vatican Museum tour. You could go wine tasting in Florence, but then take a Vespa side car along the Amalfi Coast. You could do a ghost tour of Venice, but then a rowing class in the canals. So it's literally everything Italy is famous for transformed into a service, and then we expanded that.

Jason Elkins (06:10.825)
So I hear a wide variety of just really cool things that people maybe have aspired to do, or maybe there are things that they don't even know are on the radar that are even options and they're able to connect with them through you guys. Are we talking exclusively day tours or do you work with clients to put together multi-day packages as well?

Angelo (06:14.574)
Yeah

Angelo (06:19.352)
You bet.

Angelo (06:31.192)
So these activities are within the day. So they could be as short as an hour and as long as an entire day. But that doesn't limit the client or the customer or the person hoping to work with LivTours to plan multiple of these days, multiple of these activities throughout their trip. What we don't do is we don't arrange their hotels or their transportation between the destinations. So we're literally just the activity provider.

Jason Elkins (07:01.397)
OK, all right. Very cool that I think that gave me a really good idea of what it is you're doing. We're going to discuss that more. I know it's going to come out because I am very, very curious about the variety of things, and I'm sure there are things that I've never even thought of. before we do that, let's go back. Let's figure out, Angelo, how did you get into doing this? I'm sure you've had people ask you many, many times. This is not the first time you've heard this question. Angela, how did you get into this?

So I'm curious, how far back do we need to go to kind of get an understanding of what would cause somebody to go into this business?

Angelo (07:34.99)
2004. Saw a little bit.

Jason Elkins (07:36.703)
Okay, that's not that. That's not, well, you're a little younger than I am. So to me that sounds like yesterday, but anyway, yeah. Okay. So what, what was happening in 2004 start right before whatever it was.

Angelo (07:39.886)
okay.

Angelo (07:52.578)
Yeah, I come from a family of performing artists. So very much nothing to do with tourism or travel, even though they traveled a lot. But literally anybody you could think of in my family, from my grandparents to uncles and aunts and my parents, was some sort of artist or is some sort of artist. And that was sort of my path, I suppose.

even though I've always had a keen eye towards tour guiding and stuff like that, but I'd never actually explored that possibility.

Jason Elkins (08:25.175)
So I'm sure you're going to get there, but I have to ask performing artists, because all kinds of visions are going through my head. this street performances, flying trapeze, circus? What does this mean when you say performing artists?

Angelo (08:37.07)
My father is a orchestra conductor and a composer. My mother is a violinist. My aunt is a cellist. My other aunt is a flutist. My grandfather is a violinist and a conductor. On my dad's side, we have singers. My sister's a dancer. So yeah, not street performing and circus people, but almost.

Jason Elkins (09:00.781)
And I was, go ahead. I'm happy I asked because I wasn't sure, what I hear is a lot of musical talent and the desire to kind of share that with the world.

Angelo (09:06.571)
Hahaha

Yeah.

Angelo (09:14.434)
Yeah, yeah, and I was supposed to be the actor and the singer, I guess. Yeah, well, you know. Well, so I'm born and raised in Rome, Italy, but my mother's family's from California, so I went to university in California and studied acting. But I would always come back every summer to help my parents put up an opera in this beautiful.

Jason Elkins (09:22.678)
Mm-hmm.

Angelo (09:43.354)
15th century court, 1500 courtyard called Cortina di Sant'Ivo alla Sapienza in Piazza Navona with a gorgeous burromini church. If you've ever been to Rome, there's one dome of all the 300 domes there are that is spiral, easily recognizable in the skyline. And that's outdoor performance operas that my parents would put up with a cast.

of 80 or 90 singers from all over North America, from grad schools that were looking for first professional experiences with a professional orchestra in Europe. And I'd love working with them in the summer in whatever shape or form. It didn't have to be singing or acting, it could be stage managing, could be whatever, because I love the company. I love being the chaperone, taking them, booking restaurants, taking them on tours, partying with them and so forth. Well, unbeknownst to me in 2003, six of

those singers from that cast, we were playing the magic flute, never took their flight back. So they literally fell in love with Rome and Italy so much that they never went back to their daily lives. They never went back to finishing their studies. One of them divorced, finalized the divorce. They literally said, no, you know what? We're going to stay in Rome. And I feel partially responsible for that in a way.

Jason Elkins (11:00.567)
That's super cool. I'm curious. Did they all six kind of like make this decision together or is just six kind of coincidentally just decided it's like, you guys, let's just friggin stay. I love it.

Angelo (11:06.594)
Yeah. No, it wasn't.

I wasn't coincidental, they stayed together because I found out the following year, there's no Facebook, so I get cast in college and playing a role in Candide, the musical by Bernstein, and there's no Facebook where you invite people to these events, so you still send mass emails, right? It's 2004. And the only person, you don't expect any responses from anybody, but the only person that replies is one of these six singers.

Jason Elkins (11:27.691)
Mm-hmm.

Angelo (11:37.518)
you know, saying congrats, love the musical and so forth and then says, just guess what? We still live in Rome and sends me these pictures of them, you know, living in the apartment together. my first reaction was, you know, this is Italy, this is Italy right after the 90s. We're not a superpower. We don't have a good reputation for workforce and so forth. So my very first question is,

What are you doing in Italy? There's no jobs. There's no jobs for English speaking people. What are you doing? And she says, we're tour guides, all of us. We're just tour guides. And she tells me how they got rolled in by this company. They were trained and given books and so forth to study. And then they got into this business. And so I couldn't really believe it. I said, we're gonna get there, you tell me. And we went out for drinks. First night I'm there.

Jason Elkins (12:09.868)
Right.

Jason Elkins (12:14.55)
Nice.

Angelo (12:34.734)
Next morning, little do you know, I'm there watching her do her thing. And then I follow her tour, she takes me up to lunch and she says, so what do you think? And I said, I think I wanna do this.

Jason Elkins (12:46.487)
Yep. That's very cool.

Angelo (12:49.25)
So she gives me a bunch of books. I knew a lot of the stuff that she was already presenting on her tours because I came from Italian GE. So was a little bit, I guess, ahead of the game in comparison to them at least when they first started.

Jason Elkins (13:02.935)
Did you say you said you came from Italian? I heard GE.

Angelo (13:07.342)
General education, Italian general education is, from my experience, at least at that time, was a little advanced in comparison to American general education. I mean, I'm talking about my art, I guess I'm talking about my art history, my art history and history knowledge, especially European art history and history knowledge was clearly advanced. a few books, a couple of weeks,

Jason Elkins (13:08.961)
Okay, okay.

Jason Elkins (13:17.709)
I can't imagine that. I can't say anything about that.

Angelo (13:37.43)
I'm actually tour guiding. It was a great summer and that's how I got into it, 2004.

Jason Elkins (13:43.565)
Did you, well, a couple questions. What were you studying in school? Were you studying theater?

Angelo (13:49.614)
Theater and, well, theater for my major. was obtaining a minor in music in the meantime, but I've also taken some European art history classes.

Jason Elkins (14:00.575)
It's interesting. I, the first time I've been to university a couple of times and the first time I went, was a theater major with, wasn't, didn't get far enough to really declare a major per se, but I went on a theater and music scholarship as well. So it was vocal, vocal music. So I think we've got something in common, but my, my general education probably wasn't where yours was. So maybe it's why I didn't stay with it as long, but all right. So, so after that summer, did you go back to school?

