Every guest who books a tour hands the operator an email address, yet most of those addresses sit unused in the booking system after the trip ends. That list is the one marketing channel a tour business owns outright, and it gets more valuable as OTAs take a bigger share of bookings. This guide covers how to grow that list at every point where guests meet your business, how to recover bookings people start and abandon, and how to bring past guests back for another season.
If you are looking for the messages that go out between booking and tour day, those are covered in our guide to pre-arrival email and SMS reminder sequences. This article picks up everything around them.
TL;DR
- OTAs reached 37% of operator bookings in 2025, so every guest email you collect directly is an audience you can reach again without paying commission.
- Collect addresses at four points: the booking form, your website before the booking, check-in, and the end of the tour.
- Abandoned-booking emails should go out within about an hour, because about 1 in 5 tour bookers buys on the day of the experience.
- Win back past guests with a short, segmented series, then remove the people who stay silent.
- Plan four seasonal campaigns a year, including a December gift card push to past guests.
- Judge results by clicks and bookings. Apple Mail Privacy Protection hides real opens, so open rates overstate engagement.
Why Your Own Email List Matters More Each Season
Arival’s January 2026 analysis of its operator research found that OTAs reached 37% of operator bookings in 2025, while direct website bookings fell. A guest who books through an OTA belongs to that OTA’s marketing first. A guest who joins your list can hear from you again next season at almost no cost per message.
That makes email marketing for tour operators less about newsletters and more about ownership. Each address you collect directly is one more guest you can invite back, offer a gift card to, or tell about a new tour without paying for the introduction twice. If you are weighing how much to rely on resellers, our post on whether tour operators should be on OTAs covers the trade-offs.
Where Tour Operators Can Collect Email Addresses
A single field on the checkout form captures only people who finish a direct booking. Guests who book through resellers, walk up, or arrive as part of someone else’s group slip past it. Build collection into four moments instead.
At Booking
Your booking system already records an email for every direct booking. Two steps turn that into a marketing list:
- Add a clear opt-in. A checkbox such as “Send me trip ideas and early access to new dates” separates guests who want marketing email from those who only want their confirmation. Guests who choose it expect to hear from you, which keeps complaints low.
- Connect the booking system to your email platform. Use a native integration or a connector tool so each new opted-in guest flows into your email platform with the tour name, date and party size. Those fields power every segment later in this guide.
On Your Website Before Anyone Books
Arival’s December 2025 research found that 60% of travelers booked tour and attraction tickets at least three days ahead. Many of those planners visit your site more than once before they commit. Give them a reason to leave an address on the first visit:
- A one-page planning guide for your area, such as the best months to visit, where to park, and what to wear.
- A “what to expect” sheet for your most popular tour, with the questions your staff answers most often by phone.
- A date alert for tours that sell out, so planners hear the moment new dates open.
Pair the signup with a short welcome email that delivers the guide and links to the matching tour page. Keep it to one message with one booking link.
At Check-In
Check-in is the best moment to reach guests who booked through a reseller or who are traveling in someone else’s party. Place a QR code at the check-in desk or on the waiver tablet that leads to a one-field signup form. Tie it to something guests want right then, such as a trail map, a photo download, or a discount on their next trip.
On Tour and Right After
Guests are most willing to sign up while the experience is fresh. Ask guides to mention the photo gallery or next-season dates at the end of the tour, and send the gallery link only to people who sign up. The same follow-up can carry a review request, which builds the reviews future guests read before they book.
| Touchpoint | What to Offer | Who You Reach |
|---|---|---|
| Booking form | Opt-in for trip ideas and early dates | Direct bookers |
| Website | Planning guide, “what to expect” sheet, date alerts | Planners who have yet to book |
| Check-in | QR code for a map, photos, or a next-trip discount | Reseller bookers and group members |
| End of tour | Photo gallery link, next-season dates | Everyone on the tour |
Rules Every Signup Must Follow
In the United States, the CAN-SPAM Act governs commercial email. The Federal Trade Commission’s compliance guide requires every marketing email to include a valid physical postal address and a working way to opt out. Opt-out requests must be honored within 10 business days, and the opt-out link must keep working for at least 30 days after you send.
