Today’s market is saturated with organizations selling the same product and services, and that means the customer experience (CX) is more important now than it’s ever been before.
In fact, in today’s competitive market the customer experience is one of the only differentiating factors between brands. According to Gartner, 86 percent of professionals engaged in or leading customer experience expect to compete based on CX alone.
While this is now one of the leading factors of a successful organization, it’s even more important for businesses in the tour and activity sector. That’s because our industry really does compete on nothing but the guest experience.
Your entire business model is to provide your customers with a world-class experience that they’ll remember for the rest of their life. Businesses in the tour and activity industry should be striving to continuously improve the guest experience.
The better your guest experience, the more you’ll drive new bookings, increase repeat bookings, gain new referral bookings and outdo the local competitors in your target market.
But how does your business ensure you provide a great customer experience, even after your customers have finished their tour or activity experience? Great photos are the key to a long-lasting guest experience that your customers love.
Why are photos important for improving the guest experience
People pay for tour and activity experiences for two reasons. Firstly, they want an amazing experience that they can remember for the rest of their lives. Secondly, they want to be able to get photos of themselves enjoying the experience, so they can both remember the experience and share it with their friends and family.
As a result, taking great photos of guests is a huge opportunity for tour and activity operators.
Providing your customers with great photos of their experience will set your brand apart from your competitors. This is particularly true if you provide your customers with free photos, as this will differentiate you from your competitors who are still selling expensive photo packages to their customers or not even providing photos at all.
There’s one important thing you can do to improve the guest experience of your tour or activity business, and it’s simple. Take one high-quality photo of each guest smiling.
A photo will capture the joy, excitement and emotions that your customers had when they were enjoying your experience. Giving them free photographic evidence of their memory will leave customers with fond memories of your brand for years to come.
How do great photos improve the guest experience?
With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the key reasons why great photos improve the guest experience.
✔️ You provide your customers with memories that last a lifetime
When customers are provided with a photo of them looking happy, they will relive their experience with your brand over and over again. Each time they look at the photo, your guests will be able to remember the emotions and revisit the experience they had with your brand. Each time they relive that experience, they’re more likely to recommend it to others or make a repeat booking.
✔️ You allow your customers to share their experience with their friends and family
Guests want photos of their time with your company, so that they can share that experience with their friends and family. When guests have a photo that perfectly depicts how they felt during the experience, they’ll be more likely to share it on their social media channels. That means happier guests, as well as a higher chance that your business will receive referral bookings through user-generated content.
✔️ Customers appreciate high-quality photos
Customers appreciate when brands go above and beyond to improve their experience. By providing photo memories to your customers, guests will see that you are putting in the extra effort to not only ensure they enjoy the experience while it’s happening, but so that they can remember it for years to come. Your customers know that you’ll take photos of their experience far better than they can (since your guides will know the most exciting and attractive parts of the tour), and they'll appreciate how those high-quality photos really depict the emotions they were feeling.
✔️ Let your customers live in the moment
There’s no doubt about it, your guests will have a far better experience when they don’t have to be concerned about bringing their own camera and taking the right photo. By making photos a part of the experience that your guides manage, you’ll ensure your guests don’t have to worry about taking their own photos and that they can instead truly focus on the activity and having fun.
Interested in learning more about why photo marketing is crucial for the growth of your tour or activity business, and how it enhances the guest experience? Get in touch with Fotaflo today. We’ve developed an innovative memory marketing platform that automates and simplifies the way in which activity and tour operators distribute photos to their guests.