Angelo (14:14.62)
Angelo (14:22.231)
No.

Jason Elkins (14:29.493)
and finish or what?

Angelo (14:30.114)
Yeah, went back to Los Angeles. Lived a very fun year because I had a lot of money from a really good summer job. It wasn't your $7 an hour job, right? So I was able to travel between Los Angeles and London trying to get my masters in London, trying to audition. Two of the six institutions I had expressed my interest to attend.

Jason Elkins (14:44.62)
Mm-hmm.

Angelo (15:00.17)
did not reply to me by the time I graduated. So then I moved packed boxes and moved back to Rome, started tour guiding again whilst waiting for the London institutions to let me know. it was an O so I was disappointed, angry, didn't really want to go to London without education and had a great job, was making good money, convinced myself that in Italy I could

you know, pay my rent, tour guiding, then act in any language I wanted because Italy is the only place where can actually act in English. There's a lot of productions here and so forth. It kind of worked, but then tour guiding and the travel world just took over and that's what ended up being my profession, my job, my passion and so

Jason Elkins (15:49.857)
Very cool. And what did your family think of this transition into tourism? Were they supportive or disappointed? Because you've got a long history of performing artists, right?

Angelo (15:59.171)
Yeah

Angelo (16:04.012)
Yeah, they're extremely cool about it all. They've never been, they never put pressure on anything. My dad's dad, who I never met, his name was Angelo, and he, this was a story for an entire other podcast, but he was supposed to be the greatest opera singer of Italy, apparently, according to my grandmother.

Jason Elkins (16:33.761)
Mm-hmm.

Angelo (16:34.254)
He was cast by an amazing agent and the same teacher of Benamin Ogigi, who was the Pavarotti before Pavarotti. And it was her who told them, since he started going to these rehearsals and to these lessons and leaving for days, it was her who moved back to Naples, this is the 40s, right? Early 50s, and said to her dad, she was like, Angelo is not.

anymore here with me, he's all into singing. So my grandfather, my great grandfather called Angelo down and he said, you choose family or opera. And he chose family. They had three children, he continued to work in the military, he was an artist, but continued to sing. He would sing at every mass, would sing at some weddings, but very, you know, amateurly.

Jason Elkins (17:12.599)
Mm.

Angelo (17:27.15)
He got brain cancer in his 50s and was still singing to sick patients in the military hospital for the last two weeks of his life, hitting the highest notes ever. This is the stories that my grandmother tells me. So when he died, the three brothers, the three sons said, the first male born that comes, we're gonna name them Angelo. My uncle had his first two male borns, he didn't. My dad named me Angelo and then there was some sort of like underlying pressure, Angelo needs to be the singer.

Jason Elkins (17:38.444)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (17:57.099)
Mm-hmm.

Angelo (17:57.326)
So that was the only pressure I received, but it was never other than, we would love if you could say what that was.

Jason Elkins (18:07.181)
I see a lot of kind of correlation, guess, because of some of my own personal experience growing up involved, you know, in a bit in theater and music. And I've always considered myself kind of I like to put on a show, I guess. And I see that connection with with tourism being a tour guide. mean, I can't really think of anything I've done in my life that is closer to performing arts than

Angelo (18:28.014)
I'll get that.

Jason Elkins (18:36.663)
than being a tour guide, than meeting someone in the morning and kind of working through the production, you know, through the story, building the experience and connecting, because that's one thing when you're on stage, I felt anyway, was that connection with the audience. Not necessarily one person in the audience, maybe, but just the energy and the connection that is very, very similar to my experience leading groups of people on either multi-day trips or day trips.

So I'm curious what your thoughts are on that. Is that your experience as well?

Angelo (19:11.394)
Yeah, absolutely. Egotistically speaking, the self-contentment, the fulfilling feeling that you get as a performer or as a tour guide are very, similar.

Jason Elkins (19:24.895)
It's like that experience at the curtain call, you know, or at the end, or when you go back to the dressing room after the end of the performance. For me anyway, that feeling and that emotion is the same feeling when I give them a hug at the airport, or I drop them back off at their hotel. It's the same feeling. It's like, wow, that was pretty cool. It sounds like you have that as well.

Angelo (19:41.656)
Yeah

Angelo (19:48.95)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And then there's obviously all those, you know, technical similarities like, well, and actually, to be honest, there is even some better features in the tour guide world where you can still improvise, you can test your jokes, you can storytell tactically, you know, one of the things that I teach my tour guides when I workshop them is to understand that there is science behind storytelling.

Jason Elkins (20:18.358)
Mm-hmm.

Angelo (20:18.782)
So of course it goes without saying that you need to know how to weigh your words, how to drive the phrase, you know, all these technicalities. But if you understand the fact that you induce a different hormone every time you tell a story and that if you're smart enough, you can label your stories depending on the hormone you want to induce. Hormones, hormones that are induced produce an emotion.

Jason Elkins (20:40.566)
interesting.

Angelo (20:46.528)
and you can obtain whatever you want depending on the story you want to tell. If I want, this is gonna sound awful for the listeners, but if I want people to give me a tip or buy more tours, I'll tell the story that at the end of the tour clearly that induces endorphins because endorphins includes, it makes people excited and makes it memorable and makes them want to act.

Jason Elkins (21:00.491)
Mm-hmm.

Angelo (21:15.832)
do something, they're induced in doing something. It be a hug, not necessarily a tip or buy more tours. And so that's sort of the fun and the freedom that a tour guide gets in addition to performing, yeah.

Jason Elkins (21:19.501)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (21:30.603)
Now, do you feel like what you were just describing sounds like something, you know, someone would learn it wouldn't, maybe they've got a natural personality and outgoing personality, but what you're saying is not stuff that just comes naturally. So did you learn that in tourism or is that stuff that you actually learned when you were studying theater and music?

Angelo (21:53.55)
It's a little bit of both. It's a little bit of both. I studied, in my acting world, studied the Stanislavski technique and the Chekhov technique. And so I understood how important it was to constrain an emotion within certain character parameters.

Jason Elkins (21:55.318)
Okay.

Angelo (22:22.808)
So when I started tour guiding, I understood that in order to make a story effective and resonate in people's minds, I needed to make them imagine as well as possible that emotional state of the character I'm talking about. So, you the sufferance of Michelangelo in making the Sistine Chapel. And I would dig deep into that aspect.

making sure that I would really weigh down on such emotional states. So to make them really kind of like lower their shoulders and get really compassionate and spark that kind of sentiment in them. And then when they finally would see it, it would blow up in front of them and spark all sorts of other emotions. yes. And then obviously when I slowed down tour guiding a little bit and started workshopping my tour guides,

I wanted to give them, I don't want to say literature, but I wanted to give them more tangible things rather than just me saying how I did it. So I did a lot of research, I studied, I watched a lot of Ted Talks, a lot of tutorials, documentaries, and noticed that there was a lot of similarities between storytelling and acting, between tour guiding and public speaking, and put them all together and created my own literature and workshopped them.

