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You’re a marketer in one of the most competitive industries.
You may be tired of trying, over and over, to use the same marketing strategies that you read about online or learned about in school - but is that really going to move the needle?
We all know the big brands - Booking.com, American Airlines, The Points Guy, Royal Caribbean, Marriott, VRBO, and Hertz... but what about the emerging brands that have found their path to scale?
The Travel Marketing Podcast is about sitting down with successful marketing professionals in the travel, transportation, and tourism industry to learn what has worked for them, what they’ve learned along the way, and what new trends they’re noticing.
We are Propellic, and we’re on a mission to create more diversity in thought for the planet. We’re doing that by helping brands - specifically travel, transportation, and tourism brands - increase their reach through intelligent marketing that travels further.
Blending Culture, Storytelling, and Technology
This is the Travel Marketing Podcast brought to you by Propellic, bringing you the news and insights and what's working and not working in today's competitive transportation and tourism landscape. From emerging brands to the most established professionals. These lessons of intelligent marketing will help your marketing plan travel further.
Brennen Bliss: I could not be more excited about today's episode. I have the pleasure and honor of introducing someone who has over the past. A year and a half or so became just a really good friend of mine after seeing her at so many conferences and originally being introduced to her by Bruce Rosard from Arrival.
Today, you're going to hear from Daphne Trevini. I got the name right. The last name is hard, it's Greek, but I did my best. She is the CRO and co-founder of a company called Clio Muse Tours, and Clio Muse Tours is… they're based in Greece, they've got a team of at least 30 or 40 people if I remember correctly.
And she's just one of the most passionate and innovative people that I've met in my experience working in travel and tourism. She is essentially covering marketing and overall revenue generation for Clio Muse. And under her leadership, they've really successfully combined technology, culture, and storytelling to create immersive and engaging tours for travelers worldwide.
And with all that said, I am so excited to introduce Daphne. Hey Daphne, thanks so much for joining me today. It's so good to see you.
Daphne Tsevreni: Hey Brennan. It's very nice to see you too, as well.
BB: How have you been since, what was it, Focusrite that we saw each other at last?
DT: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm great. Actually, the season is running smoothly, quite smoothly, as any tour operator can actually say.
And I think that in general, everything is working as it should.
BB: Well, I'm so excited to talk to you today about Clio Muse Tours and everything that y'all have been doing. It's been a company that I've been following since we got involved with Arrival and the tours and activities space. I certainly appreciate and enjoy having you as a friend and in my world, but I'm excited to hear what you have to share today.
So let's just dive right in. How'd you come to be a part of Clio Muse Tours? Tell me about the founding story.
DT: Okay. So the founding story started back in 2012, where I met Andreas and Yanis in a startup weekend university hackathon. It was one of the first that actually ran in Greece, in general, even in Athens.
So, back then, we were just university students, or seniors, or whatever. Right about before we ended the university, the bachelor degree. And we met because this hackathon brought people together from different industries and this basically helped us a lot because we had, you know, totally different experiences and also totally different objectives.
So, but then the vision that was connecting us was Andrea's vision, actually, that actually told us that he wanted to create a network of cultural heritage and he didn't know how to do it, but he still did it. So he still said it and we discussed, you know, internally and said, okay, what is it exactly that you're thinking about? And he didn't have any idea. He just wanted, you know, to create this cultural heritage network and wanted to basically do that through technology. So running a few years down the road, basically what happened was that we started creating this platform for museums to bring people and make people more engaged with culture.
We collaborated with those museums, they gave us their source, so their content, and we created stories out of them. And those stories seemed much more engaging than the raw material that the museum had. So we ran a few experiments with other museums as well, and we wanted to have this app free for the world, and basically the museums paid some kind of subscription.
But then... In 2018, a tour operator came to us and said, I want you guys to do what you do, but for the travelers. And basically they wanted us to recreate the business model and make the tours purchasable by travelers for specific attractions, museums, city walks, archeological sites, etcetera. So back then, basically in 2018 we launched this brand new business model where we actually combined entry tickets for those attractions with the audio tours for those attractions and launched them to the tourism world in all of the big online travel agencies and also some local tour operators. We started in Greece, but now we are in 24 countries, if I'm not mistaken and our best, basically, let's say sales revenues comes from Greece and Portugal, currently Portugal, even better than Greece this year.
