How to Get More Reviews for Your Tour Company

Getting more reviews for a tour company comes down to one habit: send a short review request to every guest after every tour, with a direct link to the platform they're most likely to use, and never skip the guests who seemed less thrilled or add an incentive for the ones who leave a review. That sounds simple, and it is — the hard part is doing it consistently once you're also running tours, managing guides and handling bookings. This guide covers the mechanics of a tour review request that actually works, when to send it, and how to keep it clean of the mistakes that get operators flagged by Tripadvisor, Google or the FTC. For the wider picture of managing what comes back, see our guide to review requests after every tour as part of full tour operator reputation management. Why most tour companies under-collect reviews Most operators don't have a review problem because guests are unhappy — they have one because asking gets pushed to the end of a long day, or forgotten entirely once the group has dispersed. A guide finishing a walking tour at 6pm, handling questions, tips and a group photo, is not thinking about review requests, and by the time anyone does it's the next morning and the moment has passed. The guests who had the best experience are also the ones most likely to simply move on with their trip unless someone gives them an easy way to leave a review in the next few minutes. The fix isn't asking harder — it's asking at the same reliable moment every time, through a system that doesn't depend on a tired guide remembering at the end of a 10-hour day. Tour review request timing: right after, not days later Send the request while the tour is still fresh — ideally within an hour or two of it ending, by SMS, email or WhatsApp, whichever a guest is most likely to actually see on their phone that day. Waiting until the next morning or batching requests at the end of the week measurably drops response rates, since travelers move on to their next activity, flight or dinner reservation almost immediately. Automating the send so it fires from your booking confirmation or checkout, rather than depending on a guide to remember, is usually what separates operators who collect reviews steadily from ones who collect them in occasional bursts after a slow week. Which channel gets the best response: SMS, email or WhatsApp? For international travelers, WhatsApp tends to perform well since many guests don't check a foreign SMS number or an inbox they're not actively watching during a trip. For domestic day-trip guests, a short SMS right after the tour tends to get opened within minutes. Email works as a backup or for guests who booked weeks in advance and expect a receipt-style follow-up anyway. Testing more than one channel against your own guest mix is more useful than assuming one channel wins everywhere. Writing a tour review request that doesn't feel like a form Keep it short: thank the guest by the activity name, not a generic "thanks for your business," and link directly to the platform — Google, Tripadvisor or wherever most of your reviews already live — so the guest doesn't have to search for your listing themselves. "Thanks for joining today's sunset kayak tour — if you had a good time, a quick review helps other travelers find us" reads better than a long paragraph explaining why reviews matter to your business. For wording that works across SMS and email without sounding templated, see our review request text message templates. Ask every guest, not just the ones who looked happy This is the single most important rule and the one most often broken, usually without anyone meaning to. A guide who only hands out review cards to the group that clapped at the end, or an automated system that skips anyone who filed a complaint, is review gating — selectively soliciting reviews based on satisfaction — and it's against the rules of Tripadvisor, Google and most OTAs, as well as the FTC's rule on fake and deceptive reviews (16 CFR Part 465). See our guide on why review gating is a legal risk for what that actually means in practice. The same rule applies to incentives: no discount, free upgrade or gift card in exchange for a review, and no separate "better" review flow for guests who tip well. Reviews for guides, not just the company Tour reviews frequently name the guide directly — "Our guide made the whole trip" is one of the most common lines in this category. Track which guide gets mentioned, thank them for it internally, and treat a pattern of complaints about one guide's pacing or knowledge the same way: as a training conversation, not a review-reply problem to paper over. A guide who knows their name shows up in reviews, good or bad, tends to care more about the next group than one who never hears about it either way. Where to send guests: platform by platform Direct most guests toward Google, since it's the platform most likely to show up when someone searches your tour company name or "[activity] near me" later. For guests who booked through Viator or GetYourGuide, check each platform's current rules about contacting guests outside their checkout before adding them to an off-platform review request flow — those marketplaces restrict review eligibility to their own verified bookings, and some restrict contacting guests outside the platform too. Tripadvisor accepts reviews from any traveler regardless of how they booked, which makes it a safer default to point direct bookings toward. Yelp is the one exception across every channel: Yelp's own policy prohibits businesses from soliciting reviews at all, so treat Yelp as a platform you monitor and respond to, never one you ask guests to visit. What about guests who don't speak English? Keep the request itself short and simple regardless of language — a one-line message with a link translates fine even through a phone's built-in translator. Where you can, consider sending it in the guest's language, especially for groups that skew heavily toward one nationality, since a request in their own language tends to get a better response than a generic English template. Seasonal operators: don't let the off-season reset your review flow A lot of tour companies run heavily seasonal schedules — a ski-town sledding operator, a summer kayak outfit, a holiday lights tour — and review volume naturally drops to near zero in the off-season simply because there are no tours running. That's not a problem to fix, but it does mean the request process itself needs to survive the gap without someone having to rebuild it from scratch each season. Keeping the same automated send in place year-round, even if it fires a handful of times a month during slow stretches, means you're not starting cold every time the season ramps back up. What to do once reviews start coming in More reviews only helps if someone's also replying to them — a growing pile of unanswered reviews, even positive ones, reads as a business that's checked out. See our guide on how to respond to negative reviews for the harder ones, and consider checking periodically whether AI assistants are recommending your tour when travelers ask for the best activity in your city — review volume and recency feed into that too. How many reviews does a tour company need before it shows up in search? There's no fixed number, and it varies by city and competition, but a thin review count combined with long gaps between reviews tends to read as inactive to both travelers and the platforms ranking you. Steady, ongoing requests after every tour matter more than chasing a specific target number once. How much does review request software cost for a small tour company? Tailwind runs $5 a month per individual tool, or $50 a month for the Full plan covering every tool, with the first month free and no card required to start. For a company sending requests after every tour across Google, Tripadvisor and OTA channels, that's usually cheaper than the time spent chasing reviews manually. Every review from Tripadvisor, Viator, GetYourGuide and Google in one inbox → Try Tailwind free.