Jason Elkins (23:52.181)
I really, really am fascinated by this conversation. I love the Ted talks. love, just, you know, storytelling. It's, it's part of why I do a podcast, I guess, but you're clearly very good at it. And you've, you've clearly gone a lot further than a lot of tour guides. You know, we think the typical tour guide, I shouldn't say typical, but maybe the stereotype is, okay, welcome. This is the Sistine Chapel. Mike Lennon painted this on.

And this year and this was what was going on and da da da da. OK, now we're going to go on to we're going to go break for lunch. So they're they're giving the facts they may get. They may have a good friendly personality, but that's where I think maybe some. Tour guides kind of stop. They figure, well, I've got a good personality. I'm outgoing. I can connect with people and I know the history. I know the stuff I need to know and I know enough to be able to answer questions.

but you've taken it to a whole other level, clearly. I just hear, I've never been on your tours, I've never met you in person, but I hear that. And it's exciting. And you know, the question that comes up for me is the six people that you mentioned that came to Rome for the, I guess, for the opera, they participated in that and they stayed on and became tour guides. So presumably they were doing something in performing arts as well.

Angelo (25:06.008)
Yeah.

Angelo (25:10.04)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (25:18.741)
I mean, that's why they went there in the first place. Do you think that they maybe not to the level you're at now, because I realize this, they just got into tour guiding. But do think it was an accident that they went from performing arts into being tour guides? And did were they able to benefit from that experience as performing arts? Or is that just kind of coincidental?

Angelo (25:19.01)
Yeah.

Angelo (25:38.582)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no, I would never be so presumptuous to think that it was just my, it was an advance to my game, the fact that I came from that world. It is clear, it's objective that if somebody has stage experience of any sort, then will be, at the bare minimum, more comfortable in delivering tours.

Jason Elkins (26:08.575)
Okay, because the reason I was asking that was something that comes up quite often in these conversations is, you know, what kind of advice would you give to somebody that's listening that wants to get into tourism or what kind of, when you get ready to hire for the season, you know, and you get a bunch of resumes and a bunch of people connect with you, are there specific career paths that you feel are more aligned? So example might be.

You know, school teachers have come up or servers. And I spoke with someone recently that was a bartender. And I, and we discussed kind of the connection with dealing with a bunch of people that have different needs that are there trying to have an experience and, keeping them happy. And sometimes you get people that don't fit in so well or have an hard time. So I guess where I was going with that question is when you get ready to add.

to your team or you are out in the field looking for new operators to work with.

When I guess what I'm saying is if you see a resume come across your desk and someone, you know, has experience in the theater performing arts, does that still kind of get your attention? I mean, is there any other type of background that you feel is equivalent to that? I'm just trying to get a feel for how you make hiring decisions or how you make decisions on who to meet with.

Angelo (27:21.762)
Yeah, sure, sure.

Angelo (27:33.686)
Yeah, no, no, no, definitely, definitely. There's, of course, if they've had plenty of experience in the travel industry and they never were on stage or they were never a bartender, it doesn't really matter. So I'll look at any scene. I'm not pretentious like that. know, the other, I suppose it's definitely an added value because besides everything that I just said, which is teachable and coachable.

Jason Elkins (27:49.154)
Mm-hmm.

Angelo (28:03.822)
There's something that you learn by being on such high pressure of performance. could be acting on stage for perhaps, which is the ability to, which is something that people always forget about tour guides because people judge tour guides for the information they know, for the details, for how they say the information and et cetera.

A lot of people forget about how good a problem solver tour guides have to be.

Jason Elkins (28:37.165)
Mm-hmm.

Angelo (28:38.04)
and they have to be stay cool in the most stressful. Of course, Jason, luckily we're not brain surgeons and so we're not that kind of, we don't have a body on the table to take care of, but you know, but you know that those clients treat you like if you're a heart surgeon. And.

Jason Elkins (28:52.405)
Not usually life or death, but yeah.

Angelo (29:01.58)
The difference is they're not sleeping. So they're on to you and they're like, so what's the solution? What's the solution? Are you gonna take care of this? This is my vacation. I've done, you know, and it could be something that you have no control over, but you have to stay cool and find the best possible solution on the ground within the time, within the resources you have. And that's so much about improv. It's so much about remembering your lines when the whole stage is falling apart, you know, or helping the person you're talking to remember their life. You know, it's all this.

So of course, yeah, I'll give it a plus look if they come with that experience.

Jason Elkins (29:36.429)
I think that's great that you mentioned that because yeah, I would come back to all kinds of memories from my past is, you know, when I was guiding or working with guides or, yeah, you're right. It's high pressure in the sense that your client generally or your guest, I like the word guest, is on their two week vacation or they've worked, you know, they've worked for 30 years to retire and take their grandkids to Europe or whatever. This is something they've

oftentimes been thinking about for a very, very long time. And they've been creating all of these visions and stories for what that's going to look like. So the expectations are there. And then they go and they've got a week because their kid's got to be back or whatever. And

They go out on this tour and you know it's time for lunch and the vendor that was providing lunches brings the wrong lunch or not enough lunches for everybody. And this is kind of a big deal to the guests and you get to figure out how do you make this a positive experience? How do you solve it in a way that actually like is a surprise that they didn't even know that's like a good thing? Because if you don't.

Angelo (30:40.227)
Huge.

Jason Elkins (30:53.653)
You know, they'll go home. They'll remember that dream trip to Italy and the day that they went out and the guy didn't have enough lunches and their kids didn't get to eat enough and how screwed up that was. And then they don't. It's a day tour. I don't want to say only a day tour, but I'm trying to emphasize the importance is it's maybe one day of their trip and it's one meal of their trip. And when they go home, yeah, exactly. And when they go home.

Angelo (31:00.814)
Hahaha

Angelo (31:18.35)
It doesn't matter.

Jason Elkins (31:22.317)
That's the thing they remember for some reason. And if the guide can say, you know what? Oh the lunch person screwed up, but you know what? I got a better deal. There's this cool little cafe down around around the corner and we're all going to go down there and we're going to have a treat and do something. And, know, maybe that tour isn't profitable that day, whatever, because the guide had to shell out some money, improvise, whatever. But but save the day and actually create an experience. I mean, I remember I was in Africa and.

We were doing something kind of new with some. was a fam trip with a bunch of tour operators and these guys, you know, got stuck in the sand out in the middle of absolutely nowhere. And we're all tour professionals. We'd all been around and we're and we're all like, crap, I think we're going to die here. You know, it's like really hard to imagine how we're going to get out of this. But these guides just stayed so calm and just they've.

fixed it. I still don't know how they managed to do this. Maybe the whole thing was set up. Maybe they already knew how to fix it and they did this in order to create those emotions because there was a lot of emotions. But that's what I remember about that trip was how we got stuck in the sand and the guys were so funny about it and made it fun and it was a fun experience. And in my back of my mind, I thought we're never going to get out of here. And so it is super important. So, yeah, yeah. And I'm sure you have a ton of stories of.

Angelo (32:21.634)
Hahaha

Angelo (32:37.87)
Yeah, yeah.

Jason Elkins (32:44.973)
of things that have gone sideways. So when it comes to mine that you want to share, because I know you've got a ton of stories, but I don't want to put you on the spot.

Angelo (32:45.249)
A ton.

