Is the Tourism Industry Recession-Proof?

Kevin: 0:00

Guys Welcome to episode two. I was trying to get that but my biggest fucking fan Jared Broach interrupted me to let me know about my other podcasts that I do that he listens to every single episode. So we at least know he's coming back for Episode Two. Those of you guys who tuned in episode one we are the tourism Titans if you don't know by now, with me, my wonderful co-host Steven Edwards, Jared Broach Andy Kurtz, and combined between the four of us we've got like 60 years and tourism Andy bringing in 50 of those.

Andy: 0:39

Oh, goodness, I see the way this is gonna go. How

Kevin: 0:41

are you guys doing today? Ma'am? Excellent.

Andy: 0:44

Excellent. Fantastic. Fantastic.

Kevin: 0:46

Jared: 1:28

Kevin: 2:20

Andy: 2:47

Stephen Edwards 4:07

Kevin: 6:57

Andy: 7:21

I think it does also matter where you are. So if you're in fucking Tulsa, Oklahoma, and nobody wants to go to Tulsa, when I don't know I've never been there. But I'd imagine there's not a lot of recreational opportunities. So if you're counting on people visiting, and now they're not going to visit, you know, that's a different story. We're lucky where I am. People live here. And that's a market. I have people that can drive here. So planes are expensive. So it's different, depending on the market.

Kevin: 7:45

Yeah, it must be nice to operate in Florida. Kevin.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

21 Yeah, because I deal in adventure, outdoor tourism.

mean, God, I didn't even get back open until 21. So I mean, that was crazy. But you know, it's, there's a pivot, right? If you pivot within the industry, like we didn't, we didn't really, we just kind of kept doing our thing. Because I, I thought that COVID was going to be gone, you know, and we weren't going to be in a situation where I had to go, like, figure out a new plan, but the girl that did like the, the whatever the food boxes, I think it was what it was, I mean, that's a pivot total. And like, that's not like you're competing with like, Harry's cookies, or Aryan or whatever, you know, like Omaha Steaks, like sending them boxes that like, I don't think that's a pivot, I think that's a like, straight up, like, abort what you're doing. We're gonna like, I'm no longer in tourism, right? And now I think she's back. But, you know, for the most part, it's like, you know, recessions I like the main like San Diego's the San Diego's the Miami's those big cities that people always want to go to the people that do have money, they end up going to and you've got to like just outmaneuver your competition to get that, that smaller, you know, smaller amount of traffic, the bigger pie that right. But you know, like, we're in a weird situation that is different, where I have not personally like I'm more of a doom and gloom. But I'm not like necessarily seeing that traffic's dropping off. I'm not seeing that we're selling any less tickets. But I'm seeing our cost just like, you know, good get out of control. I'm seeing like, everything like that. And I you know, for a company where I didn't raise the price of our ghost tours for damn seven years, probably. And I mean, I have literally increased prices this year, across the board. Like every tour, I think seven times, like on differences. Like, I've literally like, anywhere I can possibly like, squeeze a few extra dollars is like the difference of paying for $7 guests in a bus in California versus, you know, versus trying to like raise the ticket. But I mean, it's just, it's been brutal, like the amount of price increases you've had to do.

And that's great, but so can your competitors so it just makes them work? Yeah, so it's easier to make the phone ring but your your phone's ringing and so is everybody else's so that's a different set of challenges. Yes, it's it's easier the face that I did have yellow page ads that it was a big thing every year what do you spend? Now my spending goes up and down. You know as the wind blows and you know, we can go we can change tomorrow. That makes it easier but you still it's competitor. And that's

