Trafalgar Tours Uses Guest Reviews to Build Interest in New Offerings

Trafalgar Tours is encouraging guest feedback and online reviews from its customers, an effort that is tied to the growing demand for more authentic – and less scripted – tour itineraries.

Company CEO Gavin Tollman, speaking at a recent event in New York to promote an expanded 2016 product line, elaborated on how the company has tapped into social media and customer reviews to reach a wider range of demographic groups.

A key part of the company’s strategy is to build credibility through the user reviews posted via the Feefo customer-feedback system. Reviews are only accepted if the person posting can prove that he or she had taken a trip with Trafalgar. Tollman said Trafalgar has already been awarded Feefo’s Gold award – granted to companies with the highest satisfaction rate – after just one year.

People are looking for more individual and authentic experiences, he said, not the formulaic group tours of yore. The stereotype of the group tour market as “old people on a bus” is a thing of the past, he said.

A successful addition to its roster is the line of “Be My Guest” programs, which connect Trafalgar tour clients with local residents who share common interests, such as arts and crafts or culinary expertise.  

The company now has a roster of about 200 of these programs; for example Trafalgar’s “Best of France” package includes an evening meal in a traditional 17^th century farmhouse in the Loire Valley that “gives you an opportunity to meet and share with the local people,” Tollman said.  

Other offerings include dinner with a family whose ties to their village outside Dubrovnik go back five centuries; lunch at a castle overlooking the Rhine near Frankfurt; dinner with a Dutch host in Amsterdam; and lunch with a family at their wine estate in northern Italy.

Trafalgar also encourages guests to post photos via various social media, such as its Twitter hashtag #simplytrafalgar – which echoes its new slogan, “Simply the Best.”

Pic: Adventure Jay