Jason Elkins (32:58.059)
or anything you're willing to share. might have stories, might not want to share with the world.

Angelo (33:05.134)
I mean, yes, yes. mean, not stories that went, luckily nothing that went. One story that comes to mind, but I don't really have the details of it, but I know, and it has nothing to do with something going wrong on the tour or the tour guy not performing or tickets being wrong or anything like that. It's just the two clients. Everything happens on vacation, right? Life keeps going.

Jason Elkins (33:25.602)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (33:32.577)
Mm-hmm.

Angelo (33:33.228)
you keep having your relationship with the person you're traveling with and you could have arguments with that person during your trips, right? Christine and I...

Jason Elkins (33:40.717)
could, you could and happens quite often, I believe.

Angelo (33:44.888)
Christine and I actually, we first, our very first few trips for the very first few years, I was joking around with her and telling her, we'll be having so much experience in travel and tourism. said, you and I will have a very, very long relationship. And she was like, wow, how do you know that? Why? And I said, because we never fight about where to go to eat.

Jason Elkins (34:07.831)
Mmm.

Angelo (34:09.944)
Whenever, especially when we're out on vacation and we're trying to figure out where we're going to go or what food we're going to have, there's never an argument. Either or the other one is always very flexible with whatever the first proposition is going to be, or there's a very healthy debate on that versus that, distance versus style versus whatever.

Jason Elkins (34:32.109)
Do think that's just part of your personalities naturally or did that come from the business or how did you get to them with? Okay, all right.

Angelo (34:37.674)
No, it's part of our personalities. It's part of our personalities. But I can guarantee you that couples on vacation argue all the time on the food. On the food, on wear, on the quality, on where am I sitting, what is this, there's no view, la-la-la-la-la, right? Literally everything. So this couple must have had that kind of evening, okay, and just didn't let it go.

Jason Elkins (34:47.97)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (34:54.379)
Mmm.

Angelo (35:03.038)
Probably has bigger ish actually surely had bigger issues than just not finding where to have dinner But they got to the tour early morning. I wasn't the tour guide was one of my LivTours tour guides and they clearly comes separated there they come to the meeting point More or less from the same direction, but they're split. Okay

Jason Elkins (35:06.093)
You

Jason Elkins (35:21.995)
Yeah, yeah. They look like two individual clients approaching instead of a couple together. I gotcha. I can envision that.

Angelo (35:24.75)
tour guide sense.

Angelo (35:30.99)
Tour guide senses, tour guide senses the drama, tries and say hello to everybody, but it's really tense, it's really tense. Now mind you, we do groups of six people, okay? So it's not that you do groups of 30 and you kinda like let it go and they're gonna figure it out and you just start the tour. No, it's six people, so if two, 33 % of the group have that negative, that, it's really hard to avoid looking at.

Jason Elkins (35:40.897)
Mm-hmm.

Jason Elkins (35:54.253)
Because the other 66 % is dealing with it. Everybody's dealing with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Angelo (35:58.124)
are dealing with it, are feeling it, the tour guide can't, okay. So they do big intro to the Vatican Museum, about 25 minute intro, because the doors are about to open, four LivTours at 8 a.m. And the tours open at 8 a.m. and they were standing, listening to, the tour guide is showing visuals and iPad about the Sistine Chapel, telling the story, et cetera. And the tour, the two of them are not speaking to each other, they're distant and they're just angry faces, red in their faces. They go inside.

The guide goes to print the tickets at the cashier. She shows up at the cashier. They're supposed to be waiting in the middle of the foyer, in the middle of the lobby. She, wife, shows up at the cashier where the tour guide is, takes her wedding ring off, lays it on the cashier, and leaves.

Jason Elkins (36:47.595)
goodness.

Angelo (36:53.038)
Yep. That was it. That was one story. One of the thousands.

Jason Elkins (36:53.261)
OK. Wow. I would love to hear the rest, but I understand you probably got that. Those are the details you got. It's yeah, wow, because that's it. And this did the guide keep working in the industry. OK, I'm done.

Angelo (37:06.168)
Yeah.

Angelo (37:10.924)
Yeah, yeah, the husband stayed on tour. She picked up the ring, gave it to him. The husband stayed on tour and it kept going. The show must go on, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jason Elkins (37:19.607)
Did he? All right. Good. Well, I don't know the background. I say good for him, but maybe not. Maybe he was the problem. I don't know. But it's I suspect you do a variety of different things. I remember when I was guiding leading trips, there was always a set of questions that you you'd heard a few times. And every time you heard it, you're like, wow, that's the funny question. I guess an example would be.

Angelo (37:25.847)
Who knows?

Jason Elkins (37:46.613)
I managed a fly fishing and scuba diving resort in Belize and it was on an island, a very small island. And every once in a while people would be sitting at dinner. We'd be having a conversation and they say, what's the elevation here? You know, and if you fell and I would say, well, you know, well, about 10 feet, you know, cause if you fell down the stairs, if you fell down the stairs, leaving the lodge after dinner, you would fall into the ocean. So, and there's those, those types of questions that.

Angelo (38:12.238)
End of the version.

Jason Elkins (38:16.957)
is fun as a tourism professional to answer them in a way that's not nasty but playful. And usually you might be at a table with seven other guests and they all know it was a dumb question. I shouldn't say dumb question. They all know it's a question. They all look at you like, okay, Jason, how are you going to answer this? Show me your stage presence and how you're going to improvise with this one.

Angelo (38:33.12)
No, that, but yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, now show me how you're gonna answer this. Try to get out of it.

Jason Elkins (38:43.623)
Or when I was a fly fishing guide in Montana, we'd be on the river, we'd be on the Yellowstone River and a drift boat floating down the river. And they would say, well, how do we get back to the car? Does the river go in a circle? You know, those types of questions. And I'm sure you've, do you, do you have some questions like that that kind of you joke with around the guides? Like, yeah, they asked us, I don't know Italy, but are there any questions that you want to share that maybe someone listen to this when they go to Italy, we'll make sure they do not ask their tour guide.

Angelo (38:55.822)
Great.

Jason Elkins (39:12.405)
or do even want to call any of that out?

Angelo (39:16.014)
has been asked several questions several times during the tour, but even in post tour feedback, which I thought was, it was a little bit like, okay, chill. know, it gets really hot in Rome, really warm. And to do the Roman forum and the Colosseum can get, you know, of course you put your hat on, put some sunscreen on, walk around with the Gatorade, you'll be fine, kind of heat.

Jason Elkins (39:24.66)
yeah.

Angelo (39:45.774)
It's not something unbearable like the desert or anything like that. And it's a little humid. So just be ready to go back to your hotel, maybe change your shirt or take a shower. But, you know, some people are very insufferant. And so we get this question quite often, unfortunately, on tour and I've seen it in post tour feedback. And the question is, why isn't there any air conditioning at the Coliseum?

Jason Elkins (40:14.274)
There you go. That's the one.

Angelo (40:18.338)
and you just don't know how to answer that Jason. mean like.

Jason Elkins (40:21.453)
And you're happy when it's, well, even with post-war feedback, because sometimes you like to receive the feedback and, you know, hey, thank you for sharing your feedback. But yeah, that's the question that they ask in front of five other guests.