where everybody, you know, from the old school days had a marketing budget and their marketing budget was $1,500 a month, because there was never any attribution. They never understood what actually converted. So it was just picking a random number. And they ran that TV ad or put up that billboard, and hopefully they had some more booking. I mean, I trust me, I'm Mr. optimistic about almost everything. But to think that I just think it's very easy when your business is crushing it to say that the recession isn't like gonna hit you, because I would happily bring on 10 Other operators from around the country that would say, Hey, we're getting our asses kicked by the by the recession, because that drive in market, you know, the, the guys that were taking out campers to go to Utah to go to the National Park are not filling up their fifth wheel and spending $300 on a tank of gas to go and rent UTVs when they get to Park City or rent, you know, or to go to Zion and do some of that. Do people like going to the ocean or people going to the beach? Yeah, it's still going but and you guys are doing great. I'm super stoked for you guys. But it's just it's not the case of what we're seeing across the country. I mean, search volume, like not even talking about numbers like what your bookings are. But actual just search volume, volume, the amount of people that are searching for similar products is down 20 to 40% across like the board. So when you chop off 40% of your customers are no longer even looking for your product. Yeah, it's gonna affect somebody's numbers.

Do you think that the hotels on the Vegas Strip are seeing like a drastic reduction in occupancy rates?

So that's actually that's, that's a great point. So yes, there's less discretionary income. But what are you going to do to adapt to get that reduced amount, there's always people willing to spend money. So you're going to change your mark, you know, so instead of charging by the by the unit, you're going to charge per head. So you and your three scumbag friends can pay, you know, 25% each, and we can get you out there. You've got to adapt, you got to figure out how to do it because your expenses don't go away. So you don't have that up. Yeah, the recession makes it more difficult, but the strong survive, and you got to figure out what it is to make that happen.

But we're not we're not in a recession though. I mean, I think it's argued I think it's argued like people aren't it's not like job just because the stocks fucking going down. I mean, no one's losing their fucking jobs, the unemployment rate. I mean, I'm not that I'm over here like fucking waving a Biden flag. But I mean, the unemployment rates not down. I mean, are the unemployment rates not up like everyone's still have their job? inflation's up, so let's not necessarily recession just shit cost more. So. Yeah, people are still spending somebody somewhere, right? Yeah, yeah. Jared.

I mean, dude, I mean, I like of all you guys like, I've like United sent me an email. I have been on 84 flights so far. January, Julie. So I'm in the airports around the country. Every I mean, like I say this all the time, like so I'm, you know, hugged in Denver. Anyways, so like, you know, like Denver is a united hub. It's a Southwest hub. I mean, I've never seen the airport more crowded. I fly to Austin a lot. Austin is just absolutely insane. But I go downtown in Austin, I see no one. Like, it's like, you know, like, there's nobody downtown just like Denver, nobody's downtown. But then I fly to San Diego, San Diego is busy flying to LA, you know, so like, I don't I have not gone to a city yet. And don't get me wrong. I'm going to very touristy cities for the most part. But I'm not going to be like holy crap. People aren't traveling, because I know what the cost of a flight is. Like they went from 150 bucks. We're up to 300 Most of the time, you know, one way. And so I don't think people are quite there yet. You're right. Kevin, you said it best. We are in an inflationary period, not necessarily recession. And it's just whether or not that that turns it into one right. I mean, that's the big debate. But, you know, I'm kind of hoping maybe they closed down Europe a little bit so people stay in America for the summer.

That could possibly be it too though. Well, Like, there's all So to be fair, like Steve, you're like a niche marketer. So like, like I almost wanted to like to like to like maybe like make like a cut sign like, man, what's the one thing all these guys were

pretty quick he's gonna find no need everybody's business here

that's listening? Well I just have to say, my I attribute my success to the marriage to the amazing job that Steve has done. It's like, and I'd say that tongue in cheek, obviously. But I mean, yeah, if you think like you're

getting busted over

it? No, yeah, that might be part of being successful is having people that can help you be successful. So yeah, it is tough. And so when we talked about what are we going to do, he seems like a lot of people pull back, a lot of people are not going to spend any money, they're going to try and conserve cash, they're not going to spend money on Google ads, they're not gonna do this seems like put your foot on the throttle and go for it. And we've gotten a great return on it. And he keeps cranking it up as long as it's working. So there's no way to be successful in a good market, a bad market and anything in Steve.

