Use Your Slow / Off Season to Improve Your Marketing, with 9 AI Pro Tips

Investing in your business can look like a lot of things – and one of our favorite ways to invest in your business is to use your slow season for a strategy reset and content and sales funnel revamp. The tour operators who come out of the off-season with a booked-up calendar spend the quiet months doing the work that’s impossible to do mid-rush: analyzing what actually worked, fixing what’s broken, and building a stockpile of content and campaigns ready to fire the moment demand picks back up.

This year, there’s a new factor in all of it. AI now sits between travelers and your business: answering their questions, summarizing your reviews, and even booking trips. Here’s how to make the most of the slow season, what AI has changed in each area, and how to use it to save time.

Analyze Last Season

Before you plan anything new, look hard at what already happened. This is the step operators skip most often, and it’s the one that makes everything after it more effective.

• Which tours sold out? Not just which sold the most units, but which sold out fastest, when, and why. Price point, seasonality, group size caps, or something in the marketing?
• Where did bookings come from? Direct site traffic, OTAs, referrals, email, paid social. Pull the real attribution, not the assumption.
• How many visitors found you through AI? More trip planning now happens inside ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google’s AI Mode. Traffic from tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity shows up as referrals in GA4, so check how much it’s growing. Then try it yourself: ask ChatGPT or Gemini for the best [tour type] in [destination] and see whether you’re mentioned.
• How do AI tools describe you? Ask ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google’s AI Mode the questions your guests ask, like “best kayak tours in [your town]” or “family-friendly things to do in [destination].” Do you show up? Who shows up instead? Are your prices, tours, and details correct? Anything wrong or missing usually traces back to your website, Google Business Profile, or OTA listings, so this gives you a to-do list for the rest of the slow season.
• Which ads performed best? Look past click-through rate to cost per booking and lifetime value where you can track it.
• What questions did customers ask most? Check your inbox, DMs, and booking-flow drop-off points. These are your next FAQ section and your next blog topics. Not sure what the top questions are that your website and channels do NOT answer well? Ask your AI tool(s).
• What marketing channels had the highest ROI? You’ll use this information to decide where slow-season effort goes first, and what to invest the bulk of your marketing budget in as you set up next year’s campaigns.
• What changes did competitors make in their marketing? Check whether other operators in your area shifted pricing, launched new packages, or picked up new channels since last season. If you see them winning out on certain channels, learn from their successes.

Refresh Your Website

Your site was built for last year’s version of your business. If it did well, great! But chances are there are at least some minor updates to make to ensure you have the best-possible website that follows the most current best practices. Your site also has a critical second audience now: the AI tools reading it on travelers’ behalf. They favor pages that state the facts plainly, like price, duration, meeting point, what’s included, and most important questions and answers.

• Update photos and videos with footage from the season you just finished. Nothing dates a tour page faster than five-year-old photos.
• Improve SEO – traditional and AI – on your key tour pages: titles, meta descriptions, headers, and the actual copy searchers are looking for. Make sure you have your schema markup dialed; AI bots rely on it.
• Add FAQs pulled directly from the customer questions you just gathered.
• Speed up your site and fix broken links; both are silent conversion killers.
• Add fresh reviews and social proof; recency matters as much as rating. Reviews are a key credibility and trust factor to win AI Overviews.

Build Next Year’s Content Library

Content made in a rush during peak season is rarely good content. Build the library and content calendar now, for the foundation of a great annual messaging strategy for the rest of the year. The more you handle when you have downtime, the less you have to think about actions when things feel hectic. And with AI making generic content rapidly, the stuff that stands out now is what AI can’t fake: real footage, guide expertise, and firsthand stories.

