The Lifetime-Value Playbook: Repeat Bookings, Referrals, Merch & UGC

A happy guest who walks away with just a memory is a marketing opportunity that didn't compound. The operators winning right now turn one trip into repeat bookings, referrals, walking billboards, and content that sells future trips.

In this episode of the Tour Operator Growth Podcast, Nikki and Greg close out the Sharing stage of the Resmark Growth Engine with a deep dive into lifetime value. Using the Savannah Bananas and their fan-first mindset as a model, they make the case that any operator can be outspent on ads, but no one can out-build the relationships you create with your guests, and they share the exact systems to do it.

What you'll learn:

• Why treating a booking as the start of a relationship changes everything
• The 11-month anniversary email that recaptures guests as they plan next season
• Seasonal and behavioral triggers plus cross-selling to drive repeat bookings
• How to systematize referrals without feeling pushy, using two-sided incentives
• Why referrals land best 30 to 60 days after a trip, separate from review requests
• How to treat merch as marketing first and revenue second (and limit inventory risk)
• Why user-generated content outperforms branded content by 2 to 4x, and where to use it
• A quick-fire action list you can start on this week

If this series helped you map out your own growth engine, share it with another tour operator who needs this framework, and subscribe for the next chapter.

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Chapters:
0:00 Intro: the lifetime-value playbook
1:08 The Savannah Bananas & fan-first thinking
5:34 Why the guest relationship starts before booking
7:24 Word of mouth is a process, not luck
8:11 When to invite a guest back: the 11-month email
10:48 Systematizing referrals without being pushy
13:30 Timing referrals & cross-selling the next trip
15:53 Merch is marketing first, revenue second
18:07 What merch actually works: stickers, ornaments, SKUs
20:47 User-generated content: cheapest, highest-trust marketing
24:30 Where to put UGC + quick-fire action recap
26:57 Series recap & what's next

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to another episode of the Tour Operator Growth Podcast. This episode is a lifetime value playbook. How to bring guests back, how to turn one trip into a referral that fills your calendar, how to put your brand in their hands with merchandise, and how to turn their photos, videos, and stories into your most powerful marketing. If part one was about reputation, part two is really about lifetime value. Let's go. Before we get tactical, I want to start with kind of a mindset piece because every operator who's actually doing a really good job with maximizing lifetime value made a specific shift in how they think about their guest in the first place. Greg, a lot of tour operators treat booking like a transaction, but we see with really, we'll say great, great companies like Western River, Big Creek Expeditions, even uh Grand Canyon expeditions, they treat that booking as the start of a relationship, not just a transaction. What changes in the tour business when you make that mindset shift?

SPEAKER_01 1:08

So I'm gonna go about this a little bit abstract outside of the tour industry. So first I want to ask you, Nikki, have you heard of Banana Ball?

SPEAKER_00 1:17

You know, that sounds really familiar. Kid guy, not sure.

SPEAKER_01 1:24

Okay, so there's a baseball team called the Savannah Bananas. They played their first official game in 2020. And this is just some like offshoot of a minor league baseball team that decided in in I think it was 2018, they they did a game with another university where like no rules. They basically threw out all the rules and just had fun, right? So this is originated from a guy named Jesse Cole, and he is one of the best examples in our time today of what every business should do, where the the fan in his case is first, the guest is first, the participant is first, right? So they played their first game in 2020, and and this is just to kind of frame the type of growth they saw because of his mindset. So in 2021, they played like a weekend two nights in a row in Mobile Alabama with a combined guest count of 7,000. So 3,500 people per game, let's say. Just recently, on May 2nd, 2026, they sold out a football stadium in Texas with 102,000 fans. So five years later, they sold out 102,000 person stadium. Like that's massive. And this year they expanded their league. They now have six team leagues that are gonna play a total of 190 games across 45 states and 75 stadiums. Like that's massive growth in essentially five, six years. So, how did they grow this fast and how do they continue to grow? And it's the focus that they have on the fan. If you've ever seen Jesse Cole, he's in a yellow suit with a yellow top hat. He's like every video, every time you see him, he's in that. So, one, he's like the brand, you know the brand. Anytime you see yellow jerseys, there they are. But he, every video that I see about him, he preaches about fan first entertainment to the point where like his company, the the holding company of Banana Ball is called Fan First Entertainment. And that is the one thing they focus on always. They've done it with pre-game, like before the booking. How are we gonna engage fans before the booking? How are we gonna engage fans after the booking? How are we engaging them at the game? How are we engaging them after the game? The way that they're they call it a cast, this would be your guides. The way that they have them interact with the fans is like extremely amazing. And then they they've gone to the extent where they care so much about their fans, they created their own booking platform because they got sick of all the fees that go through like Ticketmaster because people they they were selling tickets for $40, they were being resold for $300 to $700. And they actually made it so that you cannot resell their tickets, and they have to be resold on their platform. Their platform has no booking fees, and you have to sell it for the price you bought it for. So, like, that's how much they care about the fan, is they want every single person, rich or not, to be able to come to their games, and they've created everything around that. So that's a long story to basically frame the picture of what you can be doing as a company as well, right? Stop thinking of guests as a one-time booking. I don't, I don't care if it's a one-hour tour or an 11-hour hike through the Alps or 11-day hike through the Alps. Start thinking them as a long-term relationship. Because often these, the shorter the tour, the more likely you are to get them back, right? Like the chance of me going on an 11-day alpine hike twice in my life is probably pretty slim. Um, the chance of me going on the Chicago architecture tour where you go down the river, I've been on it four times.