Angelo (40:34.818)
But yeah, guess, if it were a closed room or a closed space, you could easily say, you're absolutely right, ma'am. They could invest in air conditioning somehow. There must be some sort of technology. Of course they could have made it 2,000 years ago, but now, but it's all open. You never go inside. even, you know what I mean? Like even in the real world, in a modern building, you wouldn't expect.

Jason Elkins (40:56.589)
Yeah

Angelo (41:03.95)
you wouldn't expect the air conditioning in a place like that.

Jason Elkins (41:07.317)
It's kind of like maybe the folks that go to the Amazon and stay in an eco lodge in the Amazon and then complain about the monkeys in the morning, you know, making too much noise. Or I remember there was a place I took a group of you took groups a few times in the Bahamas. had a lot of tree frogs.

that would sit up on the top of the buildings and just sit there and make noise all night long. And the just complaints about, you should do something about the frogs or you should do something about the monkeys. you just wonder like, why did you come here? You know, it's, and I love feedback. love communication. I love conversation regardless of what it is. But sometimes there's those questions that are just so hard to answer. And you just, you hope something else, someone else ask a question really quick that can help you.

Angelo (41:37.816)
Hehehehehe

Jason Elkins (41:59.066)
Get off of that that that course.

Angelo (41:59.8)
Have you? There's that blog post, super famous blog, I think it's from Trafalgar or some other big, no, TUI, big British tour operator. And it's the 10 or 20 worst complaints ever received. I don't know if you ever read them, but it's stuff like literally.

Jason Elkins (42:21.889)
I haven't, I can, my mind is going there, because I've seen enough. I've been around long enough that it's some of the things.

Angelo (42:28.726)
It's like my boyfriend and I booked this vacation on the brochure, the pictures show the two single beds in each room. You put us on a king-sized bed, now I hold you responsible for being pregnant.

Jason Elkins (42:44.333)
That's pretty good. That's funny. And funny things come up. That's a funny thing. And for some reason, it reminds me of I had taken my mom to Africa. We have the same last name. I was the guy who arranged this. I was in the business. So I was working with the partners on the ground.

sent him all the information for the manifest and thought I was really clear on what was going on, but every camp we went to or every place we went to, they had us in the honeymoon suite with a room that normally has two twin beds and they do the little thing, they push the beds together and spread the rose petals all over the bed and have the bath waiting with the rose petals floating in the bath. it was funny because

Angelo (43:24.002)
Yeah

Angelo (43:32.574)
Hahaha

Jason Elkins (43:39.243)
It was funny because I was involved in setting it up. I'm the one that sent off the manifest information and that still happened. So you can imagine that that stuff just happens and just and how you interact with the staff. Hey, this is really cool. Super, super romantic. I'm not sure if you I know you don't know this, but this is actually my mom. Do you think maybe we could, you know, pull the beds apart or something? Help me out with that. And they're just so gracious about it. But it but those things just come up and I'm.

Angelo (43:45.324)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jason Elkins (44:08.461)
pretty easy going. So I tend, know, and I've worked in the tourism business, so I'm pretty patient, but there's other people that shop could be absolutely livid, especially if someone else was supposed to set it up. They think it was Jason at Orvis Travel who told the people in Africa that, we're on our honeymoon, make sure you, anyway, I go off on a tangent, but I know you've seen that type of stuff and it's just, it's part of the fun of the business, I think, you know, is,

Angelo (44:36.78)
Yeah, of course.

Jason Elkins (44:38.293)
If I don't want to say you need people to be unhappy so you have an opportunity to fix it, but sometimes that actually is a good thing. I mean, I wouldn't go out of my way to create problems so that you can fix them. But.

Angelo (44:53.17)
It's one of the, it's an incredible industry, it's an incredible business. It's one of the only industries that I know of that is 100 % made by, consumed by, created by people, just people. There's no object, there's no, we're not creating ships, we're not creating cars, we're not selling t-shirts, we're not.

You know stock market and litter. It's just about people people unpredictable They're diverse. They're different and for all of their For all of this it is the most welcoming industry in the world because and it was the most diverse industry in the world Did you know that Jason did you know that female entrepreneurs? There was an article that came out, know, of course on the 8th of March about a week ago on the arrival

newsletter that said that the activity industry is the one number one industry in presence of female entrepreneurs and female CEOs and CEOs and stuff like that. So more than any other compartment, the female world is really, this is unique. We're ahead of the game because we're made of people. it's all these stories that we're telling each other is part of it.

Jason Elkins (46:13.515)
Are you saying?

Jason Elkins (46:18.999)
Are you saying, cause I want to make sure I've got this cleared. I want to make sure our listeners, let's go. mentioned that the connection between tourism, this industry and female CEOs, leaders, are you saying that we've got a higher percentage of female entrepreneurs in the, okay. That's, that's what I thought you were saying. And it makes sense if you, if you know, someone goes, they're listening to this podcast, maybe they're on my website, scroll down the list of guests.

Angelo (46:34.936)
Yeah. Yeah. Female leaders.

Jason Elkins (46:46.551)
that we've had on the show. And if I was doing probably any other sort of podcast. I mean, there's a few markets if I was doing, you know, thing, there's a few things where you'd see a lot of women, but there's a lot of women leaders. There's a lot of women's travel groups. I mean, I've got people that I've met on the show, their whole team, you know, they've got 15, 20 members on their team, guides, planners, everybody.

Angelo (47:04.61)
You bet.

Jason Elkins (47:15.149)
and their clients are all women. And I think that's cool. I think that's super. And I get that. mean, honestly, I get that because I've been around long enough. You've got into there's got a lot of a lot of solo travelers, women. You know, I'd heard a stat that a majority of the solo travelers are women, which I don't know about. I could see that that could be the case. And anyway.

Angelo (47:22.712)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Angelo (47:37.346)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (47:43.477)
I'll find a little bit of a tangent there, but I think it's super important. That's why I did the, to do this podcast, have conversations with interesting people that are dealing with a thing that's not like, wouldn't want to do a podcast about finance or sports or shoes or whatever, because this is just so much more interesting because it's just the nature, the nature of this business. And I know that we've got listeners that are

Angelo (48:03.278)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (48:10.231)
doing some of those, maybe they work in finance. I'm not knocking finance, it's just not my thing. But we've got listeners that are aspiring to break out of that and go do these types of things, maybe either as a traveler or become a guide or start a business. If you go back and listen to these episodes, a large number of the people worked in something like finance or academia or something and then transitioned into tourism.

Angelo (48:15.278)
Mm-hmm.

Angelo (48:34.606)
Yeah, it's

Jason Elkins (48:40.205)
So I think that a lot of people are inspired by that. That was a long, real, real long winded way of asking you, what is your advice to somebody that's listening to this that started out on different career paths, or maybe they're young and haven't even started their career path yet that wants to be a part of this business and wants to take it past just listening to podcast episodes. What would be your advice in general or specific?

Angelo (49:09.23)
I don't know if I'm old enough to give advice or have spent enough in this industry to do so, yeah.

Jason Elkins (49:14.901)
Well, but you're doing it. you know, I mean, I would say the advice for me would just be take action. I always think taking action is the most important thing. But maybe you've got some other.