BB: So it's the natural positioning and founding story of you having an idea of what the market wants, then the market tells you it wants something else. And you follow that as a responsible business owner should.
I love that. Incredible. Is there anybody like Clio Muse Tours in the market? What's not necessarily mentioning names, but you know, how do you differentiate yourself?
DT: Basically a lot of other companies exist in the self guided tours industry in general, audio tours, city games, exploration games, etcetera, etcetera.
So we do have a few companies that do the same thing per location but what differentiates us, I think, is more in the operational part and the business model part because we, by us automatically serving people that want to buy both the entry ticket and the audio tour is something that not many companies have managed to do so.
So I would say that the customer journey is what sets us apart. No, from every revenue stream, every channel that we use, the customer gets everything very, very automatically. So that's how 99 percent of all of our customers complete their experience with no human intervention. So I think this is the first USP.
The second USP is that it's the content creation process. We can create any tour in any destination in under two months. And also the structure of the content is very specific because as I told you before, we know how to create raw material into very engaging stories. And we have developed this content structure that we can actually make available for our authors because we create content through content professionals locally.
We hire them, we help them understand the structure and basically the storytelling methodology that we have created. They adapt to it quite easily, I would say and then they create the tours as they basically believe that it's most engaging.
BB: And the tours, so I know that originally some tour operators came to you and asked you to do this.
So are you selling this under your brand right now, a hundred percent? Or are you doing, are there partnerships where?
DT: We do co branded things, yes. And it's something that we are exploring through different tech channels. So we have our mobile labs, of course, which are branded Clio Muse but we also connect with local operators and make co-branded technological tools, either by web or by integrations of content. We do a lot of things around this department and we are actually experimenting with a few things this year. So you will have news from us, you know, in the coming weeks.
BB: Okay. I'll be following it. So 100 percent per usual, just watching your LinkedIn. That's all I do. I sit in the, I sit in the corner in the dark until I see a notification that Daphne's posted something on LinkedIn.
And then I wake up and my life is full again.
DT: Yes, because you were expecting me, yes, I understand that.
BB: Of course. Walk me through the purchasing process. So I'm a customer. What's the attraction in Portugal? Give me an example.
DT: So it's Quinta da Regaleira, I'm always saying that's quite difficult but you know, this is it.
BB: If only you had chosen an attraction that I could actually pronounce, but whatever you just said, let's go with that and say, I want a tour there. Is it that I'm looking at the attractions website and I'm Getting Clio Muse Tours as an ancillary purchase, or am I going to Clio Muse Tours to buy everything?
DT: So you're going to both our website, but also many, many OTAs, like Get Your Guide, Buy a Tour City, Bad Days, Tickets, all of the big ones, all of the big names that are currently known to the travel industry. And they can find us as a package of entry tickets and audio tours. So yes, this is how they find us.
But also coming to our subject of conversation, we're doing a lot of efforts in order to increase our B2C approach and B2C customers. So this is very important as well.
BB: So on the B2C side, what is your marketing and go to market strategy look like?
DT: So, okay. In general, we have, as I said, building strategic partnerships with travel companies is our biggest, let's say revenue stream currently, but we're also leveraging social media, push notifications and targeted email campaigns to basically increase brand awareness and also direct sales. We're also employing Google and Meta ads, reach new audiences, and this is actually starting to pay off, you know, have a positive role. And you know all about that.
BB: Nothing on x.com yet.
DT: Nothing on X.com yet.
BB: So what about content marketing? What about SEO? Any work that you're doing on that front?
DT: So definitely that. We do create a lot of content, a lot of high quality, informative and SEO optimized content for our website through blog posts and we ensure content aligns with the search intent. We also keep up with content marketing trends, creating relevant and engaging content for our social media newsletters, and push and in app notifications. And we're currently running an extensive SEO audit with a partner here in Greece to ensure that our content basically aligns with search intent and we are open and willing to invest in long term SEO efforts that will improve our visibility in Google ranking.
It's very, very important.
BB: Yeah, we should always talk, of course. Definitely. Maybe in October at arrival, right? You talked a little bit about Meta, you talked about Google ads, and I'm curious, has anything particularly been successful there or other channels that are direct to consumers that you found to be particularly successful that you'd like to share?
