Embracing a major shift to digital sales, founder Christian Campanella has grown a tour company that’s still experiencing rapid growth seven years on.
Before Christian Campanella founded Crown Tours, he improvised as a guide for his friends visiting Rome, then started selling tours outside the Colosseum. “I spent the first three to four years selling tours myself ... I spoke to over a million people,” he reminisces.
Since then, Crown Tours has successfully transitioned from 100% offline sales to a digital-first approach, becoming a European powerhouse in the tour business. It operates in nine cities — from Vatican City to Paris to Granada — with 160 staff and 500 guides. Now, Crown Tours’ highest-grossing tours are all fueled by a data-driven approach and a central partnership with GetYourGuide.
“If someone can guarantee sales so I can focus on making the tours better, that’s a deal you take,” Christian explains. With 52% year-over-year revenue growth and 31,000 bookings to date on GetYourGuide, that deal is paying off.
Here, he talks about the value of the GetYourGuide algorithm and why outsourcing sales to OTAs fueled his success.
How did Crown Tours get started?
I started by selling tours for another company. I kind of stumbled into the tourism industry because I was playing football and quit fairly early. I was good, but I wasn’t going to play for Real Madrid. I needed a job, so I started selling tours outside the Colosseum. Within a few months, I realized I could build something significant.
The Colosseum will always be there, so the market is reliable. Everything else depends on how good I am. For the first seven years, we did only Colosseum tours. I’ve done thousands of tours myself. Over the years, we expanded across Italy and are now in Paris, Barcelona, Seville, and Granada. We built it brick by brick.
What stands out most from those early days?
Actually, just yesterday I met clients who came back after 11 years. They were one of our first bookings on our website back in 2015. I went to the meeting point because they emailed me, asking, “Hey, does Christian still work with the company?” I was their guide. They may not have known I owned it at the time; I was 24.
I actually have a really cool picture of them — I’d had a car accident a few months before and showed up to the tour with this neck brace after surgery. It was a miserable time in my life, but they were one of the first bookings, so I had to go. I couldn’t miss it. Seeing them again after 11 years was awesome. That emotion of having those first bookings sticks with you. And you don’t forget the first people.
What was the biggest challenge in building the business?
At the beginning, 100% of our sales were offline. What shifted us into online growth was a regulation change — it became illegal to sell tours offline near major monuments in Rome. We had to shift to an entirely online model around 2019. It was a big punch in the face. Sales went down, and it was a restart button. We were doing high volume and high margins before, so we had to reset.
Then came COVID. That was a jab and a right hook, but also a bit of a blessing in disguise. I had to reduce the team to two people. But by then, I was confident I knew how to rebuild with the right people when the moment was right.
How central was your partnership with GetYourGuide in your growth strategy?
GetYourGuide is always going to be super central to our growth. Five years later, we’re still about 95% OTAs, and I’m not trying to change that. I don’t think we have more than five people on our sales team, out of a team of 160, because we sort of outsource sales.
Someone else is putting the marketing dollars in for you, and they’re guaranteeing the returns because you’re giving up a commission. If someone can guarantee sales so I can focus on making the tours better, that’s a deal you take. In 2019, we did about €1.5 million in revenue. Last year, we did over €50 million.
What makes GetYourGuide different from other platforms?
The algorithm is very merit-based. If you do a good job, you get rewarded. You don’t have grandfathered-in products that aren’t going anywhere. Our account managers also help us understand demand. If they point out that our availability isn’t sufficient for the demand they expect, we can buy more tickets. That makes the product healthier and converts better.
We analyze a lot of data, and knowing how reviews impact conversion is huge. It’s crazy how much better 4.7-star reviews convert than, say, 4.5-star ones.
How do you ensure consistent quality with hundreds of guides?
That’s been a real challenge because we grew so quickly. I’m not going to tell tour guides how to do their job, but there are non-negotiables — the core elements that are promised in the online description. I tell them it’s like a movie: we’re the producers, and you’re the star. I won’t interrupt you, but there is a production behind it. Now we have a customer experience team that goes on tours to ensure guides meet our expectations and the narration is right.
Has the type of customer changed since you moved online?
The personality is very different. People who walked up to the Colosseum offline were just so grateful. They had no idea what they were going to get. There used to be loud applause at the end of tours; you could hear it across the Roman Forum. You don’t see that anymore.
Online customers have looked at every picture and video, like checking out a menu before visiting a restaurant. They know exactly what to expect. If it’s not exactly how they pictured it, they might be let down. So, we specifically leave wow moments out of the description to surprise and delight people.
What advice would you give someone considering working with an OTA like GetYourGuide?
Make it a central part of your growth without remorse. The risk element of going into a new destination is taken away.
You can test a product with a sheer volume of audience you’d never get on your own. You avoid getting caught in your own ideas and spending too much, which can be a waste if the market doesn’t like it.
Key takeaways
• Treat OTAs as outsourced sales. By committing 95% of bookings to OTAs (31,000 to date via GetYourGuide), Crown Tours eliminates the risk of investing upfront in marketing costs, freeing the team to focus entirely on optimizing the customer experience.
• Build products around customer psychology. Having been a guide himself, seeing what made thousands of customers say yes to a tour and listening to their pain points, Christian built an understanding of travelers. This helps shape online tours and descriptions that convert.
• Withhold the “wow” moments. To meet the high expectations of digital customers who research every detail, Crown Tours intentionally leaves standout moments out of online descriptions to give guests unexpected joy.
• Standardize the non-negotiables. To maintain quality across 500 freelance guides, the company established strict, non-negotiable requirements that align with the online description, while giving guides the freedom to add their personal flair.
• Use setbacks to build efficiency. When regulation changes (and the pandemic) destroyed Crown Tours’ sales model, Christian stripped operations back to basics. The company rebuilt as a more agile, scalable, and profitable digital-first one, recently experiencing 52% year-over-year growth.