Inbox providers add their own bar. Google’s sender guidelines ask senders to keep the spam rate reported in Postmaster Tools below 0.1% and to avoid ever reaching 0.3%. Senders of more than 5,000 messages a day to Gmail addresses must support one-click unsubscribe. A list built from clear opt-ins stays well inside those limits, which keeps your pre-arrival and confirmation emails landing in the inbox too.
How to Recover Abandoned Bookings
A visitor who picks a tour and a date, starts checkout, then leaves is the warmest lead your website produces. Recovery emails remind that person of the exact tour and date they chose and send them straight back to finish.
Timing Matters More for Tours
Arival found that about 1 in 5 tour bookers bought on the day of the experience. For those guests, a reminder sent the next morning arrives after the tour has already left. Send the first recovery email within about an hour, and keep it short: the tour name, the date they picked, how many spots remain if your system can show it, and one button back to checkout.
A Three-Email Recovery Series
- Within an hour: a plain reminder of the tour and date, with one link to complete the booking.
- The next day: two or three recent guest reviews and answers to the questions that most often stall a booking, such as weather policy, age limits, and cancellation terms.
- Two to three days later, only for dates still in the future: a final note offering the next available dates if the original one has sold out.
Stop the series the moment the guest books. Suppress it entirely for dates that have passed.
Check Your Setup First
Recovery depends on two things your booking system controls: whether it records an email address before payment, and whether it can send a message or pass a “checkout started” event to your email platform. Ask your booking system’s support team both questions before you write a single email. If the answer to either is no, a retargeting ad aimed at checkout visitors is the fallback. Our guide to retargeting ads for tour businesses covers that setup.
How to Win Back Past Guests
Past guests already know your tour is worth the money. A win-back program reminds them, gives them a reason to book again, and asks them to bring someone new.
Segment by What and When They Booked
Send each past guest something that matches their trip. The booking data you synced at checkout makes three simple segments possible:
- Tour type. A family who took the half-day kayak trip should hear about family dates and the next tour up, while a couple who booked the sunset cruise should hear about the private charter.
- Last trip date. Guests from last season are the easiest to bring back. Guests from three or more seasons ago need a fresh introduction to what has changed.
- Home location. Local guests can book on short notice and respond to weekday or off-peak dates. Visitors from out of town need trip-planning lead time and respond to early-booking offers.
A Three-Email Win-Back Series
- What is new. A new route, a new boat, a new season opening date. Lead with the change, and link to the tour page.
- A reason to book now. An early-access window or a returning-guest perk, sent about a week later.
- A referral ask. A simple “bring a friend” offer for guests who still have yet to rebook, sent a week after that.
Subject lines should read like a note from the business, using the guest’s tour and season. Examples:
- “The river trail opens May 2 this year”
- “Early dates for your family’s next paddle”
- “Bring a friend on the sunset cruise”
Clean the List After the Series
Guests who ignore every email in a win-back series, and who have clicked nothing in a year or more, are better off removed. Mailbox providers watch how recipients react to your mail, and a list full of silent addresses raises the share of people marking messages as spam. Removing them protects delivery for the guests who still want to hear from you.
Seasonal Campaigns Across the Year
Most seasonal operators can plan their year around four campaigns. The timing below assumes a spring through fall season, so shift it to match your own quiet months.
| Timing | Campaign | Best Audience |
|---|---|---|
| December | Gift cards and experience gifts | All past guests |
| January to February | Early booking for the new season | Past guests and website signups |
| Two to four weeks before opening | Opening dates and new tours | Whole list, segmented by tour type |
| Final month of the season | Last available dates | Local guests and recent signups |
The December campaign deserves the most attention. Past guests are the likeliest gift buyers because they already know the experience is worth giving. Two or three emails promoting a gift card, linked to a short purchase page, turn the quietest month into revenue. Our off-season marketing plan for tour operators walks through the December gift card campaign and the January early-booking launch month by month.
Where Pre-Trip Emails Fit
Everything above happens before a guest books or after the trip ends. The messages between booking and arrival, such as the confirmation, the pre-arrival email and the day-before text, belong to a separate sequence with its own timing and add-on offers. Our guide to email and SMS reminder sequences covers that sequence message by message, and our post on increasing revenue per booking covers the add-ons to feature in it.
