A finance executive with no tourism experience took over a struggling 40-year-old company with seven employees and one computer. Two decades later, Key Tours is a market leader.
When Dimitris Bistolas joined Key Tours as general manager in 2004, the company was a relic. Founded in 1963 as part of a consortium of major travel agents, including American Express, it had helped create the tourism industry in Greece. But by the early 2000s, the 40-year-old company was running on fumes.
“There were seven employees, and I was in my 30s — the youngest by far,” Dimitris recalls. “Everything was manual. We had one computer, and it was in accounting, not even operations. But we were running around 10 tours per day with bookings coming in for the next day, next month, three months out — imagine the paperwork.”
Coming from investment banking, where he worked with three screens and complete automation, the contrast was stark. Dimitris saw the potential, though. Over time, he bought out older shareholders and modernized the company. Twenty years later, Key Tours has 40 employees, works with 84 guides, and served 620,000 guests last year. The company runs around 100 different experiences across Athens and beyond.
Here, Dimitris shares how he dusted off the legacy brand, why GetYourGuide became a lifeline, and how platform data helped Key Tours achieve massive success in unexpected circumstances.
What was the biggest challenge when you took over Key Tours?
The company always had a good reputation, but the name had collected a lot of dust. I had to rebuild trust with partners and end customers — I needed to show everyone we still deliver quality. The other challenge was innovation.
Our bestsellers were tours created 60 years ago, and you can’t reinvent the Acropolis or Delphi. So, the job is to keep improving quality on those core tours while finding other ways to innovate and show travelers our culture.
What pushed you toward OTAs?
I kept presenting my new ideas to traditional travel agents to show the quality standards I was implementing, and I always got the same response: “Dimitris, that’s great, but…” Always “but.” “I’m a friend of your competitor.” “I’ve worked with them for 20 years.” “Maybe in the future.”
To survive, I saw a small light at the end of the tunnel: the internet, digitization, and OTAs. I caught that trend from the beginning. I’m probably one of the first suppliers to come on board at GetYourGuide.
We were both figuring out how to adapt, I think. It was totally new, but I decided to trust them, and they trusted me, so we could build something together.
When did you realize the GetYourGuide partnership was making a real impact?
Almost from the second year. I saw sales growing, and it pushed me to create new ideas. Back then, OTAs were in their infancy, so GetYourGuide didn’t have the power it has now. But even with low volumes, it made a big difference for us.
How did the business grow in those early years of going online?
Growth was slow at first. We had the 2008 recession, then the Greek financial crisis the following year. In the first 6-10 years, up to around 2010–2014, we doubled our revenue and built trust with OTAs and travelers.
The real success started after 2015. The Greek crisis was ongoing, but it wasn’t bad for tourism — Greece was cheap, so more people wanted to visit. At the same time, OTAs grew stronger. Because we were already working in that environment, it was easy to keep growing through digital sales.
How did the figures improve?
When I started in 2004, we served around 20,000 guests. By 2015–2016, we reached 50,000–60,000. Last year, we served 620,000.
How do you tackle those challenges?
Let’s look at 2020. The coronavirus pandemic wasn’t a time to sit back. We were afraid of the unknown, so we tried to create new things. We call them our “COVID babies,” and they’re still successful now.
We saw people wanted to walk more and be outdoors, and closed buses weren’t appealing (or possible). So we introduced more walking tours around Athens and up to the Acropolis. We worried nobody would want group tours ever again, so we created attraction tickets with audio guides.
We built a good ticketing system and our own app. People can download it and hear narration by real Greek guides, not actors. That was very innovative at the time, and it was a big success. We were the first to offer walking tours in Spanish, and I think still the only ones, despite Spanish tourists being our second biggest demographic in Greece.
How does working with GetYourGuide help you spot trends and plan new products?
Data is very important. Working with GetYourGuide, seeing the amount of data, and analyzing it with my team helps us create new tours. Spanish was one example. We saw many people booking in English who were Spanish speakers. So it was easy to see there was an audience.
