Operator Insight - Rebecca Giglia, Bounce Walking Tours, Sydney

Our Operator Insight segment is designed to give people in the business a view on how other people in the business work; their inspiration, their challenges and their plans for the future - with an emphasis on marketing. That goes for tourism operators large and small, traditional and not so traditional. This time around we spoke to a very interesting smaller operator, Rebecca Giglia of Bounce Walking Tours, Sydney.

Rebecca and Bounce Walking Tours customers.

Tracker: How long have you been running Bounce Walking Tours?
RG: Coming up for 2 years.

Tracker: How’s business?
R.G.: Good. Very good.

Tracker: How many people are working in the business at the moment?
R.G.: There’s myself and 6 guides. There could probably be more but you have to have the right people and that’s not always easy.

Tracker: What were you doing before you started Bounce?
RG: I worked in financial marketing. Nothing to do with tourism at all.

Tracker: So what made you start the business?
RG: I’d done a lot of walking tours in cities around the world; Berlin, Prague, Rome, Paris, London and decided that there was room for more walking tours in Sydney. At that time you could only do a walking tour of the Rocks and there’s a lot more to Sydney. There was a latent demand and we’re meeting it.

Tracker: What’s the best part of the job?
R.G. Definitely the people. You get to meet people from all over the world and they invariably end up having a good time.

Tracker: Does any one day or experience in running Bounce Walking Tours really stand out.?
R.G.: No one single day, but it’s always a good day when we get customers from a direct referral. It means what we’re doing is working and that’s pretty important in any business.

Tracker: Where does your market come from?
R.G.: It depends on the tour. Our city sightseeing tours are mostly international people with a few from interstate. Our Kings Cross tour is probably 1/3 Sydneysiders, which is nice to see, 1/3 interstate and 1/3 international. Of the international people, the bulk are from the U.K. and the U.S.
We’re introducing new tours like the Oxford Street shopping tour which is attracting a lot of women from interstate and overseas.

Tracker: What do you see as the biggest challenge for tourism in Australia and in Sydney in particular at the moment?
R.G.: The strong Aussie dollar. We’re noticing that Americans in particular now seem to be ‘going away to think about it’ a bit more often where they would previously have made a booking on the spot. Operating in Sydney is always a challenge because there’s so much quality competition but that just keeps us all on our toes.

Tracker: Where do you put most of your marketing efforts?
R.G.: We’re active on line and we have some good agents that we work with.

Tracker: How do you track where your marketing efforts?
R.G.: We aways ask where people have found us and record that information. It does give you a pretty good picture of what’s working.

Tracker: How important is your brand in terms of your marketing efforts?
R.G.: Absolutely critical. The brand is what people see…it’s your reputation in the market and it influences everybody that you work with at every level. You have to be consistent, especially in the customer experience. With a name like ‘Bounce’ we need our guides to be bright and happy and fun. So in keeping your brand values strong the people on your team are really important.

Tracker: Do you have any words of advice for smaller operators?
R.G.: Keep innovating. You just can’t stand still. You need to be providing the market with new, different and stimulating product. If you stay the same, you go stale.