Choosing an Email Platform
Many small operators start on a free plan, and the free limits are tight. Check the live pricing pages before you commit, because both companies change plans often.
| Platform | Free Plan | What to Know |
|---|---|---|
| Mailchimp | Up to 250 contacts and 500 sends a month | The free plan excludes automation flows. Essentials starts at $13 a month for 500 contacts with flows of up to 4 steps. Standard starts at $20 a month with longer, branching flows. |
| Klaviyo | Up to 250 active profiles and 500 email sends a month | Automations and segmentation are available on the free plan. Paid plans are priced by active profile count. |
For the abandoned-booking and win-back series in this guide, choose the platform that integrates most cleanly with your booking system. A platform that receives tour name, date and party size automatically will save more time than any feature difference between the two.
How to Measure Results Without Trusting Open Rates
Open rates used to be the first number operators checked. They are now unreliable. Apple’s Mail Privacy Protection, available since iOS 15, prevents senders from seeing whether a recipient opened a message. Apple Mail downloads email content privately on the reader’s behalf, and Mailchimp’s own help documentation says the opens reported for Apple Mail users inflate overall open rates. The result is open rates that look healthier than real engagement.
Track these numbers instead:
- Click rate. Clicks are a stronger signal than opens. Security scanners and other bots can also click links, so turn on your platform’s bot filtering where it offers one.
- Bookings and revenue from email. Tag every link with UTM parameters so your analytics and booking system can credit email for the bookings it drives.
- List growth by source. Count new subscribers from the booking form, the website, check-in and the end of the tour separately, so you know which touchpoint to improve.
- Unsubscribes and spam complaints. A spike after a send points to the wrong audience or too many emails.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do tour operators get guests who booked through an OTA onto their email list?
Ask in person. A QR code at check-in or on the waiver tablet, tied to a photo download, a trail map or a next-trip discount, reaches reseller guests at the one moment they deal with you directly. Guests who opt in there can then be invited to book direct next time.
How soon should an abandoned-booking email go out?
Within about an hour. Arival’s research found that about 1 in 5 tour bookers buys on the day of the experience, so a next-day reminder can arrive after the tour has left. Follow up the next day only for dates still in the future.
How often should a tour operator email past guests?
Plan around the four seasonal campaigns, with two or three emails each, plus the win-back series for guests who have gone quiet. Send more only when you have something new to say, such as new dates, a new tour, or a gift offer.
Are email open rates still worth tracking?
Only as a rough trend. Apple Mail Privacy Protection prevents senders from seeing real opens, which inflates reported open rates. Clicks, bookings from email, and list growth by source are better measures of whether your email program works.
Do tour operators need permission to email guests?
In the United States, the CAN-SPAM Act requires a physical postal address and a working opt-out in every marketing email, with opt-outs honored within 10 business days. A clear opt-in checkbox at booking goes further and keeps spam complaints low, which protects delivery for all your email.
Summary
- Collect email addresses at booking, on your website, at check-in, and at the end of each tour.
- Send abandoned-booking reminders within an hour, and stop them once the date passes.
- Win back past guests with a short series segmented by tour type, last trip date and home location, then remove the silent addresses.
- Run four seasonal campaigns a year, starting with December gift cards.
- Measure clicks, bookings and list growth, and treat open rates as a rough trend.
Want to know how many past guests and abandoned bookings your business is sitting on? Get my free revenue analysis.
Sources
- Arival, “Direct Bookings Dive, OTAs Rise”, January 2026.
- Arival, “Why Travelers Book Experiences in Advance (or Not)”, December 1, 2025.
- Federal Trade Commission, “CAN-SPAM Act: A Compliance Guide for Business”.
- Google, “Email sender guidelines”, Gmail Help.
- Apple, “Use Mail Privacy Protection on iPhone”, Apple Support.
- Apple, “If you see ‘Unable to load remote content privately’ at the top of an email”, Apple Support.
- Mailchimp, “Apple Mail Privacy Protection (MPP) FAQs” and “About Open and Click Rates”, Mailchimp Help.
- Mailchimp, Marketing plan pricing and plan comparison, checked October 13, 2026.
- Klaviyo, Pricing, checked October 13, 2026.