DT: Particularly successful part was the location based push notifications. They have proven immensely successful because we had an impressive engagement rate of over 10% and basically we leverage this strategy by sending promotional push notifications to users within a two to five kilometer radius of a specific landmark.
BB: And this is on the Clio Muse Tours app?
DT: Yes and through social media as well.
BB: Okay. Got it. You're essentially looking at location shared data in the app when somebody's near, like, let's pretend they're in Barcelona, where we just were, and they're near, within five miles of La Sagrada Familia.
We push notify, audio tour La Sagrada Familia, that has the best engagement rate.
DT: Basically, yes.
BB: Very cool. Wow. So, I guess that there's a big technology component to that, right? Because you need to be able to push notifications API. You have to have an app. You have to have people download the app. When you think about technology and how it plays into your overall marketing strategy, what's your mindset and how do you see the technology piece as an element that is an integral piece to you, or is that just a bonus?
DT: Oh, it's an integral piece for sure. Technology is part of our DNA, so it plays a vital role in enhancing our marketing efforts by enabling us to deliver. Innovation right and integrated customer experiences and our focus is on automated and personalized content and precise targeting to provide tailored experiences and looking ahead.
We have certain plans to integrate virtual reality, augmented reality and artificial intelligence technologies into our offerings. This might be the case even for the summer, and this advancement will enhance the immersive and interactive aspect of our tours, providing an enriching, you know, experience that opens up new possibilities for cultural exploration.
BB: So it's really about using technology to meet the customer where they are with the content that serves them at that time.
DT: And I would say that technology is just the means to do it. We always focus on the content as well.
BB: You could have a person walk around with each of your customers and say the same thing that tech technology is saying, that would be a much more expensive, but still viable alternative.
All right. I understand. So how about reviews? So every business deals with negative reviews. Every business deals with positive reviews. Have you had any experiences with negative reviews? That you've been able to turn things around on, or, I mean, the thing about self guided tours and walking tours and audio tours, there is nobody there to fix something if something doesn't go right until after the fact, until after somebody makes a review.
So what systems do you have in place to make sure that you maintain your reputation and maintain the way that you look in the market?
DT: We do have a very streamlined process of the customer journey, first of all. So we send very specific messages either by email or by SMS with mash SMS. Basically we notify people that haven't downloaded the app beforehand.
We also have this customer pipeline process after the experience we asked for feedback. This is the most important part, I think that unhappy customers are the ones that leave bad reviews, whereas good reviews are not really, you know, a thing, you know, people actually want to write bad reviews. You know, you cannot make them write the good review.
It has to be a really, really wow experience in order for them to do it. I have tried to do it by asking for feedback, timely, okay, occasions, exactly after, one day after, we have a very good communication pipeline there. And also, if somebody isn't happy, we don't leave them hanging. We always reply as any tour operator already knows.
And we give them some coupon codes, we explain the situation, we always are very happy receiving bad feedback because this makes us actually better. And this is how we actually create new features, we add different things, edits in the content or in the user experience. So all of this is basically a continuous process.
But the first thing that I have to know is this, it's that we really need to pay attention to bad reviews and we really need to open the conversation with travelers. It's really hard to be self guided. Yes, because when somebody is actually there and can actually say to a person, Why did you like that?
Please tell me more. It's much easier. With that, in our case, it's not, so I think that we have managed that to a certain extent, but there's always room for improvement.
BB: Got it. So, you've got the system for negative reviews, and I think, broadly speaking, it sounds like really leveraging technology and leveraging the systems that are around you and tools around you to reach customers has been a success for you.
And then also particularly this partnership model with attractions and with obviously OTAs has been really valuable to you. I'd be curious to dive a little bit deeper into that in the broader context of other marketers who might be listening to this. So just taking from your wealth of experience and time, you know, you said 2012 was when you really started this and 2018 was when you started repositioning into, into working with tourists and travel.
What have you learned, what advice would you give to other travel and tourism marketers looking to grow and improve their marketing strategies?
DT: I would say, listen to your audiences, always be aware of what people are using in terms of tech, social media, Google, whatever and so I would say that the future in general, in travel and marketing, in the travel and tourism industry is personalization, customization.
So you cannot use a specific rule for everything because nothing works like that anymore, basically. So definitely that also experiential marketing. So uniqueness and having that very broadly and directly promoted. I mean, people, when they arrive at your website or to your app, they need to understand why you're different than all others.