Angelo (49:27.286)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no, absolutely. I think you have to be, you have to know yourself a lot. One thing that I always say when I'm trying to...

interview people, both in back end and front end of this industry. This is something I tend to say to everybody when they're at their last stage, literally ready to jump in. And people see as our industry, righteously so, as very dreamy and very creative. And it's all unicorns and...

Jason Elkins (50:02.869)
Instagramy.

Angelo (50:04.706)
Right? Exactly. It's all Instagram. Exactly what they see on Instagram, both as a consumer and as somebody who wishes to be part of it. And they think it's all about that. And mind you, there's a lot of that. I wouldn't change my lifestyle and what I experience for any other job in the world. So of course I am privileged and I admit that I am and I love it. But what people don't realize is that it requires, as we were saying earlier,

Jason Elkins (50:10.775)
Mm-hmm.

Angelo (50:34.509)
The capacity of handling stress dynamics changes. This industry is still very embryonal. We still don't know because it's made of people. It's still constantly changing and reinventing the wheel and coming up with new things and changing regulations and hating mass tourism and then loving it. then, you know, so it's very stressful both on a daily, but also there's

It's very hard to have long term visions. It's very hard to be a strategist, but you're always very tactical and you're always very much spending your day problem solving. And there's two types of people in the world. One, like me, that loves to be the problem solver. It gives me adrenaline. It gives me oxygen. love, I'm...

Jason Elkins (51:13.997)
Mm-hmm.

Angelo (51:30.446)
This is an unfortunate thing. I'm the worst business leader, because I love to micromanage every single little thing of my business. I respond to every message. I talk to every tour guide. I reach out to literally everything. And this is the worst way to lead. But this is because I love, get high on being the person who is looking for the solution. And it makes me

Jason Elkins (51:43.245)
Hmm.

Jason Elkins (51:56.738)
Mm-hmm.

Angelo (51:58.168)
come at the end of the day where I feel satisfied and get charged again to do it the next day. And that's what is required in tourism. If you're the other person who may be really good at problem solving, but at every time there's an issue, at every time there's a necessity to pivot, you sulk and...

Jason Elkins (52:06.838)
Mm-hmm.

Angelo (52:22.254)
you soak and you soak and you get to the end of a day that you're out of breath and you don't feel re-energized to start the next day, travel is not for you. It doesn't matter how dreamy creative an Instagram you think it is, you're not made for travel. So know yourself first and then take action and jump into it if you are that kind of person.

Jason Elkins (52:41.581)
love the way you described it. I've heard and thought about it or discussed a few other, like there's the introvert and the extrovert, different personality styles. When I listen to you, hear kind of extrovert. You gain energy from the stuff. But I also think of things like terms we toss around like ADHD, which I think probably.

Angelo (53:04.254)
No, we're gonna hear you back.

Jason Elkins (53:06.847)
I won't speak for anybody else, but I definitely think that shows up in my life and probably a big part of why I enjoy tourism and travel. And I suspect I've interviewed quite a few people that maybe are in the same boat, but I don't make diagnoses here on the show. And then there's also like the Myers-Briggs personality, styles and types and stuff like that. So when I guess where I'm going with this is when you say, yourself, I think you did a good job of kind of painting the picture.

Angelo (53:13.167)
yeah, my life too.

Angelo (53:22.508)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (53:36.513)
But is there anything else like a personality type or specific labels that you would use when having conversation with somebody to try and help them figure out if tourism is right for them or is it just basically what you said?

Angelo (53:49.958)
No, I don't know. I've never thought about it that way. It's I generally word it exactly like I did with you.

Jason Elkins (53:57.781)
Yeah. Which I, which I, which I thought was great and probably a lot better than saying, well, you should go take the Myers-Biggs personality assessment. And if you're an intuitive feeler with an extroverted, you know, whatever, whatever, then I was just curious if, if that, if that has come up.

Angelo (54:01.206)
I did.

Angelo (54:06.69)
Hahaha

Angelo (54:13.098)
Yeah, I mean, then there's also some other technical things, you know, that are very pragmatic, but very important that people need to know, like, hey, be ready to be on your feet 12, 14 hours a day if you want to be a tour guide, and that is, right? Be ready to work six months uninterruptedly, seven days a week, and then be stuck with doing something and maybe doing nothing, maybe just reading books, watching Netflix, and traveling on your own for the remainder of the year. You know, there's a lot of stuff that...

people may not be aware, just look into it. Of course, it depends which part of the world, what kind of tourism you want to be in, what kind of position, but yeah, just take action once you've figured that all out.

Jason Elkins (54:44.086)
Right.

Jason Elkins (54:52.109)
I think that a lot of things you said will apply to this next question, but I'm curious about kind of age dynamics as far as tour guides, kind of what your experience is with, you you've got a group, I don't know what your average client looks like you probably do and we can discuss that, but I'm imagining a lot of times, you know, in the work I've done, it's maybe people a little closer to retirement, kids have moved out of the house, they've got a little bit extra money, they're going and traveling.

And then they show up somewhere and they've got a tour guide that's, you know, 20 years old working on summer vacation, or they've got the opposite end of the spectrum as the, the guy that's, you know, kind of grisly and just been around forever and just, you know, those different, those are personality things, but they're also age things. So I'm wondering if that comes up, like in your post-trip feedback, do you see things like, the, young man or the, the guy who's like,

didn't have the energy. Does that come up or is that something you even want to discuss on a podcast that people might listen to?

Angelo (55:57.134)
Well, luckily we don't. Luckily we don't. Yeah, we don't get notified about either of that. Okay, so LivTours works. I guess LivTours is meant to sell to affluent travelers. So, know, $350,000, $400,000 households, two or three degrees of any age. It could be, you know,

Jason Elkins (55:57.633)
that will listen to, that people will listen to.

Angelo (56:26.22)
young tech people in their late 20s, early 30s. It could be young families, it could be boomers from all over the world, but mainly North America, England, Australia. The most important thing for any of these age groups, at least I'm talking about my client clearly, right? But I think nowadays in 2025, you can see the generic. Doesn't matter your age. Of course you have must present yourself.

Jason Elkins (56:44.833)
Mm-hmm.

Angelo (56:55.406)
Well, so you can't be a 20 year old scrubby or a 60 year old overly dressed, neither, right? You can't have open-toed shoes, you need to have close-toed shoes, you can't wear baseball caps, you can wear a hat, you need to take off your sunglasses when you're greeting and talking straight to people, know, just basic stuff, but then it doesn't matter if you're 20 or 60. But one thing I will say, you have to know tech.

You have to be able to use an iPhone or a smartphone, take good pictures, follow up with the company's feedback process and procedures, use a Revolut card to pay things on route and so forth. You can't be a dinosaur in this. You cannot, not anymore.

Jason Elkins (57:43.44)
That's a good, that's a, that's a really, really good point because I think there may be some people approaching retirement that think I'd like to go be a guide and I'm not saying there are jobs, maybe not for live tours, but if, yeah, that, ability to, I mean, when I was guiding,

mean, when I started guiding, didn't have a cell phone at one point. You know, I mean, I remember breaking down on the side of the road with my clients and my drift boat attached, attached to my, yeah, attached to, yeah. And, and, know, you've got clients there and they're like, they want to go fishing and you're broke down and no cell phone and, know, or I was in, I was in Santiago, Chile, they had a massive earthquake several years ago. and the, the airport.