SPEAKER_00 5:34

So you love that tour.

SPEAKER_01 5:36

It's a great tour. I lived there for a couple years and uh went back recently to do it. So like it doesn't matter the length of your trip, focus on your guests and the experience that they're gonna have. Now, I think a lot of companies do a good job at this, but one thing to correct from what you said at the intro, Nikki, is the booking is not the place to start this. If you're not treating your guests the way you want to treat them throughout the whole website, the full process up to booking, then you can't just magically shift and expect them to like view your company as completely different. Now it might change their perception and be like, oh, like I was a little worried, but then it was a great trip. You don't want them to ever feel a little worried. You want it to be a good experience from start to finish and just rotate that. That's why if you've ever seen our graphic of the customer lifecycle, it's a circle. Because ideally you have them keep going in, right? It's not a linear line where once they reach the end, they're done. So your competitor edge, competitive edge is that any operator can outspend you on ads, but they can't necessarily build those relationships as well as you can. So if you put in the effort, put the time to build those relationships, you might not get that return visit, but that person's gonna share with their friend who's then gonna go on. And that person might share with their friend. And and now you're just getting word of mouth. We actually have a client where probably 90% of their business, 80 to 90% of their business is all word of mouth. And it's all because people had a good time, they share it with others, other people come.

SPEAKER_00 7:24

So But that didn't just happen. That client has a process in place to spread that. You know, it's not like, oh, I'm just gonna create a good experience. Like there is probably a process in place in order to get to that point, you know, and that's what he's putting all the effort into rather than paid ads and whatnot.

SPEAKER_01 7:42

So that's yeah, and it took time to get there too. It wasn't like day one, word of mouth, no one shows up for the first year. They they probably had to build up to that for sure. So this mindset mindset shift is real, but it only matters if you actually act on it. So, Nikki, this is where you've helped a lot of operators dial in. When is the right moment to invite a guest back?

SPEAKER_00 8:11

Yeah, it's going to look different from tour operator to tour operator, but some basic principles is one, an anniversary. I don't mean like your anniversary, though. You could totally do that, like your marriage anniversary. I mean the anniversary of when your last trip was. So 11 months after their trip. Great opportunity. And I have a story I'll share with you about that. Seasonal triggers, so Christmas, birthdays, personal holidays, that sort of thing, behavioral triggers as well. So open a past email, visited the site recently, engaged with you on social media. The other thing is personalized cross-selling. So, for example, we see you joined us on the half day trip. Why don't you consider the multi-day trip or the full day trip if you want to take it just a step above that? Okay, so going back to anniversary, picture a guest. We'll call her Maria. Last July, she did a half-day um kayaking tour with her friends. She absolutely loved it, took hundreds of photos, told everybody about it, even left a glowing five-star review. But work filled up her calendar. She has kids, she's busy, and the trip just faded into simply a good memory. 11 months later, late May, an email lands in her inbox. And it's something along the lines of, wow, it's it's hard to believe it's almost been a year since you've paddled with us last. The weather's warming up again. Are you ready for round two? So here's the thing. Maria had started vaguely thinking about her summer plans. The email arrived right as she was itching to form something fun to do for the summer. It didn't feel like marketing it. It really just felt like a friend reading her mind. So she booked that afternoon and this time upgraded from the half day to the full day. That email cost essentially nothing. It was one automation. It's a one-time setup thing to do. It's firing 11 months after every guest trip. Maria didn't get reacquired through an ad or a discount. She got recaptured by good timing, which is much cheaper than most leads. So timing isn't random. It cannot be random with any of this. It's engineered around the guest emotions, making it feel like personal to them. Now, getting one repeat guest is great. We'll take that, right? But getting one repeat guest who's going to bring multiple friends or family members is a completely different business strategy. So, Greg, how do operators systematize referrals without making it feel like awkward or pushy or transactional?

