Creating exciting tourist programs

A travel program is a planned sequence of services sold by the operator as a single product: transportation, accommodation, meals, excursions, on-site guidance, and support. A successful itinerary is based on a single concept, structured according to time, and appropriate to the group’s abilities. An unsuccessful one simply lists attractions from a guidebook.

The industry’s scale explains the attention paid to this work. According to UN-Tourism, 1.4 billion international arrivals are expected in 2024 — an 11 percent increase from the previous year. Europe welcomed 747 million visitors. The World Travel and Tourism Council estimates the sector’s contribution to approximately one-tenth of global GDP, and international traveler spending at two trillion dollars. Given this scale, tour design has become a discipline with its own theory, methodologies, and quality control tools.

Historical roots

The first programs in the traditional sense emerged with the advent of the railways. Before them, long-distance travel remained the preserve of wealthy families: since the 17th century, British families had been sending their sons on multi-year educational tours of France and Italy with a tutor, an itinerary, and letters of recommendation. The program already contained the essential components of the tour — a schedule, an escort, and a pre-arranged selection of seats.

Thomas Cook, a typographic engraver and temperance activist from Leicester, is considered the father of package tours. The idea came to him in June 1841, when he walked about 24 kilometers to a temperance society meeting. Cook negotiated with the Midland Counties Railway to charter an entire train and took over the sale of seats.

On July 5, 1841, 485 participants departed from Campbell Street station in Leicester for Loughborough, each paying one shilling for the round-trip fare. A band traveled in open carriages, and the organizer’s seven-year-old son, John Mason Cook, was among the passengers. In Loughborough, the group enjoyed marches, speeches, games, and tea in the park; the train returned to Leicester at 10:30 PM. The distance between the cities was approximately 18 kilometers.

Demand was immediate. Cook grasped the mechanics of the new venture: gather an audience with a common goal, purchase the entire capacity from the carrier, and sell it in portions with a markup for the organization, tea, and orchestra. A decade and a half later, his company was taking English tourists to the continent, and later organized round-the-world trips and serialized travel guides. On the 150th anniversary of the first excursion, a statue by sculptor James Butler was unveiled at Leicester station.

The company’s history ended in September 2019, when Thomas Cook Group, after 178 years of operation, ceased operations under the weight of debt. The craft remained. Paid vacations, charter flights, and computerized booking systems had long since transformed group travel into a mass commodity, and competition within this market had to be based not on ticket price, but on the quality of the experience.

What does the program consist of?

Legally, a package is a product combining at least two travel services, covering at least a day or including an overnight stay, and sold by a single seller at a single price. Behind this simple definition lies a collection of dozens of components: hotel slots, transportation, entrance tickets, restaurant reservations, insurance, and guides with access to tourist sites.

Each tour is described by several documents. The program dossier contains the logistics: addresses, contractor contacts, minute-by-minute schedules, and emergency numbers. The process map breaks down the route by day, indicating distances, meals, and points of interest. The guide’s script contains the text, stop locations, legends, and answers to frequently asked questions. The commercial section — net rates, quotas, and currency — is kept in separate folders next to these.

A solid program doesn’t start with a list of attractions. It begins with the question: why are these specific people willing to pay money and spend their vacation? The route, timings, and even the choice of lunch cafe follow from this answer, not the other way around. An operator who builds a tour "from the attractions" risks creating a travel schedule without an emotional core.

Experience Economy

Joseph Pine and James Gilmore established the theoretical framework for this work. In the July/August 1998 issue of Harvard Business Review, they proposed considering experience as a distinct economic offering — separate, like a good and a service, rather than a vague mixture of the two. This article, and later the book "The Experience Economy," moved the conversation from the realm of beautiful metaphors to the realm of design.

The authors organized experiences along two axes: passive or active guest participation and absorption or dissolution within the experience. The intersection of these axes yields four domains. Entertainment — the guest watches and listens. Education — the guest thinks and acts. Aesthetics — the guest is present in the environment and contemplates. Escape from routine — the guest acts within the event and influences it. The most powerful products blend all four domains and fall into the center of the model.

For a route, this is a working tool, not an abstraction. A food tour of the market: tasting is entertainment, talking with a vendor about cheese is an education, wandering the aisles at dusk is aesthetic, frying your own fish in the communal kitchen is an escape from the routine. Create a daily schedule so that all four areas have time to alternate at least once. Weak tours get stuck in the first one.