• Prioritize editing from your in-season B-roll for reels and TikToks. The off-season pace gives you time to fully strategize videos and build a solid stash of content to pull from when planning posts for the season.
• Write blog posts targeting seasonal search terms, and publish early enough for them to rank before demand spikes. Mapping them out in the calendar will help you create the timeline for publishing and promoting.
• Create email campaigns in batches instead of scrambling one at a time. For the seasonal content that is relevant every year, you can build out that info in advance and have more time throughout the year to prioritize time-sensitive or new information.
• Design social graphics ahead of time so posting doesn’t depend on someone’s bandwidth that week.
• Capture evergreen content, like behind-the-scenes footage, guide interviews, or gear breakdowns, that works all year, not just this quarter. When you don’t have time to source images during busy times, you can dip into this pool of already created content for easy quality posts.

Invest in AI-SEO

SEO is slow by nature, which makes slow season the right season for it. Making strategic changes earlier in the year will allow the improvements to grow and boost your SEO strategy for when a surge in searches picks up again. The goal has also shifted. AI Overviews and ChatGPT now answer many travel questions without a click, so being the source they cite matters as much as ranking.

• Create destination guides that establish authority beyond your own tour pages. This is a great way to expand keyword opportunities and gain more eyes from people at the beginning of the research and purchase process.
• Build internal links between guides, blog posts, and booking pages. A strong internal linking strategy is still a strong SEO indicator, not to mention an important way to guide website visitors through the purchase funnel.
• Update older blog posts instead of only publishing new ones. Refreshed content is widely reported to outperform brand-new posts on traffic gains, since the old URL keeps its existing backlinks, rankings, and search history while getting a relevance boost, something a new post has to build from zero.
• Earn backlinks through partnerships and local tourism sites. Relationship building takes time, and people in the tourism industry are often more responsive and forward-thinking in the slow season.
• Add structured data for AI visibility. Schema markup tells search engines and AI tools exactly what’s on a page. For tour operators, the most useful types are TouristTrip or Product (with Offer for pricing), LocalBusiness or TouristAttraction, FAQPage, Review and AggregateRating, and Event for scheduled departures. Clear, structured facts make it easier for Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Perplexity to surface and cite your tours.
• Consider adding an llms.txt file. This is a separate plain-text file at the root of your site that points AI tools to your most important pages. It’s a quick win, but support varies by platform, so treat it as a bonus rather than a priority.
• Clean up your Google Business Profile. Make sure your name, address, phone number(s) are the same across all your digital channels (social media, Tripadvisor, etc.). Update your hours, photos, services, and posts. Accurate and consistent data is a strong credibility signal, which is very important to AI agents. This matters just as much as being able to accurately show up for “near me” tourism searches. Google has replaced the manual Q&A section in your Google Business Profile with an AI “Ask” feature that answers customer questions using your profile and reviews. Complete, current information matters more than ever.
• Audit your OTA listings. Many operators get most of their bookings through Viator, Tripadvisor, and GetYourGuide, and AI tools pull from those listings when describing you. Match the details to your website and refresh the photos.
  

Improve Your Email Marketing

Email isn’t dead! It just needs to share the right message. Thoughtful email outreach can be a low-effort, high-reward marketing channel that you can build off of for years. Inboxes are changing, though: Apple Mail now shows an AI summary in place of your preview text, and Gmail offers AI summaries too. Lead with your key message in the first two lines so the summary gets it right.

• Clean up your CRM first. Merge duplicate contacts, update tags, and fix stale data before you build segments and automations on top of it. The more up to date and clean your lists are, the more accurate the results data will be.
• Segment past guests by attributes that help you understand guest subgroups. Examples include trip type, spend, season booked, repeat or new, family/kids, etc. This will allow you to tailor messaging to each guest type, creating a more customizable and valuable email strategy.
• Build an automated welcome sequence for new subscribers. Take the pressure off during the busy season by having your welcome messaging dialed in. Offer timely information right when people sign up and learn more about what new or prospective customers are looking for.
• Set up abandoned cart/booking emails to recover drop-offs. This ensures that your experience stays top of mind when people are looking in the off-season, but aren’t yet ready to pull the trigger.
• Launch a referral campaign that rewards past guests for sending new ones. Word of mouth is still the best form of marketing out there!
• Share behind-the-scenes updates between booking pushes to stay visible without selling every time.