SPEAKER_01 10:48

Yeah, this can't, it can be tricky to do. Um sometimes it feels like you're paying them to come back or paying them to bring other people. Some businesses don't like providing discounts either because they see that their tours are valuable enough that you know they don't need to discount them in order to have people come back. So it really depends on what tactic you want to use. But referrals can be really good at, like you mentioned, bringing more people back so that they are repeat customers and bring other people with them. So one way I've seen this work really well is with companies like Mint Mobile. Um, I don't know if you're familiar with Mint Mobile. Um, Ryan Reynolds owns it. And when I signed up with Mint Mobile, I got three cards in the mail. SIM card, this is back when you had like the actual SIM card going to your phone. Um I got a card for my phone with a SIM card. I got a card with with my wife's SIM card, and I had a third card with a fake SIM card that said, share this with your friend. Like, here's your friend's SIM card, and you'll receive a discount, or can't remember what the it was, but you'll receive a hundred dollar gift card and they will too. Something like that. And I thought that was a really cool way of like actually sending me a card for them to then have them join, right? So you can do physical things like that, you can do it in emails. Two so the two-sided incentive like this one is a win because I win and they win. So I get something, but they get something that's great because now I can go and refer a bunch of people and I'm gonna get more and more money or whatever it might be, and they're gonna be incentivized to actually sign up versus me just saying, like, hey, go do this and um sign up in the case of Mint, go on a trip, obviously, with all of you. Um, but make it frictionless, you know, single link, one tap, pre-written copy, something that you can do easy and send out to people, and then celebrate the top refer referrals publicly, um, obviously with permission. But if you have people that are just like top contributors, is what they call it on Facebook groups, right? You have people that are just fully engaged, they're constantly referring people, they're constantly coming and they're in your conversation all the time. Like let people know about them. And we as humans like that validation, and it usually is just gonna fuel us to be even better. You could gamify it in that aspect as well, which is gonna really, you know, make it interesting also. So we talked about a 72-hour window in the last um conversation, the last podcast. This is for reviews, so don't crowd it with another task. Don't go asking for a review and asking for referrals within that first, you know, 24-72 hour window. Focus on one thing kind of at a time so that you're more likely to get those responses. So referrals really land best after review reviews are in, typically 30, 60 days after the trip, when guests are still excited, right? They're still showing friends pictures, they're reliving the trip, they might be you know starting to plan another trip too. So this referral might happen a little bit later. If maybe it was the end of the the year season, like 60 days might not be the best time if you don't have your inventory already for the next year. So time it so that the referral comes once that inventory is ready and people can start booking again, uh, or as it gets closer to that window. Trip anniversary moments are awesome. You know, we're already booking summer 2027. Come rejoin us and have a great time. And here's a a trip that maybe different than what you went on last time that you'll really enjoy this time. Um, I think that works really well with I'll use Moab Adventure Center as an example. They have a bunch of different rafting trips that you can go on. One is like a full day, you know, it's a more relaxed, it's a lot of floating, there's some rapids, but they're not huge, right? If you get hooked on rafting because of that, because it is super fun, then now it's like, okay, let's refer you and move you over to the Westwater trip, which now is like adrenaline. And kind of thinking through what trip they've been on and what pairs well, what would naturally be something they might want to do is gonna be best beneficial as well. Nikki, there's another way to get your brand in front of people besides referrals and to capture new audiences. This is merchandise. So when does merchandise make sense and when does it actually move the needle for businesses?