Pine and Gilmore warned about the habituation effect: experiences, like products, lose value once they become a standard. Hence the constant updating of programs, seasonal itineraries, and group size limits. Craftsmanship requires movement.

Interpretation of heritage

Freeman Tilden, an American publicist, published "Interpreting Our Heritage" in 1957, which became a standard text for national park guides. He formulated six principles of interpretation — the art of translating facts about a place into a visitor’s personal experience.

The first principle: interpretation is dead unless it is connected to the personality and experience of the visitor. The second: information is not the same as interpretation; interpretation is a revelation arising from information, and every revelation contains facts. The third: interpretation is an art, and every art can be learned to a certain extent. The fourth: the primary goal is thought provocation, not instruction. The fifth: address the whole person, not just one aspect. The sixth: children under twelve require a fundamentally different approach — a separate program, not a watered-down adult version.

The idea was refined to engineering precision by Sam Ham, a professor at the University of Idaho. In his book, "Interpretation: Making a Difference on Purpose" (2013), he proposed evaluating any tour text against four criteria known as TORE: topicality, organization, audience relevance, and engagingness. Each item is rated on a seven-point scale, and weak points are immediately apparent.

The practical conclusion of TORE is simple. One program — one theme, formulated in one complete sentence. The theme "old town" is empty. The theme "a thousand years of maritime trade fit into the four streets of this neighborhood" provides the guide with a filter: only what supports it is included in the tour. The rest is mercilessly eliminated.

Drama and the Rule of Peak

How will guests remember a tour? Experimental psychology provided the answer. In 1996, Donald Redmelier and Daniel Kahneman recorded patients’ pain experiences in real time during colonoscopy and lithotripsy, then asked them to evaluate the procedure retrospectively. Retrospective evaluations were almost entirely predicted by two factors: the most intense moment of discomfort and the final minutes.

In a series of 682 procedures, duration ranged from 4 to 69 minutes and had little effect on the final assessment. In a 2003 study, some patients received a procedure with a longer, less painful ending; these patients were more likely to request a return visit. Memory of an event preserves the peak and the end, while the middle part smooths out the pain.

The end is more important than the middle. Experienced planners build a tour like a play: a hook in the first ten minutes, a buildup of intensity, the strongest scene near the final third, a solid, calm denouement — coffee, a view from the last vantage point, a brief farewell from the guide. A common mistake for beginners is to put the best attraction first, to "hook" the group, and leave the transfer to the airport as the final impression.

The rule also works in reverse. One mishap — a two-hour line in the rain, a lost bus, a cold lunch — can ruin a day of impeccable timing. Stress points are scheduled as carefully as highlights: long lines are marked with a guide’s description, transfers with sleep and podcasts, and inevitable breaks with seats and a restroom.

Pace, distances, fatigue

The average person walks at a speed of about 1.4 meters per second, or 5 kilometers per hour. The design standards for pedestrian infrastructure are lower — 1.2–1.25 meters per second — and are set for the slowest walkers. A tour group, stopping at landmarks, effectively achieves a speed of two to three kilometers per hour. The math is ruthless: a "light walk all day" turns into 12–15 kilometers of pure walking, and by evening, the group can barely hear the guide.

Examination fatigue is a measured phenomenon, not a figure of speech. The term "museum fatigue" was coined by Benjamin Ives Gilman in the January 1916 issue of The Scientific Monthly. At the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, he photographed a visitor attempting to examine the exhibits: the images captured a hunched back, an elongated neck, and a half-crouched posture in front of the low display cases.

Further research identified the main culprits: the monotony of the exhibition, long walkways between rooms, hard floors, and the constant mental effort of processing information. Hence the practical rules for the route. Forty-five to ninety minutes per object, then a change of format. Alternating between indoor and outdoor spaces. A bench in the middle of each large room. Coffee breaks every two to ninety minutes. Every fifth stop is not a viewing area, but simply a comfortable one.

Children’s programs are structured differently. According to Tilden, children under twelve require a separate narrative: shorter blocks, more movement, a story with a character and a task, and an object to be held every ten minutes. Children tune out an adult lecture, delivered more subtly and quietly, after four minutes — a fact verified by thousands of museum educators through their own experience.

