My Tourism History

Arriving back in the UK after a year in South America, I made the decision to move away from my home city and chase a job in tourism. I’d booked my first big trip with STA when I was 18, so I was really happy to be offered a sales role and moved to Brighton soon after.

3 weeks of training later and I’d got a good grip on the GDS system (which I came to love in a massive geek sort of way), then I was onto the shop floor selling flights and tours and insurance and whatever else I could possibly sell.
I was pretty good at it, too. I sold a lot of stuff and came to enjoy it, although I’d never really pictured myself as a salesman.

STA were a good company to work for as well, even though the pay and commissions weren’t mindblowing. And if you do OK then you get to travel, which was big for me, and I managed to get trips to Russia, China, the Philippines, and Indonesia during my time there.

I did a bit of blogging during my trips and led some local marketing projects too, but I was a salesman first and foremost. I wasn’t sure that’s what I wanted to be forever though…

Rickshaw were a lot smaller and less corporate than STA, and it felt like there would be more variation and opportunity in my new Sales job with them.

I only had one thing to sell – Cuba holidays. It was the start of the Cuba boom, when Obama was relaxing restrictions and the whole world seemed desperate to go see it “before it changes”. We were well positioned to take advantage with fairly reliable DMC partners and a way to sort visas, local homestays, transport, and activities.

Cuba was a mess and things went wrong ALL THE TIME, but I’d made it part of the sales pitch so most people just accepted it and had a lovely old time. And we sent A LOT of people to Cuba. In fact, I think I still hold the Rickshaw record for the most sales ever in a month and I wouldn’t say I’m an elite salesman. You literally couldn’t stop people booking.

Then a Product Manager job came up. I went for it, got it, and ended up as the Product Manager for most of Rickshaw’s Latin America destinations (plus Indonesia and Morocco, randomly).

I liked it. I liked designing new trips, I liked working with the DMCs, I liked solving problems and dealing with the technicalities, and I LOVED going on Product Development trips I liked writing product descriptions too, and I was good at it – things I re-wrote invariably sold better than before, and my destination sales were growing. So I started rewriting other destinations too, and they sold better, so this became another part of my role at Rickshaw.

Years passed and everything was going pretty well. Then Covid.

The business shrunk from almost 40 people to less than 10. Operations experts were very much needed. Product Managers not so much. Fair enough.

With tourism on its proverbial knees, I decided to lean on my writing skills and went freelance under the name WordsWritten. I did a few copywriting crash courses, set up my website, and started pimping my services.

With most of my useful contacts belonging to the travel industry, a lot of clients came that way early on.

Here’s a selection of one-off tourism projects I’ve delivered in the past few years;

Vapues Tours – A Nicaragua-based DMC I’d worked with at Rickshaw. I re-wrote their entire website and most of their product info, helping them with SEO, sales copy, B2B pages, and a whole bunch of other stuff too.

Royal Mountain – A Nepali DMC and tour operator, I created a new Nepal-specific branded website to act as a SEO-friendly funnel for new direct enquiries. As well as managing the build and directing the project, I also created all the static travel guide pages, blog content, and social posts to help launch the site.

Laik – I ended up writing for a whole bunch of different businesses across a whole bunch of industries, but one of my favourite clients was Laik. They renovate and let properties across the Lake District area, and they’re genuinely lovely people who tackle a sometimes controversial business model in the right way. I helped them design a new website and set a tone of voice that suited them, with a local feel and a bit of warmth and humour.

JW Marriott & Marriott Bonvoy – I’ve done a fair bit for both brands now, most of it under NDA, but it largely revolves around specific destination campaigns or copywriting for the Bonvoy membership benefits.

Eager for a break from short-term contracts, I signed a 6-month deal with a US-owned day tour company. They’d become one of the biggest operators in Rome and were expanding to run guided tours around many European and US cities. My project was to work through all of their 300+ tours, look for potential product improvements, and re-write everything with effective titles and sales copy supported by SEO research and keywords.

Feedback and early data showed that the work made a significant impact.

Closer to home in Brighton, I agreed a short-term contract with this Brighton-based B-Corp specialising in tailored holidays to Latin America, Spain and Portugal. I worked on a number of branding, product, and website projects as the business moved towards a more commercial model.
It was a good fit in many ways and the hope was that we’d form a longer-term relationship, but the timing was off for both personal and business reasons, so we amicably parted ways at the end of our initial agreement.

In the years since Covid, Rickshaw had thankfully survived and were growing again. But their once-manageable website had undergone major structural changes and split into multiple sub-sites. It was a change somewhat forced upon them and it had created a lot of gaps and UX doom-loops, so I went back in to help sort it out.

I planned and executed a project to solve UX issues across each sub-site, and to create a clear customer journey from home and landing pages through to product and contact pages. I also created or re-wrote multiple sales and information pages to enhance the Rickshaw brand and improve SEO across their most valuable destinations.

Things were going very well and we’d started to discuss extending the relationship, but I was approached with a different opportunity that was difficult to turn down.

Somewhat out of the blue, I was offered a 12-month Head of Product role at Top Sights Tours – one of London’s biggest walking tour operators with aspirations to expand into new territories. They operate almost exclusively on the OTA model.

To be blunt, the whole thing seemed like a mess. The business model was simple and effective, the core tours were selling well, but all the knowledge and processes were locked away inside my new boss’s mind. So, with a newly-recruited team of four people under my wing, I set about extracting the info I needed and putting proper processes in place.

I trained my team into good shape before rolling out projects to improve the sales copy and images across all existing tour listings and sales channels, as well creating new tours and listings for the planned expansion destinations (New York, Thailand, and Dubai).

It was an eye-opening year which put the business in a much stronger position to move forward, and it also gave me an introduction to a whole new side of the travel industry.

The great thing I learned about the day tour industry is that you don’t need to be a millionaire to get started, so in Spring 2025 I formed my own company to give it a try. At the time of writing it’s only been running for a few months, but the goal is to create a low-maintenance business I can operate alongside other projects and roles.

It’s been a lot of work and I’ve even been guiding most of the early tours myself, but the signs are promising. My most popular tour is a London “City Hike” designed for the active travel market, but I also offer a private tour in partnership with Uber Boats by Thames Clippers.