And also sustainability and responsibility in travel. So even us, we're working with attractions, right? We really need to be aware that attractions can overflow with tourism. We need to help travelers understand when to visit an attraction or offer them alternative solutions. So if you can't visit the Acropolis, let's say, because it's too crowded, it's too hot whatever, there's so many other attractions that are so important, so filled with history and culture, interesting things, basically. So I think that it's our role to do that. So it's all about communication there as well.
BB: Yeah. It makes perfect sense and I think marketing and travel and tourism it's a matter of like, one of the things that I hear most often, just speaking specifically to what you said about knowing your customer and asking your customer and targeting and talking to your customer.
One of the things that I see frequently is companies get way too settled in way too quickly and think they know their market and it's good to feel that way, but any company that's doing less than 10 million in sales generally can't confidently say that they've got perfect product market fit unless they really have access their entire market.
I think for a firm like ours or anybody in the travel and tourism space, the needs of customers are constantly changing. So really figuring out and continuously having a pulse on what they need and what they want is probably the most important piece before you do and employ any tactics at all. I mean, on that note, how do you continuously collect customer feedback?
How do you make sure that you're staying relevant and applicable to such a diverse range of travelers?
DT: I would say that, as I said, the communication pipeline part plays a huge role in that. So definitely every company should have in place a specific communication pipeline. So first of all that, second of all, it's all about having that in your mind, always when creating a new product, when having a new distribution channel, you always need to look out on how your product arrives to your customer.
Because all of the travel industry collaborates with multiple channels, right? And not all channels work the same way, or not all channels have the same communication pipeline. So in that aspect, you really need to enhance this and be very specific when you're talking to a distributor that you should have a say in the communication pipeline part. This is not easy, but this is very important.
BB: Yeah, I mean, generally when you go to a distributor, I mean, whether it's a attraction directly or a OTA, which is generally, you know, that's one of the most common sales channels for tours and activities, obviously, you know, think buy a tour, think get your guide, think Civitatis as you mentioned, you'd lose the ability to contact the customer.
You don't get to collect customer data, you don't get to... The good thing is when they sign up and download your app, you get the opportunity to recollect that and you have the ability to re-engage with them. What is an instance in which customer feedback actually led to a meaningful change that you could think of, other than obviously 2018, when you completely changed the direction of your company?
DT: Well, I would say... A notable instance was when we received feedback regarding language preferences, right? Actually, this is an easy one, of course, but we took action with translating a few tours in different languages and tested this out. But this is just, you know, an example. I think in general, you have to have a specific feedback form.
So you need to collect feedback from all parts, technology, content, or the overall experience. And in this way a way for your customers to communicate with you and say what they would like better if you had, you know, better maps. We would create better maps. This was actually one of the things that actually changed the whole experience for us.
They said, okay, there's Google maps, there's directions, but still, I don't want to look at my phone when I take an audio tour, I want to have audio directions. So this is one of the things that actually changed our experience, the overall experience of the customer. So we wanted to keep the customer looking at the attraction, not on their phones. And this is something we were trying, but, you know, everyone said. Do better maps, but this is not the point. People don't wanna look on their phones and this is what we receive from our audience.
BB: I can imagine just being in an attraction and having to look down and being the one person that's looking down, not observing and not like, think that Taj Mahal walking around there and looking at your phone versus, I mean, you had to dodge people at the very least.
DT: Once we got this feedback, we saw 10 percent increased sales per product. Once we just uploaded one extra language, this of course is not the same for all languages, but you understand what this is.
BB: You are in Greece and you know, Greece has a substantial number of French travelers. I mean, like that France is one of the most common countries that travels to Greece, right?
You offer your tours in French, in addition to English, noting that the French generally dislike Americans.
DT: And also Spanish is a very international language as well, you guys have to have it.
BB: 100% and everybody coming through from Civitatis would be very interested in that, right?
DT: Yeah, of course that’s how we got into Civitatis in the first place.
BB: Yeah, exactly. So broadening out, just getting to the end of our discussion, because I know that we're almost at our 30 minute mark. You clearly invest heavily into your product, you clearly create something that's meaningful that you're proud of. How do you balance creating a high quality, incredible, unique experience and maintaining profitability?
