The last busy weekend ends, the guides go home, and the booking calendar goes quiet. For most seasonal tour and activity businesses, that quiet stretch is treated as a break from marketing. It is actually the only window of the year when an owner has the time to fix the systems that decide how many bookings arrive next spring, and how many of them come in direct instead of through an OTA.
TL;DR
- The off-season is when tour operators should repair their booking path, content, and tracking, because there is no time to do it once guests are arriving.
- OTAs took 37% of tour and activity bookings in 2025, while direct website bookings fell (Source: Arival, The Global Operator Landscape, 4th Edition). Off-season work is how operators win some of that share back.
- In 2025, 60% of travelers booked tour and attraction tickets at least three days in advance, so next season’s early buyers start researching during the winter (Source: Arival).
- A simple month-by-month plan works best: audit in October, build content in November, run holiday gift offers in December, and launch early-booking campaigns in January and February.
- Email to past guests is the cheapest off-season channel most operators already own and underuse.
Why the Off-Season Matters More Than the Busy Season
During peak months, an operator’s marketing is mostly reactive. Phones ring, reviews come in, and the calendar fills with whatever demand already exists. Very little of that demand is shaped by decisions made in July.
The decisions that matter get made earlier. Travelers planning a spring or summer trip start researching in the winter. Arival research found that in 2025, three in five travelers (60%) booked their tour and attraction tickets at least three days in advance, while about one in five tour bookers bought on the day of the experience. The advance bookers are the most valuable group for a direct booking strategy, because they have time to find an operator’s own website instead of defaulting to the first OTA listing they see.
Distribution trends make this more urgent. Arival’s latest survey of more than 5,000 operators found that OTAs’ share of bookings rose to 37% in 2025, and that direct website bookings saw their steepest decline yet. Every booking that shifts from an OTA to a direct channel keeps the commission in the operator’s pocket and gives the operator the guest’s email address for future marketing.
The Month-by-Month Off-Season Marketing Plan
The plan below assumes a spring through fall operating season. Operators with a winter season can shift the same sequence to their own quiet months.
| Month | Focus | Key Outputs |
|---|---|---|
| October | Audit and measurement | Season recap, booking source report, tracking fixes |
| November | Content and search visibility | Updated tour pages, new FAQ content, structured data review |
| December | Gift and holiday revenue | Gift card offer, past-guest email, holiday social posts |
| January | Early-booking launch | Early-bird offer, reopened calendar, paid search scale-up |
| February | Scale what works | Retargeting, partner outreach, review requests for returning guests |
October: Audit the Season Before the Details Fade
Start with a plain accounting of where last season’s bookings came from. Pull a booking source report from the reservation system and split it into direct website, OTA, phone, walk-in, and partner or reseller bookings. That one table shows how dependent the business is on third parties and sets the target for next year.
Next, check the measurement setup. Confirm that analytics tracks completed bookings on the booking platform, beyond page views. Many operators find in October that conversion tracking broke mid-season after a website or booking widget update, which means the data used to plan next year is incomplete. Fixing tracking now means next season’s decisions rest on real numbers.
Finish the month with a short list of the three biggest problems the season revealed. Common examples are a slow mobile booking page, tour pages that leave basic questions unanswered, and a thin review profile on Google.
November: Build the Content Travelers Will Find in Winter
November is the best month for work that search engines and AI answer engines need time to discover. Pages updated now have months to be crawled and indexed before spring planning peaks.
Focus on the pages that sell:
- Rewrite each tour page so it answers the questions guests actually ask: duration, meeting point, what to bring, age limits, accessibility, weather policy, and cancellation terms.
- Add a short FAQ section to each tour page, using the real questions that came in by phone and email during the season.
- Review structured data on tour pages so search engines and AI tools can read the product name, price, duration, and reviews accurately.
- Publish one or two helpful articles aimed at trip planners, such as a seasonal guide to the destination or a comparison of the operator’s tours.
This work supports both traditional search and AI visibility. Tools like Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT pull from pages that state clear, specific facts, and a tour page that lists its details plainly is easier to cite than one that relies on photos and brochure language.
December: Turn Past Guests Into Holiday Revenue
December is the one off-season month with built-in buying intent. Gift cards and experience gifts let an operator earn revenue in the quietest part of the year and lock in guests for the next season.
A simple December program includes a gift card or gift certificate offer on the website, two or three emails to past guests promoting it, and a small set of social posts. Past guests are the most likely buyers because they already know the experience is worth giving. Keep the offer simple and make the purchase path short, ideally one page with the gift option visible from the homepage.
January: Launch Early Booking
In January, reopen the calendar for the coming season if it is still closed, and give early planners a reason to book now. An early-bird rate, a small add-on, or priority date selection all work. The goal is to capture advance bookers directly before they compare options on an OTA.
This is also the time to scale paid search back up, adding budget to high-intent phrases such as the tour type plus the destination. Branded search should run all winter at a small budget, because it protects an operator’s own name from competitors and resellers who bid on it. In January, raise its budget as search volume returns.
February: Scale What Is Working
By February, the January numbers show which offers and channels are producing bookings. Put more budget and effort behind the winners. Add retargeting ads for people who visited the booking page and left without finishing. Reach out to hotels, visitor centers, and complementary businesses about referral partnerships before their own busy season starts. Ask returning guests who book early for a review after their visit, so the review profile grows from the first week of the season.
Common Off-Season Marketing Mistakes
Operators tend to repeat a few mistakes in the quiet months:
- Going silent. Stopping all email and social activity for five months means past guests forget the business right when they start planning.
- Discounting without a reason. Early-bird offers work when they reward commitment. Blanket discounts train guests to wait for a sale.
- Starting too late. Content published in April has little time to rank before peak demand.
- Ignoring tracking. Planning next season on broken data leads to cutting channels that actually work.
Frequently Asked Questions
When should a tour operator start marketing for next season?
Most seasonal operators should start in October with a season audit and have early-booking offers live by January. Content and search work done in November has time to be indexed before spring trip planning peaks.
What is the best off-season marketing channel for a tour business?
Email to past guests is usually the highest-return channel in the off-season, because the audience already knows and trusts the business and the cost to reach them is close to zero. It works especially well for gift card offers in December and early-booking offers in January.
How can a tour operator reduce OTA bookings next season?
Improve the direct booking path on the operator’s own website, answer common questions on tour pages, run branded search ads, and give early planners a reason to book direct, such as an early-bird rate or add-on that is only available on the operator’s website.
Should tour operators run ads in the off-season?
Yes, at a reduced level. Keep branded search and remarketing running all winter at small budgets, then add budget to high-intent searches in January and February. Large awareness campaigns in November and December rarely pay off for seasonal operators, with the exception of gift card promotions.
Summary
For marketing, the off-season is the planning and building window that decides how full, and how direct, the next season will be.
- October: audit booking sources and fix tracking.
- November: rebuild tour pages and publish planning content.
- December: sell gift cards to past guests.
- January: launch early booking and scale paid search back up.
- February: scale the offers and channels that are working.
Operators who follow a plan like this enter the season with cleaner data, stronger search visibility, and a head start on direct bookings, instead of reacting to whatever demand shows up in May.
Sources
- Arival, “Direct Bookings Dive, OTAs Rise”, January 2026, from The Global Operator Landscape (4th Ed.): OTAs reached 37% of bookings in 2025.
- Arival, “Why Travelers Book Experiences in Advance (or Not)”, December 2025: 60% of travelers booked tour and attraction tickets at least three days in advance in 2025.