Audience and preparatory work

Effective preparation begins with a guest profile. Operators describe segments using cards: age, group composition, physical fitness, motivation, budget, and fears. A married couple with two children, a medical congress after a meeting, a group of friends for a weekend – three different timings, three different sets of stops, three different lunches. Trying to please everyone at once results in an average tour for the average person, and such programs don’t last a second season.

Next comes a site reconnaissance. The planner walks the route themselves, with a stopwatch and pedometer, at the same time of day and on the same day of the week as the future group. The Friday market square and the empty Wednesday square are two different locations. Ramps, restrooms, shade, drinking water, road surfaces, and evening lighting are checked. At this stage, everything not visible on the map is identified: a façade closed for restoration, a market that has moved, a bridge dismantled for repairs.

Negotiations with contractors and sites are ongoing. Museums require letters and slot reservations, monasteries require visitor permits, and national parks require quotas and qualified guides. Some details are secured through fam trips — familiarization trips for agents and partners. Good operators keep two or three backup contractors for every critical situation: a guide is sick, a restaurant is on fire, a ferry is cancelled.

Seasonality deserves a separate chapter. Heat above 30 degrees Celsius shifts the active part to early morning, downpours require indoor shelters, and local holidays are divided into those that are captivating and those that are paralyzing. The tour calendar is based on weather statistics and event listings, not on logos from a brochure.

Operational Logistics and Law

A package tour is a legal document with retroactive effect. In the European Union, package tours are regulated by Directive 2015/2302 of 25 November 2015, which replaced the previous regulation of 1990. States have been implementing it since 1 July 2018. The Directive protects travelers in the event of cancellations, changes, and the bankruptcy of the organizer.

The list of rights is lengthy. The organizer is obligated to insure against insolvency: in the event of bankruptcy, the client receives a refund, and those stranded on the trip receive transportation home. Clients are notified of price increases no later than 20 days before the start; if the price increase exceeds 8 percent, the guest has the right to terminate the contract. In the event of unavoidable or extraordinary circumstances at the destination, the contract is terminated without penalty and a full refund is given. If material conditions change after the start, the organizer offers an equivalent replacement at no additional charge.

The operational layer of the directive turns it into a schedule. Buffer time for each transfer: 90 minutes for a flight connection within a single ticket, three hours for an independent one. A Plan B for each open object and for each leg of the route. Communication channels: the tour leader’s number in the program, the operator’s emergency line, the group chat. A first aid kit, a list of nearby clinics, direct-payment insurance — without these details, any scenario remains just paper.

Meal logistics are governed by timing, not the other way around. Lunch is served after the peak block, dinner no later than two hours after the last stop, and water is sold or handed out at every long stretch. A hungry group, by the fifth hour of the route, inevitably loses interest in architecture.

Segments and formats

The market has long been stratified into genres, and each genre dictates its own rules of assembly. Gastronomic tours are built around six to eight points with small portions: the physics are simple, an overloaded guest doesn’t experience flavor, and the final tasting maintains the peak until the end. Adventure programs sell guarantees and safety: detailed equipment lists, guide instructions, and an evacuation plan are more important than beautiful words in the description.

"Dark tourism" has emerged as a distinct trend. The term was coined in 1996 by John Lennon and Malcolm Foley of Glasgow Caledonian University to describe travel to sites associated with death and disaster. At the same time, A.W. Seaton proposed the concept of thanatourism — travel motivated by a desire to encounter death, particularly violent death. Classic sites of this trend include Auschwitz, the World Trade Center site, and the Roman catacombs.

Such programs are the most expensive for the designer. Ethical debates surrounding the commercialization of tragedies have been ongoing since the term itself was coined, and the script for a memorial website is written differently: without entertainment, without souvenir flair, with a mandatory substantive mode and a time limit. Tilden’s thought provocation works literally here — the guide leads the guest to his own conclusions and then falls silent.

Family, accessible, and corporate formats impose their own restrictions. For guests with limited mobility, the width of aisles, the availability of elevators, and the distance from parking are checked. Corporate programs require built-in pauses for phone calls and a stable internet connection. The common denominator across all segments is the same: the physical condition of the group is more important than the number of objects in the brochure.