Because I'm sure it's not cheap. Number one, you know, you said it takes two months, but still, that's a lot of investment that likely goes into building a tour before you've made any money from it, number one, and then two, translating it, like, how do you balance the need for profitability with investing in your product?
DT: I will tell you exactly. The first thing we know is unit economics. We know that in order to create a high quality tour, we need to spend this much money. Also, we don't go ahead and translate everything in every language that we think is going to work. You test out the product and then you upgrade the product.
That's how we always did it. And also imagine that we are a company that has more than 500 tours currently in the portfolio. This practically means that we need to have at least the basics covered at first. And then once we see that it's getting the traffic that we want, so we know that we are breaking even, let's say broken even, then we can go ahead and invest more.
So you always need to invest, but always pay attention to the unit economics of those things. Also, this is a very important thing, pricing. So pricing needs to reflect quality. I don't believe in lowering pricing in general. I think it's a very bad idea and I think that instead of decreasing pricing, just offer more products, better products, offer different options for the same product.
So this is how we try to stay at least sustainable because we are a startup, continuously investing in our products. This means that we always strive to be sustainable. Profitability is something of the future for any company at the current stage. We are profitable, but we don't care about profitability. We care about sustainability and growth.
And in order to grow, you need to spend exactly what you make back inside the company, back inside the product, because that's the only way. You can actually acquire a good enough market share.
BB: You've got now 30 or 40 people on your team, right?
DT: Exactly. Yeah. Around 40 currently.
BB: Yeah. You've got a large salary base to maintain. Then also I didn't realize there were 500 tours. that's incredible. So how many do you currently have in development out of curiosity?
DT: I think that around 10, but this is the low season so it's fair because it's a high season in terms of tourists. Everyone is on vacation, no one wants to stay home and write content.
BB: One of the things that I've heard from us tour operators is that the market is a little slower for outbound tourism, I mean for domestic tourism, but I hear it's been going well in Europe, Asia compared to years prior.
DT: It is but I have to say that the season is not as we had expected. I think everyone expected a huge boom that never actually happened. But if you are still doing better than last year, it's still a plus, right?
BB: Well, it's interesting that the U. S. has the data that the U. S. has given. Yeah, I was at Phocuswright. I put out data this is the first year that we've surpassed 2019 tourism spend in the U. S., but it's interestingly not on tourism activities, it's been on hotels and flights because hotels and flights are so expensive right now.
DT: Exactly.
BB: But I think that opens up an opportunity for a self guided tour, right? So what's the average price point for your tours?
DT: It's around 12 euros, let's say, but this is without the ticket. If it's with the tickets, ticket price…
BB: Ticket price is 20, something like that, 20 to 50 euros. Got it. Last question I've got for you. You're in startup mode still, even though you've been in your current market fit for five years since 2018. You have to take risks, you have to try new things. What's a risk that you took that paid off since you repositioned and got into tourism activities?
DT: Hiring more people.
BB: Okay. What type of people?
DT: Everything. Like product, sales, especially IT. This is actually the most risky thing because growing, you know, the tech team means that actually you need to pay attention to how the team works as a unit, right? This is not easy handling big teams. So our biggest thing right now is the IT team.
BB: Got it and they're creating the app, the web experience.
DT: And additional tech channels for what the tour operators need. You know, different applications, different features, different plugins, different integrations, all of these things that are needed for us to basically use the asset that we've already built through different tech channels.
BB: So very product led company, 500 tours. That's incredible. And tenant development, probably more. Oh, definitely. Thank you for being on. Is there anything else that you want to share with the travel marketers that are listening to this?
DT: Marketing is expensive, but if you pay attention, you can do a few hacks and see what works for you.
Everyone needs to experiment a bit, spend a few bucks, and then invest even more on the things that actually work. But if you don't take small calculated risk, you cannot actually know what works best for you.
BB: All right. Thank you. Appreciate it, Daphne. Where can people learn more about Clio?
DT: At our website, ClioMuseTours.com, if they want to collaborate, create a tour also, because we also work with tour operators to create tours of their own and have more branded solutions, co-branded, I would say, but also branded. So they can talk to me, of course, um, Daphne@ClioMuseTours.com, or you know, all of the general communication emails that we have on the website, because of course, when something is rele
vant, it comes back to, you know, the relevant department.
BB: Incredible. Thank you so much, Daphne. Thank you for joining me. It's great seeing you.
DT: You too.
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