Steve, do you have any idea? Why is Why is search volume 20 to 40% off? Because I don't see that when I travel. I don't see that anywhere I'm going. Like why possibly somebody is not searching for that so or is it just Google's tracking

sucks. My numbers this year are down like 37% from last year. Now I have some variables in mind. So like last year, our boat and jetski stuff were based in Vegas. So Lake Mead is like drying up as we speak, that has proven to be pretty interesting. And it's causing a lot of people to not rent boat and jet skis. But we're seeing it like especially in our slingshots, we're seeing it in our Jeeps where that search volume or like the amount of customers I am I am a preach revenue like get the revenue. I am not married to my price. I moved my price around all the time, I make sure that we are competitive or cheaper or beating out other people's prices. And I mean, there's days I can't give a goddamn sleeps slingshot away. It's not just me it is what we are seeing across multiple operators. I've been out with you Jared you and I have gone out and it's busy as hell out. But but that doesn't necessarily translate to like love for example, like Maverick Maverick helicopter they, they're not crushing it. And the big cons here and I have to put this out. This is a funny statistic or funny thing I heard this week. So I have a friend that works at a at the biggest concierge group here in Las Vegas handles all the concierge for MGM, huge, huge operation sells hotels or I'm sorry sells helicopters, and Red Rock tours and bus tours and yada yada yada, okay. Last week, they I mean, and now mind you like annual revenues of like 12 13 million bucks last month, or I'm sorry, last week, they did $3,500 in revenue. So lowest amount that they have done in like 12 years. So

I'm great. No, I mean, I think if you you know, like discretionary spending has to play into this a little bit, you know, and to that, like destin has a great drive and market. You've had a great year, like Temecula deals with, like, there's a certain level of customer to like to Gerrits point like being in the Temecula space. I mean, people that are going on wine tours tend to probably have a probably more discretionary money than somebody going on $119 ATV tour here in Las Vegas. I, my my guest agreed.

you know, what's your Brian?

What's my bright spot?

Yeah, where where's it working? Oh, he's winning.

You know, like, like, so Temecula, so we'll all start western movies, but like Temecula Temecula, you know, that you're, I mean, for anybody that's familiar, situated between LA and San Diego. It's a drive in market, like people don't fly in there. So it's like, it's a drive in markets got 10 million people coming from LA. So, you know, I don't see any softness there. But I go up to like Seattle, and it was recovering a little bit after all the riots and everything like that. And now you know, I see it kind of down. You know, Nashville. Nashville was the boom I mean, I'm talking it was absolutely absolutely crushing. 21 and I feel like 22 that places like I haven't been maybe it's a ghost town maybe I'm just like we're missed the mark. I'm not sure that Steve's from it's a you know, it's just certain markets you know, Tampa I didn't see too much Charlson has been really up and down compared to like, it was always a you know, a study in like Chicago same was Seattle, Chicago, like, you know, I see Chicago and I'm like, God damn, is it time to close that city? I mean, it just like, it is like nobody goes there for vacation anymore. Yeah,

I mean, so how's amp doing? Like, like, let's not talking about your customers. But I mean, are you're still signing fucking like new clients, like, all the time.

I mean, that slowed down a little bit. And now we are I mean, getting more of the emails of like, Hey, Steve, things are slower than what we expected. How can we get you know, how can we help bookings? I haven't had a lot of I've had a couple unwind. I've had a couple of clients, you know, where it hasn't made sense and their businesses not gonna work. You know, my my sweet spot has been a lot of like operators on coasts. I hate to say it like, we've done really well with guys that are in the watersports space. I like those guys. They have good businesses. And to to Gerrans point, like, I don't know that I have very many clients that are north of Chicago or even like, truthfully, probably north of Las Vegas. It's just not like anytime you take that much like weather into it, you know, we have some snowmobile guys, but they do really well in snow and then they do really well in the summer with their ATV, UTV stuff. And their business is built around it, but like, I recognize Jarrods you know, hard spots with doing some of these walking tours in cities like Chicago, Seattle. It's a it's a challenge, like Chicago is like it's it's funny. He brings that up because we have a little bit of business in Chicago, and Chicago. Seems like a super hard market right now. Yeah, I would think it's gotta be just an impossible market right now. Yeah,