Overload of directions

The travel boom has turned into a direct problem for a number of cities. In April 2024, Venice became the first city in the world to introduce an entrance fee to its historic center for one-day visitors. The pilot launch on April 25th covered 29 peak days, with a fee of five euros, and checks were open from 8:30 AM to 4:00 PM. Residents, students, and overnight guests were admitted free of charge. The scheme was later expanded to cover approximately sixty days a year, with a fee of five to ten euros depending on the payment date.

Cities are responding with both regulation and redistribution of traffic flows. For operators, this gives them room to maneuver. Programs are shifted to morning and evening slots, large groups are broken up, and alternative neighborhoods are introduced near popular streets. A route through a non-tourist area with one strong point often sells better than the twentieth walk through a crowded city center. A place among the crowds isn’t included in the price of the experience, and guests notice.

Quality assessment

Mature operators measure impressions, not just occupancy. A standard tool is the Net Promoter Score (NPS). Frederick Reichheld introduced it in the December 2003 issue of Harvard Business Review in his article "The One Number You Need to Grow." Guests answer one question — how likely they are to recommend a tour to a friend — on a scale of 0 to 10.

Responses are divided into three groups: 9–10 — promoters, 7–8 — passively satisfied, 0–6 — detractors. The percentage of detractors is subtracted from the percentage of promoters, resulting in a range from -100 to +100. The metric is simple and therefore widespread; it also has critics who point out the crudeness of truncating the data to a single digit. A reasonable compromise is to collect NPS along with open-ended comments and a question about a specific program module.

The numbers are supplemented by live test runs. A new route is always completed by a trial group of employees and acquaintances — with full timings, meals, and transfers included, without any "we’ll fix it later" discounts. Some companies commission mystery shoppers to record the tour and fill out a TORE checklist. Complaints are analyzed line by line: a repeated complaint about the third point of the route is not a customer whim, but an assembly defect.

The revision cycle is never-ending. Seasonal weather, changing contractors, site repairs, and currency fluctuations constantly disrupt the well-oiled schedule, and the program lives on in versions three, eight, and twentieth.

Digital tools

Software support covers all stages of production. Route builders maintain a database of points of interest with visit times, coordinates, and seasonal windows; the system automatically calculates the total duration and highlights transfer conflicts. Online route maps are provided to guests instead of printouts. GPS audio guides conduct personalized tours by geofences, playing the appropriate audio track upon approaching a point — a single tour can be scaled to thousands of listeners without the need for a live guide.

Cloud-based dossiers have replaced operator folders: contractors, contacts, emergency procedures, and schedule revisions are accessible to tour leaders from their phones at any point along the route. Feedback collection systems send out surveys an hour after the tour ends, while impressions are fresh, and automatically feed ratings into analytics by block. Dynamic pricing adjusts rates based on departure occupancy, partner quotas, and exchange rates.

Technology is also changing content. Augmented reality reconstructs destroyed buildings on a phone screen over existing ruins. QR codes at route points provide in-depth materials in the guest’s language. Digitized archives provide tour guides with authentic documents, photographs, and voices unavailable to previous generations of program creators.

Development procedure

The program’s assembly follows a stable sequence of steps, developed by the industry over decades.

1. Describe the audience and purpose of the trip: segment profile, physical capabilities, motivation, budget.
2. Formulate the topic in one complete sentence and check it using TORE - thematic, organized, relevant, and engaging.
3. Sketch out the skeleton of a route by day, alternating four areas of experience: entertainment, learning, aesthetics, and escape from routine.
4. Arrange the timing with the peak scene closer to the final third and a strong denouement at the end, according to the peak-finale rule.
5. Walk the route personally with a stopwatch: set the walking pace at two to three kilometers per hour for the group, and allocate 45 to 90 minutes to the sites.
6. Conclude contracts with contractors, reserve slots, and prepare two backup performers for each critical block.
7. Create a plan B for weather, repairs and cancellations, check insurance and compliance with Directive 2015/2302.
8. Calculate the cost price, include a margin and buffer for exchange rate fluctuations, and approve the price.
9. Conduct a trial run with the full group, collect NPS and open comments, and rewrite weak blocks.

In 1841, Thomas Cook managed without any of these steps — he had a train, a shilling, and tea and buns. Over the past 185 years, the list has only grown: the psychology of memory, consumer rights, the ethics of tragic places, digital logistics. Even less time than it seems between the open platform of a carriage with an orchestra and an audio guide recognizing guests by geofencing.