Angelo (58:10.572)
With 50 people behind you not knowing where you are. you bet.

Angelo (58:20.43)
Yeah, yeah.

Jason Elkins (58:31.487)
Sealingfeld, it was kind of a big deal and I was there without a cell phone. And cell phones existed at that point, so yeah, it's good to be texting. It's so great with WhatsApp. Yeah, mean, yeah, it's so cool now.

Angelo (58:36.846)
Yeah.

Angelo (58:40.29)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Angelo (58:44.28)
Basics I'm not Yeah

Yeah, basics. You just need to know how to use the company's processes and procedures. Use a Revolut card, a digital wallet, take pictures. People love when you take pictures of them, you know, this kind of stuff. Really, basics. But you can't say, no, no, no, no, no, no, don't ask me to use the, no, no, no, no, no. Then you'll never find a job.

Jason Elkins (59:08.705)
Are you asking your you're asking your guests to figure out how to do an airdrop to share pictures or something? Yeah. Yeah, that's not not cool. All right. That's very cool. Hey, one of the things it's I think it's important. think it's worth bringing up because you actually mentioned, you know, mass tourism, hate mass term, you know, changing environment. That's something that's come up quite a bit recently, specifically not only in Europe, but we're hearing a lot about stuff in Europe.

Angelo (59:20.184)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (59:38.541)
Spain, I know I'm pretty sure I've heard some stuff in Italy. So I feel like that's something we should touch on. Because you've got groups going out every day and then you've got maybe locals that aren't so happy to see the groups. And what would you like to share there? I'm just curious about that.

Angelo (59:56.814)
So we haven't talked about this, but.

When we first started LivTours or LivTours Italy, the variety of our services combined with the group size that we do, which is maximum six people, was, in my opinion, innovative in terms of how sustainable we were, because we were not just driving business in the usual sites and in the usual cities and the very known landmarks, but we were trying to disperse our wealth and...

evangelize to clients to look at various opportunities and various itineraries and tours and activities that are outside the usual big five, if you want to call it like that. And that was supporting local economies, supporting small businesses, minor museums, small villages and so forth. And in addition, the groups of six people, in our opinion, was a way to respect cultural heritage, even when you were inside the big five, the huge landmarks with big crowds.

Jason Elkins (01:00:52.481)
Mm-hmm.

Angelo (01:00:54.636)
We were doing it respectfully because we are, we still are, not with big huge flags, eye polluting a gallery. We don't have big groups of 30 where you have dirty headsets that then you're probably gonna trash. And you are, and actually the tour guide then has the, not only the ability to share their passion and their knowledge and on one-on-one kind of basis, but also then take some time.

to talk about their cultural heritage and their connection with the place and so forth. Because when you go to a group of 30, you of go at a miles an hour, 30 miles an hour. And group of six, you have a little bit more time for certain subjects. And I thought that was amazing. That was already sustainable and so forth. It is only lately that at LivTours, we asked to be certified by Green Step, which is an association that certifies tour companies and their carbon impact.

Jason Elkins (01:01:29.421)
Yep.

Angelo (01:01:52.946)
And we were unfortunately certified silver and not gold, which is still very high, I have to say. But unfortunately, because I was convinced we were doing everything right. But they went through all of our 400 products. They went through and analyzed everything that happens inside the office. Even though we're using an app, we're not dispersing paper. Still, we don't. So we've instituted a committee that is really dedicated to find

Jason Elkins (01:02:15.147)
Mm-hmm.

Angelo (01:02:22.968)
how to best be sustainable as a company. But this brings me to the next point, which is the answer to your question, which is, as the director of the Vatican Museum said the other day in an article on National newspaper about a month ago, she said, you can't.

Mass tourism can't be...

can't be looked only purely as evil, but it should be treated as a financial opportunity to then fuel the evangelization of dispersion of tourism, of alternative activities, of future opportunities. Ruben Santopietro, which is a CEO of Visit Italy, millions of followers on Instagram.

goes around, works for tourism boards and regions and municipalities as their marketing manager, goes around giving this beautiful presentation and he shows, Jason, I can't remember where you're from, but you know, have you ever seen those posters or aerial pictures of freeways in Los Angeles when the 110 and the 405 and the 760 and the 420 and the five all cross each other, right? Okay, perfect.

He has this picture of all these freeways in Los Angeles crossing each other, and only one of them is back-to-back cars. The other ones don't have the same amount of traffic. And he says, this is the mistake we're doing. Look at this picture. We're calling this mass tourism. This is not mass tourism. We need to take those people

Jason Elkins (01:03:59.149)
Mmm.

Angelo (01:04:12.098)
and tell them that there is alternative routes. So it's not that we need less people, we need to put them on all the other freeways.

Jason Elkins (01:04:16.575)
Mm-hmm. Sure. Spread it. Spread them out. Yeah.

Angelo (01:04:21.464)
Spread them out. And what the director of the Vatican Museum says is if I tell those people not to come because I don't want mass tourism, then I don't have the financial power to tell them to go to the other freeways. It's all combined. this is exact, I will not stop selling Vatican Museum tours, Coliseum tour, Douglas Palace tours, Academia tours, et cetera, because I need that financial power to then evangelize and produce all sorts of other services. So yes.

It is an issue, but it is not. We shouldn't consider it incumbent. We should consider it as an opportunity for us to make this industry wealthy, to make the local communities wealthy alike as much as the industry, and continue to foster travel and tell people that they should explore the

Jason Elkins (01:05:09.003)
What I heard you say is I'll use the example, even though don't know Italy that well, really that well. But what I heard you say is if I as a business decide I'm going to be anti-mass tourism and I'm only going to offer these villages that nobody's heard of or this, that, and the other, in effect, I'll probably go out of business. I'm just what I heard. I'm going to

go out of business or I'm not going to be able to grow. I'm going to have to like, I have my guide staff and that's not going to do anybody any good. Where if. that am I kind of hearing that right? I mean, is there something there's something there?

Angelo (01:05:50.926)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, course we can't generalize, but that's essentially what I'm saying. Absolutely. Yes. You have to know... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:05:55.917)
Yeah, yeah, it makes sense. So. So to go to a tour operator like you and say, oh, we're not going to use you because you do leaning tower of Pisa tours, you do Coliseum tours and we don't want to support that. We want to support this other stuff. Well, good luck. That's going to because somebody is going to keep doing the Coliseum tours that doesn't give us give a crap. I'm going to say give a crap about expanding these out into other communities now. But I'm also curious because I'm trying to imagine

Angelo (01:06:12.01)
Exactly.

Jason Elkins (01:06:26.195)
If I live in a small city outside of Rome that traditionally hasn't seen a lot of tourism, a lot of tourists, but I know that every time I go into Rome, I go near the area, the Coliseum, I'm like, my gosh, I'm overwhelmed. This is crazy. The traffic's horrible. These, Americans walking around and flip flops and shorts and polo shirts or whatever, they just get upset. And so they're sitting there having coffee in their small village.

and they see a tour bus pull up and a group of maybe only five or six tourists get off. Do you think it's easy for them to think, well, isn't this great? We're spreading it out. We're spreading out the wealth. sharing the wealth. And these tour operators are coming out into our communities to help support our communities. Or do they think, holy crap, here it comes. We don't want to be, we don't want this here in our village. Do you have some of that issue?

