Day-tour company Walks stays active with virtual outings

A day tour company that offers guided walks has put a new twist on virtual travel, launching live tours for a nominal fee.
Walks, a Signature preferred supplier, unveiled the innovative concept for keeping guests connected and guides at least partially employed.

For $10, anyone can sign up for the virtual events, which include cooking classes and tours of landmarks such as Buckingham Palace and the Sistine Chapel. There is a built-in tipping option, and the company said that 100% of gratuities go directly to the guides.

Those who sign up for one of the one-hour, interactive virtual tours gets a $25 credit for a future Walks tour that is good for two years.

Walks co-founder and CEO Stephen Oddo said it was a great way to keep some of the company’s nearly 700 guides working and engaged with guests, while giving travelers an interactive way to see new things or reconnect with a guide they have used previously in their travels.

“We’re going to do this for a couple of months and see how it goes,” Oddo said. “I’m not super hopeful that international travel will all of a sudden go back to normal. This could be something that we do forever.”

Douglas Quinby, co-founder and CEO of Arival, which tracks the day tours industry, said the virtual tours from Walks are just one example of what tour operators are doing to try to help partners and their workers, most of whom are independent contractors.

Several food tour companies, including the Culinary Adventure Co. in Toronto, Unexpected Atlanta and Milwaukee Food Tours, are offering “food tours in a box,” which contain meals and snacks from participating restaurants and are delivered to clients’ homes. Culinary Adventure also includes a coupon for $50 off a future in-person tour.

Most virtual content that has been launched by travel companies in the wake of the pandemic has been free, designed mostly to keep their brands and travel front and center in people’s minds.

But Quinby said that even with paid content, the impact of the travel shutdown is still expected to be grim for the day tours and activities sector, which is made up mostly of one- and two-person companies. According to Arival’s latest member survey, 43% of respondents said they were at risk of failing within three months.

“While these are all novel ideas designed to support operators and their guides, they are not really business saviors,” Quinby said. “You can’t use a sink stopper to stop a dam from collapsing.”

Source: travelweekly.com

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