A marketing plan for a tour operator
Not a thirty-page document. One page, one trip, two hours a week, and a column that says what actually brought the booking.
A tour operator marketing plan is a one-page list of five things for one trip: who the customer is, where that customer looks before booking, what you will publish each week and each month, what you will spend and on what, and how you will know which of it brought a booking. You write it before the season, cost it against what each seat contributes, and check it once a month against the bookings that actually arrived.
By the minhOS team
Updated 11 October 2026
Why the plan fits on one page
If you post on Instagram when you remember and have no idea whether it brings bookings, a plan that needs a marketing department will not change that. A plan that fits on one page, keeps a two-hour slot in your week and has a place to write down what worked is a plan you will follow.
The five parts
1. One trip, one customer
Pick the trip that earns: the one with the highest contribution per seat, from How to calculate tour profit, not the one that looks good in photos. Then describe one person who books it: where they are from, whether they are already in Greece or planning from home, what they type into Google, what worries them (fitness, weather, kids, language). Everything below is for that person. A second trip gets a second page, later.
2. Where they look
Usually some mix of: Google (your name, after someone recommends you, or a search like "sea kayaking Milos" before they do), the marketplace listing, Instagram or TikTok, the hotel reception, a friend. Tick the ones that apply to your person. You will not be everywhere; be good in two or three places.
3. What you publish, and reuse
One good departure gives you the raw material: twenty photos and a short video. That one set becomes the trip page on your site in both languages, three feed posts, a set of stories, a TikTok slideshow, one Google ad set, one Meta ad set, and the email to last year's customers when the new dates are out. Make the material once, in one afternoon, and spread it across the month. A plan that needs new content every week is a plan that stops in July.
4. What you spend, and the rule for it
Before you pay for any ad, know what one seat on the trip contributes (How to price a tour) and how many seats an average booking has. Together they give the most you can pay to win a booking and still be better off. A rule of thumb: spend no more than a third of a booking's contribution to win it.
Illustrative example: the €99 trip from How to price a tour, with €12 of costs for each person, sold direct
| Line | Working | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Contribution of one seat | €99 − €12 | €87 |
| Contribution of an average booking of two seats | 2 × €87 | €174 |
| Ceiling for one direct booking won through ads | €174 ÷ 3 | €58 |
| A €200 campaign that brought two bookings | €200 ÷ 2 | €100 a booking, above the ceiling |
| The same campaign, five bookings | €200 ÷ 5 | €40 a booking, under the ceiling |
Above the ceiling, stop the campaign or change it. Under it, keep going.
5. How you know what worked
Three simple instruments, none of them optional:
- A UTM tag on every link you share, on each post, ad, partner and email, so your analytics can tell which one a visitor came from
- One question at checkout, "How did you hear about us?", with five fixed answers and "other"
- A monthly table with one row per channel: what it cost in money and hours, how many direct bookings it brought, and what each of those bookings cost. A channel with no bookings for two months is the one you stop
The weekly and monthly rhythm
A two-hour week
| When | What | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Every week | Post what is scheduled; answer comments and messages; check new bookings against the table; check the review requests went out | 60 to 90 minutes |
| Every month | Fill in the channel table; move budget away from the channel with no bookings; refresh one trip's photos after a good departure; email your list if there is news, such as dates or a new trip | 60 minutes |
| Before the season | Write the page for the trip that earns; set the ad ceiling from the contribution; make the season's material in one afternoon; pick the two or three places you will be | One afternoon |
| After the season | Read the year's table; keep two channels, drop one, try one new one | One hour |
The one-page template
Copy it into a document or a spreadsheet and fill in the right-hand column
| Section | Fill in |
|---|---|
| Trip | The one that earns; its contribution per seat; seats in an average booking |
| Customer | One person, in one sentence; what they search for; what worries them |
| Where they look | Two or three places, ticked |
| Material | One afternoon a season: photos, video, trip page, posts, stories, ad sets, email |
| Budget | Ceiling for one booking = contribution per seat × seats in an average booking ÷ 3; a monthly cap |
| Measurement | UTM on every link; "How did you hear about us?"; the monthly channel table |
| Stop doing | The channel with no bookings for two months; the platform you post on out of a sense of duty |
What to stop doing
- Posting every day on a channel your customer is not on
- Boosting posts without a UTM tag
- Paying a freelancer once a year for a burst of content nobody measures, then not knowing whether the site or the ads brought the bookings
- Copying the marketplace listing text onto your own site: search engines may treat your page as the copy
Where minhOS fits
Some of this plan is in minhOS today. You set up UTM tags, Google Analytics 4 and shortlinks yourself, so you can see which link brought a visitor to your site. Review requests go out after every trip without you sending them. minhOS drafts ad creatives and a social pack in your brand, Instagram stories and feed posts, Facebook posts, a TikTok slideshow and Google ad sets, for you to review and export. minhOS posts nothing and buys no ads: you do.
A marketing plan inside minhOS is next, and so are newsletters, publishing and scheduling, and buying and running ads inside minhOS. Until then, this page is the plan, and the posting and the ad buying stay with you.
Questions and answers
How much should a small tour operator spend on marketing?
There is no percentage that fits everyone, and this guide will not invent one. Work from the trip's contribution per seat: the ceiling for one booking, times the bookings you need, is your budget. If that number is small, that is information, not a problem.
Do I need to be on TikTok?
Only if your one customer is. Two or three places done well beat many done out of a sense of duty.
Should I hire an agency?
If you do, hire for continuity rather than a burst, and only once the monthly table exists, so you can see what they change. An agency without measurement is one more invoice and still no answer to what brought the bookings.
How do I know if Instagram brings bookings?
Put a UTM tag on the link in your bio and in every story, and ask "How did you hear about us?" at checkout. After two months, the table answers it.
What photos do I need?
The ones you already have. Ten good photos of one trip are enough for a full set; twenty are better. A phone is fine.