SPEAKER_00 15:53

Yeah. So I was talking to somebody at a trade show in December, and he came up to our booth and we were having a conversation, and he said that he decided to do a merch or actual retail store, you know, um last year. And he decided to completely mix it because he only broke even. He didn't get any money, you know, from it, but he did break even. So I I told him, I said, merch isn't a revenue play, right? That is not the only thing that we need to focus on. It's a marketing play. So it's a great way to get your brand out there. And it's a bit trickier to measure, right? So it's a little bit harder to quantify that. But it does have the upsell of revenue, right? If if we are going past break-even. But just remember that. Don't only focus on the revenue aspect of it. Focus on it being a marketing play. So think about it. You give a guest a t-shirt they're wearing around their school, the airport, their their office. People see that. People recognize it. And maybe that brings up stories, maybe it doesn't, maybe it brings up conversations. I don't know. But what it does do is it creates some sort of awareness in that person that's walking past them in the airport. It creates some sort of awareness. So maybe they were thinking of going on a white water rafting trip and they recognize Western River because of Facebook ads, billboards, roch stores, this, a bunch of different things. And then then they're in the airport and then they see somebody wearing a Western River shirt, just adding to that feel, right? Adding to that brand awareness. So that is really a great opportunity to create those walking billboards, is what I like to call it. And the other thing too is if you're worried about inventory risk. So if you don't want to set up a physical store like the person I was talking to in December did, you could absolutely, you could do print on demand, you could drop ship, you could do a lot of pre-orders too. We see that. So, really, in my opinion, there's no reason not to do it. Do it, just do it. Okay. So I guess the next thing.

SPEAKER_01 18:07

If you're gonna do it, if you're gonna do it, have really cool stickers too, because I like stickers.

SPEAKER_00 18:12

Stickers.

SPEAKER_01 18:13

I I'm always disappointed when someone doesn't have a sticker because I always get like high-quality stickers to put on my car, ones that aren't gonna peel off in a year, but ones that I can have on my car for years to come. And that's like the one thing I buy when I go to trip. The other thing would be ornaments. My wife is an ornament buyer. If you have cool ornaments, she's more likely to buy in your shop. Just saying.

SPEAKER_00 18:38

Yeah. Well, one of my points is we'll start with only a few SKUs. But yes, absolutely. Think of this unique thing, socks for me. I love unique socks. But anyways, so we we need to think about as well what people actually want to buy. So if your consumer is into stickers, sell stickers. Um, the other thing too is most likely if you're gonna do gear, you're probably gonna do t-shirts. Make sure that they're actually wearable. Make them very high quality, fashionable, we'll call it. Like, don't be overly branded as well. Like, make it something that somebody actually wants to wear. Um, I think that's really important to get people to wear your brand out in public. You know, other places that you could sell your merch outside of a retail store would be anniversary and off-season email drops. So you could, of course, try to sell some additional merchandise and emails, dedicated holiday campaigns, especially around Christmas, Black Friday, you could do things like that. And then a standalone shop page on your website separate from your booking funnel. That's another great opportunity. So people could, after their trip if they want, they can go in and buy merchandise or before maybe. The other thing, too, that you might want to do is test with your existing guest list before going public. So see what is going to resonate with them, see what they like, experiment, test, get those results before you actually launch a full-on store. But if you are doing print on demand, it is pretty easy to get up and running. Just the one thing is if you are doing that, make sure that the products you're using is high are high quality because if you're not actually touching the products and stuff, sometimes you don't know if it's sorry, crying, you know. So I want you guys to have the mentality of merch is marketing first, revenue second. All right. So we talked about revenue, reputation, merchandise. Let's talk about videos and photos. So great, guests are already shooting photos and videos on every trip, most likely. Why does it matter that operators actually collect them and what do you do with them once you actually have them?

