USS Midway’s Joe Wagstaff discusses the mistakes, lessons, and successes of OTA partnerships, and how he strengthens the museum’s appeal at home and worldwide.
Home to the world’s second-largest naval base, and with military history embedded in its psyche, San Diego is first and foremost a Navy city. Moored proudly at the downtown Embarcadero, the USS Midway Museum is one of only five aircraft carrier museums in the United States. The historic ship has welcomed millions of visitors eager to explore its flight deck, hear stories from veteran docents, and experience a piece of living history.
For 15 years, travel industry sales manager Joe Wagstaff has steered the museum’s ticketing and sales strategies through the rapidly changing tides of the travel industry. From moving away from cumbersome paper vouchers to building — and dismantling — strategic partnerships with OTAs, Joe has helped the nonprofit grow its international reach.
“When you find the right partner, you don’t need many more,” Joe says about the museum’s relationship with GetYourGuide.
Here, Joe discusses the lessons he’s learned in finding the right partnerships, and how GetYourGuide has provided the digital firepower needed to capture a global audience.
When you joined the USS Midway Museum 15 years ago, what was the state of play?
At that time, we were still using a paper voucher system. It was just what everybody was doing. As a nonprofit, we tend to be slow to adopt new tech because we need to protect our revenue as best we can. When it comes to spending money, there’s no risk-taking.
It was obvious to me early on that there were many flaws in a paper system, especially around fraud and accessibility. Plus, it was just cumbersome. I started going to trade shows and conferences and learning more about what digital technology was coming down the road. It was obvious that was the way we needed to go, and fast.
What was your initial strategy when you started working with OTAs?
I thought the best thing to do was to figuratively throw a net out there and get as many partners as possible to market us to their existing audiences. We have very limited marketing funds, and OTAs are going to do efficient marketing in markets and countries we just don’t know, so it seemed like a great approach.
I signed up with as many OTAs and tour operators as I could, only to later realize it was a terrible idea. Not only was it a lot to keep track of and manage, but they were just eating from each other. We’ve since narrowed it down to the partners that really bring us value.
How has that strategy evolved, and how does GetYourGuide fit into it today?
Since I’ve been with Midway, I think there’ve been three or four different GetYourGuide reps that I’ve known. It’s all about maintaining those relationships and the OTAs understanding our priorities and our budget.
Right after COVID, we didn’t rehire my coordinator, so I’m doing all the work myself. That’s why I put so much value in partners like GetYourGuide — they’re one of our top three partners in every way, and they make my job so much easier. I know how innovative GetYourGuide is. Even though managing OTAs can be extra work, it’s easy.
More work doesn’t mean hard work, and the benefits are clear.
Has partnering with GetYourGuide changed the demographic of your visitors?
It helped us realize that San Diego is an international destination, and that people around the globe are interested in our product. That helped mold our marketing. It felt good to know that we weren’t just a little curious museum for Americans who liked warships.
How has that impacted what the USS Midway Museum offers?
We know that GetYourGuide is translating our product into many different languages, so potential visitors can read about the tour in their language and see the price in their own currency. It lets the consumer know we care about their business and want to make the transaction easy, without us adding any extra work or expense for ourselves.
When they arrive here, we want that experience to continue and for them to understand what they’re looking at. So, we spent a lot of money getting our audio tour guide translated into six languages, as it was only in English before.
As a static museum, how do you keep the experience fresh and attract repeat visitors?
It is a big challenge for us. The ship has 2,000 individual compartments, but we only have probably 70% of them open. There’s not much more we can add to the ship except for new exhibits. We’ve added two new exhibits over the past two years, and a POW exhibit is opening soon. A lot of museums hire traveling exhibits, but that’s too expensive for us, and space is limited.
We have a strong local membership base and build that by putting on special events for people in the city. We have a “Top Gun” movie night coming up on the flight deck, complete with impersonators. During the holidays, we have Jingle Jets, where a million Christmas lights cover the ship. Especially in the offseason, you have to give people a reason to come.
What do visitors typically say about visiting the ship?
We have probably 150,000 reviews out there, and the most common comment is, “I wish I had known there was so much to see.” People think they can come on, look around in a couple of hours, and leave. But the ship is huge, and they wind up staying longer than they thought they would.
We receive so many compliments for the docents stationed throughout the ship, most of whom are veterans and volunteers. Some even served on Midway. When they tell their stories with real emotion, the visitor is captivated. They’re connected to a person, not just a big gray ship, and that emotion stays with them and comes through in their five-star reviews.
A lot of them say, “My son and husband wanted to go, so I tagged along. I didn’t want to go.” Then by the time they leave, they’re in love. They say it was way better than they expected. I love those turnaround stories.
How come you only sell tickets from your own site within the US?
These days, fraud is rampant. If you don’t have somebody in-house monitoring that stuff consistently, you’re going to get dinged.
Our direct website ticketing is geofenced to within the United States because so many fraudulent tickets were being produced overseas. But what good does it do for us to market a ticket in France if a French person can’t buy it online? So we sell through GetYourGuide, and we have confidence in the level of security that it provides.
What GetYourGuide tools do you rely on most?
There’s a tool that tells me where ticket sales are generated, which countries they’re generated from, and I love that. I talk about it at our senior managers’ meeting every two weeks; it’s always interesting to see where bookings are coming from.
Also, things change in the museum, so I can go into the dashboard and update our description a little when we have a new exhibit opening. If there’s anything that may drive more interest, it’s easy to go on the dashboard and make those changes myself.
What advice would you give to other attractions starting out with OTAs?
Understand what your needs are, whether that’s marketing-wise or technologically, because GetYourGuide provides all that stuff. Outsource the parts your business lacks rather than trying to do it all yourself. Do the research, keep it simple, and don’t waste resources.
Make sure you’re not signing with three different OTAs who all do exactly the same thing.
Key takeaways
- Rely on partners for secure global reach. To combat online fraud, the USS Midway Museum relies entirely on trusted OTA partners like GetYourGuide to safely capture international bookings, complete with translated listings and localized currency.
- Choose quality over quantity. Joe learned through experience that it’s far more effective to work deeply with a select few top-tier OTAs rather than managing dozens of overlapping ones.
- Leverage local authenticity. The museum’s veteran docents provide authentic storytelling that turns a museum visit into a deeply moving, five-star experience, driving word of mouth and excellent reviews.
- See results through strategy. By keeping things simple and relying on a strong partnership with GetYourGuide, the USS Midway Museum has increased its international visitor base. More than half of GetYourGuide bookings come from outside the US, including 23% from Germany and 7% from France.
- Give visitors more booking choice. By keeping multiple sales channels open, the museum maximizes its sales opportunities. While about half of their ticket sales are from walk-ups, OTAs still drive a crucial 25% of overall bookings that they might otherwise miss.
