Operating on an all-OTA marketing strategy in order to focus on creating quality tours in Mexico and beyond.
In 2005, Amigo Tours opened for business in Mexico with a single van — they had about 2,000 customers that first year. The industry was far less digitized back then and OTAs were just starting to come into the fold. Amigo Tours relied on hotel concierges to sell their products in the early days, which came with a fluctuating commission structure that was difficult to plan around.
Bookings were manually tracked on a spreadsheet, requiring more administrative manpower. Today, those technical aspects of the industry have become more elegant and Amigo Tours’ operational methods have evolved with the times. In 2024, the company will have 3 million customers with tours across six countries.
Much of their growth can be attributed to the breadth of tours they offer: around 250 in total with more added every year. “Increased availability is our whole strategy,” said Arozema. Becoming a digitized business and outsourcing all marketing efforts to OTA partners early on were game-changing business decisions for Amigo Tours. Here, Arozema discusses the evolution of Amigo Tours and how GetYourGuide has been a key partner as the business continues to grow.
How and when did Amigo Tours begin?
“I founded Amigo Tours 19 years ago. We started in Mexico with a couple of tours, and then a few years later, we started our expansion in different countries. Now, we run over 250 different tours in Mexico, US, UK, and Europe.”
You began with GetYourGuide in 2014. What was your reason for working with an OTA?
“The first years of the company, we sold our tours through the concierge and receptionist at hotels. Concierges would often make decisions about what tours to sell to guests based on whoever was offering the highest commission that week.
I realized it wasn’t a smart business move to rely on them to grow my company. By 2014, we were using about 3 or 4 OTAs—there were not as many as there are now. One of my team members told me about GetYourGuide and suggested trying it. We never thought that ten years later, it was going to be one of our top resellers.”
How do OTAs play into your marketing strategy?
“Right now, we have between 75 and 80 different source channels between OTAs and offline. We sell everything B2B. It works because it’s a simple relationship; they sell well, we run the tour well.”
What is different about working with GetYourGuide compared to other OTA partners?
“We like growing. Every year, we open three to five new destinations and 30 to 35 new tours. Every time that you list a new tour on GetYourGuide, it starts selling in a few hours. That’s a big difference. We know we are going to receive the bookings and we only pay commission on successful bookings, so it works well. When we don’t have to go door-to-door looking for business, it simplifies our business a lot.”
How do you develop new products and evolve existing experiences?
“We use a lot of data. Destination data, OTA data, source market data from GetYourGuide, and information collected from reviews."
If you know how to read the data, you can get a lot of useful information from it. We use that data to build our new tours from scratch. It’s our secret sauce.
What’s the hardest thing about being in the Experiences industry from your point of view?
“Getting direct sales is very complicated in this sector. There’s no brand awareness for tour companies. If you ask a traveler the name of three tour companies, they wouldn't be able to list them."
Even if they go on a tour and love it, they won’t remember what the company is called when they get home. That is why we rely on brand awareness from our partners, like GetYourGuide, who are more recognizable in the market.
What’s the weirdest question you’ve ever been asked by a customer?
“We went to the pyramids in Mexico City. and one of the guests asked when we were going to see a human sacrifice.”
Key takeaways
- Up 25% in sales year-over-year. As of July 2024, Amigo Tours did €1M in sales and is one of GetYourGuide’s top five partners.
- Amigo Tours operates on an all-OTA marketing strategy, allowing them to focus on producing quality tours rather than attracting new customers.
- They lean on brand recognition from reputable partners like GetYourGuide to expand their customer reach.
- Amigo Tours adds 30 to 35 new tours every year, ensuring there is always enough availability to meet customer demand
- Amigo Tours lean on data from partners like GetYourGuide to make business decisions about what new tours to build each year.
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