SPEAKER_01 20:47

So, user-generated content, the statistics says it outperforms branded content by two to four times on social engagement. So I am way more likely as a future guest going to trust what I can tell is user-generated content over your marketing. Your marketing, you're gonna try to find, you know, the best view of the sunset. You're gonna try to find the best experience and post that. A user, some are really good at this, some aren't. Some post videos that are just like amazing, and some post videos that look amateur, and that's okay. The amateur to me is like, oh, that's actually what they're doing. That's pretty cool. And just to touch touch on the merch a little bit, if you have it in your budget and you can find something that makes sense, don't be afraid to give some sort of merch to your guests upon arrival of their booking. So Moab Adventure Center does this with like water bottles that they'll they'll give out when you book your trip. And I see those working. Multiple ways. One is they show up around town. If it's like in that case, it's kind of a destination town. And people might be looking like, why do all these people have red bottles? And start like spinning their wheels. The other thing is social media, there's so many people, whether you're an influencer or not, that you want people to know that you're doing something cool, right? And so now I have this water bottle that I can kind of like hold up, take a selfie with, or take a picture of that with like the sunset behind it. And it just makes my picture that much cooler because I have the brand in it, even though I'm not an influencer, right? So just naturally they're going to be more likely to share your brand just by them having something already to share. Um that's why like car wraps are super important too. Not that we're talking about all that today, but like if your car just doesn't have your logo on it and they you drove them somewhere, they take a picture with your van and nothing. Like if your car's wrapped really cool, like I'm more likely to want to take a cool picture with my my group that I'm with in front of your van showing your logo, and now it's all over the place, right? So that's important is to give them ways to share the brand. But also remember, you don't need to ask permission to have them like generate content. You need to ask permission to use it, but they can generate it. All you have to do is ask. So, and they're going to generate it on most trips. Most people are gonna have their phones out generating it anyway. So why not ask to use it? Great ways to do this is to you know, set up like a Google Drive where after the trip it goes out to everyone, they can all share their photos. This is particularly great for like long trips, right? Multi-day trips. You get to know the people you're with, and they're gonna take pictures that you're like, oh, send that to me.

unknown 24:01

Right.

SPEAKER_01 24:01

And so instead of them having to go and like swap numbers and remember to send it, everyone just uploads it to a Google file folder and you can now see everyone's files. And now you can show your friends, like as a as a guest, like, hey, check out this. I didn't get a picture of it, but this is really cool. And now you as a tour operator can use that to put on your website. So with that, the best places to kind of put user-generated content is on the pages that you're hoping to convert or hoping to move people down the funnel. So on the home page, you could have it in the hero. Um, that's the section at the top of the page. I'd be a little bit careful with that. You don't want to put you know low quality content in that section. If you have really great imagery from guests, then definitely use it. But you can have it lower down on the page with kind of a very obvious section that like this is all user-generated images. Maybe it feels like you know, like you're on Instagram with reels or something like that. The other place is tour pages. So this is most likely the page that's going to convert that they're gonna see last before going into the booking flow. And so it's another place to show that social proof that's gonna really drive home how authentic the trip is, how great the trip is, whatever it might be. Um it's gonna really help people make that final decision. So user-generated content is the cheapest and highest trust content that you'll ever get. All you have to do is ask. And once you have a pipeline created that is gathering that content, then it just keeps compounding. So to wrap everything up, let's just kind of do a quick fire recap of what we've talked about. So, first set up your 11-month repeat booking automation. Do that now. It's not hard. You just need to get it going so that you keep people moving down the pipeline. Add a two-sided referral offer to your nurture email, like we talked about. Launch some merchandise, three, four, five, not too many by the end of the quarter. The easiest way to do this is gonna be drop shipping, unless you have space on your in your in your building to kind of put some items up. Build a guest user generated upload portal so that they can provide that content for you to use, audit your homepage, how many real guest stories versus how much branded copy you have. And your top three user-generated photos on all the tour pages so that people can see that authenticity and build that trust with you right away.

SPEAKER_00 26:57

Wow, guys, we covered so much of the last several episodes, five stages, dozens of systems, and one big idea running through all of it. The operators who grow aren't the ones just doing more, more and more. They're the ones doing it with purpose and intention. The takeaway from today specifically is a happy guest who walks away with nothing but a memory is a marketing opportunity that just did not compound. The operators winning right now are turning that guest into a repeat booking, a walking billboard, a content curator, and a referral source all on autopilot. This is all automatic, most of it is, not everything. But we're not finished yet, guys. We got some really, really exciting topics, episodes coming that are going to allow us to dive even deeper into the tactics, the tools, and we're gonna share a lot of really cool operator stories to bring all of this framework into life. So if you've been with us through the Resmart Growth Engine, stick around. The next chapter is just getting started. If this series has helped you map out your own growth engine, share it with another tour operator who needs this framework. Thank you for hanging out with us. We'll see you on next week's episode.