Whether you are launching a new experience, creating an enhanced marketing campaign, or aiming for a higher conversion rate, keeping track of your progress will help you set attainable goals. One great way to do this is by defining key performance indicators (KPIs).

KPIs are a performance metric that help you evaluate the success of a project.

While identifying these metrics is an extra step in your process, it’s a great way to see if your initiatives are working as you would like them to. 

If you need some inspiration on what types of KPIs you should start measuring, here are five KPIs that are essential for a tour and activity operator. 

Booking Volume

Your booking volume refers to the total number of bookings you receive in a given period of time. This metric is especially important, as it directly relates to how much revenue you are making, and the overall demand for your services. 

For instance, if you are continuously getting more bookings after you launch a marketing campaign, you know that it is resonating with your customers. On the other hand, if you are not seeing a change in bookings, you know that you must adjust your campaign to perform better. 

Measuring booking volume can also showcase your seasonal trends. With this data, you know when to ramp up for your busy season and increase staff and availabilities — versus when to scale back. 

Additional Booking Volume KPIs

• Bookings by channels: Where are your bookings coming from and how should you capitalize on the channels that drive the most bookings?
• Bookings by day: Uncover which days are most popular for bookings to determine where you could increase prices, offer a discount on slower days, and more. We break down how to find this information in this Compass guide.
• Volume of cancellations and rebookings: Determine how many bookings result in a cancellation or rebooking. 

Conversion Rate

Your conversion rate represents how many people book your tours and activities versus how many people visit your website. Ideally, you’d like this percentage to be as high as possible — though it’s impossible to convert everyone!

While it’s a great sign to have a lot of website traffic, if people are not booking one of your experiences, you must determine the changes that will make them convert. This is a great opportunity to implement a new strategy with KPIs to test which alterations are working the best. 

We recently published a checklist that covers plentiful tips on how you can improve your online conversions. 

Customer Acquisition Cost & Customer Retention

Getting new customers — and scoring repeat customers! — is an essential part of your business’ success. Collecting data and tracking your progress of how you get more customers will help you determine which tactics are the most worthwhile. 

These types of KPIs will directly relate to your marketing strategies. For example, you can track to see how much it costs you to acquire a new customer through a Google Ads campaign. If your numbers start to dip, you know it’s time for an ad refresh.

You might also instate KPIs based on how many of your customers are repeat customers. These customers tend to spend more at your business than a first-timer, so why not do your due diligence and capitalize on them? If you haven’t already explored FareHarbor’s memberships feature, this an excellent way to boost repeat customers.

Customer Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction goes hand in hand with getting great reviews, increasing tips for your staff, getting more customers and making more revenue — so it’s best to see how you are doing in this category!

One strategy is to collect feedback by sending surveys in your follow-up email or checking your reviews on Google, Yelp, Facebook and more. You can track which percentage of reviews are positive versus negative and take note if you see a similar complaint across visits. 

How to Determine Customer Satisfaction

There are two metrics that will help you determine the overall customer satisfaction at your business.

• Customer satisfaction score: It’s all in the name! This score simply rates your business’ customer satisfaction between 0% and 100%.
• Net promoter score: This metric asks one question to customers to see if they would recommend your business to someone else and scores them as promoters, passives, or detractors.

Learn how to conduct each survey to attain these metrics in this Compass guide.

Distribution

If you are working with OTAs, the FareHarbor Distribution Network, other local businesses, or another source to distribute your tours and activities, remember to track how many bookings are coming from each source. You can use this information to assess which channels are the most profitable or determine if you should remove your offerings from a certain site. 

Adding KPIs into your business strategies can help you stay on track and collect vital information about your company. Try setting a few reasonable KPIs for your next project and see how you can maximize your efforts in any area.