Angelo (01:07:20.147)
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

our business. There is something to say about what can be sustainable for them. So I hate to say this because we all work in different parts of tourism and none is really wrong. But I'm going to make a big name that is going to resonate for a lot of people. If Rick Steves writes on his book that you should go see

Jason Elkins (01:07:48.15)
Okay.

Angelo (01:08:17.182)
XYZ Town, okay? From that day onward, millions of people are going to flock onto XYZ Town, and that one restaurant in XYZ Town is going to get rich, or at least enjoy the wealth that Rick Steves brought onto that restaurant. The day that Rick Steves takes it out of his next edition,

Angelo (01:08:45.932)
That local business owner and that town are gonna die again.

So there is, and that's where it's insustainable, meaning that's where mass tourism has a negative impact. What we need to do as locals, and so this has nothing to do with travel, so I'm speaking as a Roman, as an Italian, that we need to learn that business owner, we need to teach, sorry, we need to teach that local business owner to use what is coming from Rick Steed's recommendations as fuel to grow its business and its vision, to then become self-sustainable.

regardless of Rick Steves. So to continue to work on his quality, on his promotion, on his marketing. Now that there's finally people coming into your business, use that to grow. Exactly. Use that to grow and expand so that you can survive and be an evergreen business, regardless of who's putting your name on their page on this million dollar books being sold in North.

Jason Elkins (01:09:23.799)
Got it.

Jason Elkins (01:09:31.733)
You can reinvest it. Yeah. Okay.

Jason Elkins (01:09:46.049)
makes perfect sense because the alternative is, isn't this great? We got to mention and you know, fromers or Rick Steves or whatever, and all these people are coming here. So was all we need to do is just keep putting plates in front of people, plates in front of people, more plates and maybe cut the cost drop because now we've got so many people coming in the door. We can reduce the amount of food on each plate. We can turn people faster and we can just make up a bunch of money.

Angelo (01:10:00.392)
Exactly. No, that's not exactly

Angelo (01:10:08.203)
Exactly.

Jason Elkins (01:10:14.477)
make hay while the sun is shining, I think is kind of a phrase maybe we use in the US as opposed to, OK, great. Now we've got an opportunity. How do we take this to the next level? How do we continue to get the word out to other platforms? I mean, this is the age of the Internet, right? How do we capture a bunch of good reviews instead of 14000 three star reviews? Because 14000 people came here. And then when Rick Stevesquits talking about it, people go look at Google and say, it's only got three stars.

Angelo (01:10:16.942)
Mm-hmm.

Angelo (01:10:30.434)
Yeah. Yeah.

Angelo (01:10:37.003)
Exactly.

Jason Elkins (01:10:43.757)
You know, why would we go there? And OK, that's this is super, super valuable. It's been a great conversation for it I know that a lot of people listen to the show are tour operators. I just reached out to somebody I yesterday invited him to have a conversation to see if it would be a good fit to be on the show. He's in Tanzania and he responded. He's like, Oh, I've been listening to your podcast for a long time. I love listening to other tour operators and their ideas and this and that. So I know there's tour operators listening to this and I know that you've just provided a lot of valuable ideas and.

We discussed a lot of things and I'm curious because we've been chatting for a while. What did I forget to ask? What should I have asked? Or what do you want to make sure that our listeners know about you? LivTours tours, Italy, Europe, any anything at all that you want to make sure that we share with them before we wrap

Angelo (01:11:32.376)
Well, I mean, was a fun conversation, Jason. We were saying this before we started recording. I've been on a few podcasts and generally they're very single themed and it's very pleasurable conversations nonetheless, but to be able to talk from my great grandfather all the way to Rick Steves is quite, yeah, exactly. So I mean, it's hard.

Jason Elkins (01:11:54.861)
mass tourism and air conditioning in the Coliseum we discussed a lot.

Angelo (01:12:01.006)
Twin beds and rooms. No, yeah, so it's hard for me to, just a couple seconds. What I would love to, I guess, just tell listeners is, if you need a trusted operator, tour provider that really, really stands by your high respect.

high expectations of how a particular experience is supposed to end, is supposed to go wherever you are in Europe and you want to make sure that this happens in multiple parts of Europe. You have a one-stop shop with LivTours. We're dedicated to make sure that we've designed a product. An example is the group of six people for semi-private tours or just the

our tour guides or the products, the variety of our products, we are meant to be an evergreen business. We're meant to be here for a very long time. Christine and I are gonna have to come out feet first out of the room before you see us out of LivTours. We're not a growth at all cost company. We're not an extra strategy company and it's a family owned business.

But the point is that we're dedicated to creating a product that people will want again and again and again and again. So you can remain tranquil by the fact that we're behind everything and we're gonna make sure that not only you come satisfied but perhaps surprised of how we've super exceeded your expectations. But then I'm gonna make sure you're gonna want more of us as you continue to travel in the years ahead.

Jason Elkins (01:13:53.709)
Love it. I for our listeners that haven't had the opportunity to actually see your face during this conversation. Just hear your voice. I'm sure they hear it in your voice, but it's been a real pleasure seeing the eyes light. I know that look. You know, I've been in tourism long enough. I know that look. And it's kind of like when you're interviewing people to be guides, you probably you see the look or you don't see the look. Right. I and obviously looks there on your face. And it occurred to me as you were saying that I didn't really ask you.

Obviously you do direct what we call direct to consumer. You've got people in Minneapolis that reach out, book a tour with you. But we also have, you know, we've got a large network of tour operators, travel agents that are maybe you're listening to this. When when you were just sharing that with me the last minute or so, were you also speaking to tour operators and travel agents? Do you work with them as well as they're you kind of their boots on the ground type of people? I assume so, but I didn't. I want to make sure that's clear. OK.

Angelo (01:14:43.756)
You bet.

You bet. Absolutely. Absolutely. We work with agents and advisors and tour operators and consortiums all over the world. It's a good chunk of our business. So we love working on a B2B level and making sure that your clients receive what I just explained.

Jason Elkins (01:15:06.669)
Very cool. I figured that was the case. I just want to make sure there's no doubts. Now you know that. because like I just mentioned, there's a lot of tour operators, probably travel agents that listen to the show as well. We're going to have a link right to your website right in the show notes. So make sure to take a look at that. Go look at all the cool stuff that Angelo and his team are. I really it's Angelo. Angelo is the proper Italian way to say it. Angelo. Angelo. See, OK, I spend a lot of time in Latin America. So there's a Spanish, but it's pretty, pretty similar.

Angelo (01:15:27.766)
Angelo, Angelo. Angelo, actually. Yeah. Yeah.

Angelo (01:15:34.669)
Yeah.

Jason Elkins (01:15:36.109)
But anyway, so yeah, reach out to the team and let's make this world, big world feel just a bit smaller. So thank you so much for taking time out of your day to be here with us. And it was great. It was a lot of fun. Thank you.

Angelo (01:15:51.47)
Thank you, Jason. Thank you for having me.

Jason Elkins (01:15:52.621)
Alright, thanks, Angelo.