AI Values Reviews – Collect Any Missing Ones!

Reviews compound. The ones you collect now work for you long after the season ends. They’re also increasingly read by AI first: Google, Tripadvisor, and GetYourGuide all show AI summaries of reviews, so the themes guests mention again and again shape your reputation more than any single five-star review.

• Request reviews on Google and Tripadvisor while the trip is still fresh in guests’ minds. Timing matters more than most operators think: recent surveys show most consumers only weigh reviews written within the last month or two as trustworthy, and far fewer give any credit to reviews older than a year.
• Need to collect reviews from guests that came earlier in the year? No problem! Guests love to be helpful; be authentic and ask them for their reviews, letting them know that their review will really help your company. Ask for reviews via email and/or SMS text. Schedule 3 gentle reminders, then move on.
• Turn strong reviews into social content. Sharing powerful guest stories, whether it’s from videos or text, is a great way to communicate your story and how you want every guest to feel after the experience you offer.
• Feature testimonials directly on landing pages, not just on a reviews page no one visits.
• Turn standout guest stories into full case studies.

Strengthen Partnerships

Slow season is the only time most partners have room for a real conversation. Take this time to find partnerships, affiliates, or package deals for the upcoming season.

• Hotels
• Visitor centers
• Influencers
• Local restaurants
• Destination marketing organizations

The best partnerships give both sides something concrete: a hotel package, a referral commission, or cross-promotion to each other’s email lists. Start with one or two partners whose guests already look like yours. Reach out now, before everyone’s calendar fills up with next season’s logistics. Partner sites and local tourism listings are also the kind of trusted mentions AI tools look for when recommending what to do in a destination.

Optimize Your Booking Experience

Traffic and interest mean nothing if the booking flow leaks people at the last step. AI assistants are starting to handle bookings too, with Expedia, Booking.com, and TourRadar already offering apps inside ChatGPT. Travelers who arrive from an AI recommendation have often already decided, so a smooth booking flow matters even more.

• Reducing the number of steps to book is a sure-fire way to boost conversions.
• Improve mobile usability, but don’t stop testing desktop. Travel and tourism sites see roughly 60 – 70% of traffic from mobile, so research and browsing happen there first. Booking itself still skews to desktop; conversion rates on mobile run well below desktop in most travel benchmarks, so a smooth handoff between devices matters as much as a mobile-friendly design.
• Add clear, upfront cancellation messaging to reduce hesitation.
• Consider testing a small set of pricing and package options in your lowest volume booking window to see what works, ahead of your busy booking season.
• Make gift cards easy to find and buy; they’re an easy off-season revenue stream.
• Build off-season packages and perks. Shoulder-season deals, add-on experiences, or loyalty perks for repeat bookers give past guests a reason to book again before next season even starts, instead of waiting on new demand alone.

Plan Paid Advertising Early

Waiting until the season starts to build your ad strategy means competing at the worst possible moment. Giving your ad campaign a chance to gain traction, optimize, and grow will help you come out on top when it really counts. Google’s AI Max and Meta’s Advantage+ now automate much of the targeting and creative, so what you control is the quality of your creative, your customer data, and accurate tracking. That makes the prep below even more important.

• Build your audiences now, before you need them live.
• Install and verify tracking pixels so data collection starts early.
• Test creative while budgets are lower and mistakes are cheaper.
• Plan campaign budgets against last season’s ROI data.
• Build retargeting campaigns ready to launch the moment interest picks up.

---

None of this has to happen all at once.

• Pick two or three sections that map to your biggest gaps from last season’s data, and start there.
• The goal isn’t to do everything during the slow months – it’s to walk into next season with the groundwork already done.

Need help analyzing your results and/or setting up your marketing strategy for the upcoming season? Reach out to our team! We can help you build your foundation so you are reaching your market with the right message at the right time.