5 Tips to starting a successful tours and activity travel business. This is Tip #3. In the first two articles I wrote about how to partner and package to help your start up get business in the early stages. This third article is about implementing a simple distribution system so at launch you have other marketers and or marketplaces selling your tour and activity products. There are many new tour and activity distributors and tour and activity marketplaces like Viator, TourCMS marketplace, Isango, GetYourGuide, Kijubi, Smart Destinations and Kumutu. The tour and activity distribution system has been expanding, just Google “tour and activity distribution,” to find one-to-two distribution partners that fit your business model. Depending on how you run your new tour and activity business it may be smart to allocate a % or a # of your tours and or activities solely for your new distribution partners. If you can find a partner that can resell your tour and activity in real time from your website database or online system this is the best route as this enables you to ultimately maintain all your inventory in one system. Don’t get caught up in paying a commission and or a % of your sales to your new distribution partners when you start your business. Small business owners have this mentality that they think they are loosing money on the transaction when they could be selling it themselves directly. Another way to view paying a commission and or a fee to a 3rd party distribution partner is to view it as an acquisition cost or a cost to acquire a new client. When you start a new business it takes time to determine your acquisition cost per client. A simple equation of an acquisition cost per client is your total marketing and adverting dollars spent divided by the # of clients you acquire. When you start your business you’ll most likely have a marketing and advertising budget and you’ll be spending money to get new business. If your distribution partners acquire you new clients you can use the commission cost or fee paid to the 3rd party as the basis for how much it costs you to acquire new clients. You can boost your business and get off the ground quicker by enabling one-to-two tour and activity distributors to sell your travel product. This is a quick way to get new business fast and it will help you determine the cost to acquire new clients. Matt Zito is a veteran travel industry entrepreneur, consultant and founder of the world’s first ever, Travel Business Academy, a professional member-based, home-study program that teaches entrepreneurs globally, how to start and run a travel business. To learn more visit the Travel Business Academy or email matt@travelbusinessacademy.com