I mean well you have like, oh man we don't have a ton of people like north of Chicago like you know it's like everybody's fucking going on their summer vacation to fucking Wisconsin you know? It's like they call Wisconsin like what's the

Wisconsin Dells up to the bells

okie got on the Suicide Forest the Japan ligula reason you're going to Wisconsin is a fucking Lynch it up. I'm going to kill myself this summer got to go to a wonderful Wisconsin

Oh goodness. I see the way this is gonna

go. Didn't you take your family to Michigan for the

skin from there dude. And I laughed I brought my teenager and we left and I left my wife and kids there. I mean I did I was into adults

tell me more about how

terrible awesome

Did you ever retrievable them? Did you ever get them back?

No, I fuck I left. I left them there. You know, fucking my wife's got that terrible Michigan accent she's like, Oh yeah, we're gonna go up and clean mom's garage. I'm like, oh FAK and get out of here. If we ever get to chill, never listen, she doesn't need to listen to any of my episodes. I could beg on her as much as I want. But ya know, you know, I think those areas are super interesting like North Carolina, Michigan, Wisconsin. They have that like the whole like out but again, there were there. Their hustle was three fucking months, man. I mean, snow, you know, snowmobile tours, like unless you're doing like Colorado like skiing or something like that. That's that's a pretty fucking tough market. And the reality of it is you probably you know, you probably live fucking on site or something and you got you know, you got your house is there and your fucking rent your boats and your fucking living with your cousin and natural circumstances.

Here. Let me say it like this, because it's funny you brought up like, so I have a I have a client in Charleston. And I will say they're like, they're not down for the year. But last year, they had to do nothing to drive the numbers that they did, like, they just had to open up their doors, we we certainly were not like blowing their marketing out of the water. And what I mean by that is they were doing conventional stuff. They were running Google ads, they had a you know, good social remarketing strategy. And they were crushing it week after week, and they had a pretty excellent summer. And this year, they're coming into it, fighting tooth and nail to kind of maintain that same number. And we're having to dig in, we're having to spend a little bit more money on Google, we're having to get pretty creative on some of these social ads to drive customers to book. And it's just it's been a lot more of a fight this year than it was last year for sure.

I think that's exactly the point that I was making. So you do you got to work harder, because it's sometimes it doesn't come as easily. I would love to hear how you deal with with a multi city mark with a multi city operation. Because like, you could figure out San Diego, I know what the deal is, but you manage all those different markets with all the different challenges that each of them have.

Yeah, I mean, we roll out, you know, I mean, we were really good about rolling out the same product to different markets, right. So the product doesn't vary as much as just you know, the, honestly, you change the name on it, and it's says Charlson, or it says Temecula. It's almost the same formula for me. It's when people get super complicated, like their offerings, but I will say, when we opened wine tours in Texas, compared to Temecula Miss totally fucking missed, like our product was not what Texans really wanted. And they didn't appreciate like the historic of the California. In fact, they didn't really like San Francisco cable cars at all. So I should have fucking rolling out horse and carriage or something or some sort of rodeos.