Also, GetYourGuide can see trends before we can because they have global data. You can discover that the new trend now is cooking classes, or people are booking out walking tours, and then we can look at the data and research more. That helps us keep innovating. For us, data is crucial, and GetYourGuide helps a lot with this.
What sets GetYourGuide apart from other OTAs you work with?
I think GetYourGuide is more open to innovative ideas. It helps a new experience surface more easily in the system than on some platforms. When you search Athens now, you’ll find maybe 1,000 experiences, so knowing where a new tour can stand out is great.
With 620,000 annual guests and 84 guides, how do you maintain consistent quality?
First of all, we’re never completely sure. We train our guides and have continuous discussions about what we expect: happy customers and strong reviews.
The review systems on GetYourGuide, TripAdvisor, and Google are very helpful. We have a dedicated marketing team reading reviews, answering them, and understanding where customers are right. It’s impossible to be perfect. Even my best guides make mistakes. So we track reviews closely, especially bad ones, and focus on what we can change.
Can you give an example of a change you made in response to reviews?
Delphi is one of our bestsellers — in Ancient Greece, it was thought to be the center of the world. The landscape is beautiful, the story is strong. But we used to get two- and three-star reviews saying the same thing: great guide, good bus, good driver, but the lunch stop was one restaurant in the middle of nowhere. People didn’t have choices. We originally used that restaurant for operational reasons, but when enough people said the same thing, we acted.
Instead of stopping outside Delphi village, we now stop in Arachova, a beautiful village with lots of restaurants, cafés, and shops. That small change — which was actually a big logistical issue for us, trying to park a bus in a small Greek village for starters — changed the reviews completely.
What role does GetYourGuide play in your growth strategy going forward?
GetYourGuide has become our number one OTA. It’s very important to keep creating new tours and optimizing existing ones. We believe there’s plenty of room for improvement on both sides.
OTAs represent more than 60% of our bookings. We also have direct bookings, traditional travel agents, and hotel concierges — we’re recommended by more than 400 hotels in Athens. So we have a better mix than many competitors, who depend on OTAs for 80% or more. But OTAs are still crucial for us, and GetYourGuide is leading that.
What advice would you give to legacy companies still skeptical about going digital?
Simple. It’s essential now, so 100% go digital. We create experiences for travelers, so travelers need to find them. We can’t reach a global audience on our own. We need the help of the new tourism system, which is OTAs. So yes: work with OTAs.
You came from finance, not tourism. What made you fall in love with this business?
The smiles of the people. Every morning outside the office, we have buses, guides, and 200, 300, 500 travelers. They’re in the best period of their year: their vacation. They’re smiling, they’re happy.
We contribute something to that happy time through a good experience, through our attitude, and through our stories. We give them an experience they’ll remember for years. They might not remember the company name or the exact history, but the feeling stays with them. That’s what I love about this business.
Key takeaways
• Embrace digitization. Dimitris saw OTAs as a lifeline when traditional channels wouldn’t open their doors. Being one of GetYourGuide's first suppliers in Greece gave Key Tours a major competitive advantage as the platform grew.
• Let data drive innovation. By analyzing GetYourGuide’s global and local data, Key Tours identified an opportunity in the Spanish-speaking market and launched successful products that competitors still haven’t matched.
• Create opportunities from the unexpected. Instead of pausing during the pandemic, Key Tours developed walking tours and audio-guided experiences. All of this became major revenue drivers and helped them continue their growth, reaching 620,000 guests in 2025.
• Reviews are your compass. Key Tours’ dedicated team reads every review, especially negative ones, to identify operational improvements, and some feedback-prompted changes have turned two-star reviews into five-star reviews overnight.
• Innovate bestsellers in your own way. Key Tours sells tickets and tours for some of the oldest landmarks on Earth that cannot be changed — simple Acropolis tickets (14% of bookings) and a guided tour of Delphi (11%). Improving the product in other ways is essential to staying relevant and innovative.