Listen, I'm not gonna I'm not I know you know me dude. You know on on awkward show that we I do my other podcasts that I do. I don't I don't pitch it. I have no other platform that I don't know that they're gonna hear this. I mean, if you're listening this and neither Steve nor I or anybody in this group are trying to sell anything we're we do this we're all doing this for fun. We're all doing this because as I said in the first episode, like this tribe is like our community, you know, but it's like, if you are God, if you're if you're an amp person, like call fucking Steve, man, like you want to talk about phone sales training. And me and Steve are going to be talking at an event coming up, we're going to be co hosting a thing at a thing we're putting together that I'm putting together and we're going to talk about sales training, because it's something that's not talked about enough in the fucking industry. And I would 100% Give credit where credit's due. Because Steve brought it up to me he's like, Well, what do you mean you're not doing anything on the phone? I'm like it we talked about it today. Even with our stronger presence, we do a ton more online bookings and most companies and we talked about this and I'm like shit, man yeah, we're letting customers slip out like we have got to in this industry. I hate to say it big get fucking aggressive you know it's so easy to treat this shit like a call center like man I just I just we did a monthly bonus for the girl that handles majority of our phone calls and my like fucking head spun because I was just like she did how much I'm writing a check for how much money and it's like yeah, man, we got her fucking hungry. We put together some sales scripts. We did some sales training at the beginning of the year I routinely come in I listen to call our call rail I listen to our phone calls. And hey, this is where we're getting it wrong this how can you put into your phone center the immediacy all the old school sales tricks the building a rapport the fucking creating a sense of urgency having great value add and closing these motherfuckers because I told them if this was if you got off the phone and it was for for me my average carts like 425 but I'm like if this was 400 bucks for you, I don't care if it's been 30 minutes and I see $30 million companies that want to get off their their people want to get the fuck off the phone. They Don't want to close the sale. And it's like, man, if you're not if you're just looking outward into digital marketing and your website and your fucking Google Analytics that save your life now right now it's time to fucking get get ready to get boots on the ground. Fucking.

You know that that's true. It's very true. But the funny thing is, I use that this year. So I said, Look, last year, we could do whatever we did pull down your pants to do the antler dance, and the phone was ringing off the hook. So you could be rude to four out of five people didn't matter because everything was going to sell out. But that's not the case this year. So we turn that back on and we're recording every call we train these people better and I explained to him like every call is that much more valuable. You need to make a close on that. And they they get it they appreciate it and they're getting paid for that. But yeah, so it's easy when they're standing in line but when they're not standing in line you got to figure out how to do this and that comes down to training that comes down to scripts that comes down to giving them the tools that they need for sure

comes down to a hungry young entrepreneur like you but listen man you got to fucking this guy is not complacent he's been renting boats since the fucking Titanic fucking sank man look at this guy man he still get NAFTA it's

written fucking rowboat so that is true Carl from Mercury Marine came with his fault the first outboard that we got

well god damn guys I think I think with that, man, I don't know. So do we have an answer guys is is tourism recession proof? I don't know man, I think I think it is if you're a guy like Andy and I think if you're a guy that's like sitting around on his ass like fucking you know, continents money and not worrying about the next sale, then it's gonna it's gonna be tough tidings in that in that house?

It's both. So yes, there is an opportunity in the time of recession. But you also have to watch your ask because your expenses go up and it's harder to get those people so it's a little about it's a little above

Well, I don't know guys. You guys got any more thought? Any final thoughts? Anybody got anything to add? Does that wrap it up?

I think it was great. I love these. I love where this is going I love the topics with some buddies. I like talking to you.

I'm just trying to figure out why the hell he wrote all the sales through your guys's phones and like he specifically built all my stuff to like just be booked online and nobody calls us

Oh, well. Thanks, guys. I think we're gonna wrap it up because Steven Gerrard

need to have a conversation on the phone ringing WHAT THE FUCK Steve like, God, yeah, this is either gonna be the worst thing for your career.

The bugging

talking about his new website that went live today that looks amazing. So if any of you are bored, go check out nightly spirits.com The website went live today and it is bad ass.

And if any of you guys are clients of Steve, come on and join the podcast so we can continue the fucking beatings until morale fucking improves. Guys were the tourism Titans. Thank you guys for tuning in. And we'll see you guys on the next one.