This business idea involves creating and running mystery tours for women only.
The mystery is that the women will have no clue as to where they are going! You get to plan the surprise and have delighted tour clients that will be enjoying a fun day or weekend getaway.
If you plan to take the trips with your clients, you should be a woman too. If you are a man, you could make the plans and pay someone you trust to treat your clients well and accompany your customers on the mystery tours.
It is amazing how many exciting things there are to do and see in most areas.
Fortunately, most people are not usually aware of all the great things to see in their own areas. You can take advantage of this by investigating all the places to see and do that most people don't know about.
You don't have to plan tours to unknown places all of the time though, that is what makes it a great mystery tour. You might also schedule very typical places too, just include the extra eating-places that may not be well known and it will be a fun time.
Obviously, this business idea takes a creative personality and a person that carefully makes detailed plans.
You will be offering a service that gives women a chance to get away from their mundane weekly schedules to spend time having fun with other women from their areas.
Make sure that they enjoy themselves while being catered to throughout the whole tour. Just a simple day in a day-spa with a great evening meal and perhaps a show could be a mystery tour greatly enjoyed.
Part of the appeal of this type of weekend fun is that they won't have to make any arrangements and everything is provided for them.
These tours could be appealing to women that don't get a chance to get together with their friends to do things, various women's clubs and groups that would like to schedule mini-vacations together, and women that may like meeting others with the same interests, that live in their areas.
The tours should appeal to many different types and ages of women.
Since all of the mystery tours are a surprise, the hard part for the women will be not knowing what to pack.
So, one of the details you will need to include will be a list of important things to pack for the women on your tours.
This will be tricky to accomplish without exposing the mystery, but if you have a basic packing guide for all of your tours, it might help them pack for just about anything. (Example; a dressy outfit, comfortable walking shoes, bathing suit, etc.) Remember, that women want to dress appropriately for all different occasions; if they aren't dressed appropriately they won't enjoy themselves.
Once the women are on the tour, it should include their transportation, meals, snacks, hotel accommodations, and any other fees included.
This will require you to prepare and process the arrangements well ahead of time with all of the businesses involved on your tours.
Make it clear with the restaurants and hotels that you will be introducing your customers to their businesses.
If they enjoy themselves, they may very likely return with friends and relatives after the tour.
Negotiate with these businesses a discount for bringing future customers to them. Explain how you design your tours and what you want to provide your customers for their enjoyment while on the tour.
Most businesses should be willing to work with you, especially if they know exactly when to provide their services ahead of time.
They will be able to expect your tours at designated times, fully prepared to make sure your customers are taken care of. This will also help them to schedule the needed staff ahead of time for your tours.
When working with businesses it can be helpful to book your tours during the months that they are not as busy, they will be happy to have more business and should offer you good discounts.
If you are successful in bringing them more business, they will be happy to deal with you during busy times also. Make sure that if they want to offer your customers specials for future visits, you would be happy to pass these offers on to your customers as part of the entire tour package.
This will benefit both your business and theirs.
This is one of those small business ideas that has very little start up cost.
Instead you just need to put in the research and legwork. And the more tours you schedule the more money you will make.
You should be able to charge about $100-$300 per person, depending on how many days the tour is and what you plan to include on your tours.
This is a good base price for simple tours and you can always offer more expensive tours if your clients are interested.
A note about your choice of transportation, depending on how large each tour is don't forget to look into limousines for some of your tours; it may very well be cheaper and much more enjoyable than buses.
They will welcome all day tours since they tend to be booked more often only during the evening.
To get this business idea going you will have to put together some professional brochures and you should also
build a website
so people can find you.
GirlfriendsMysteryTours.com
is a great example of this business idea in action and the website that showcases it.
They seem to specialize mostly in day tours, and they have lots of great testimonials from women who really enjoyed their tours.
You'll find some ideas for promoting your tours on this site also, such as one of the testimonials where it was mentioned that the boss had given all his women employees a day tour as a gift.
Other ways to promote your tours would be to advertise in the yellow pages and in your newspaper, and you will also want to find creative ways to get the word out to women's groups and places frequented by the types of women who might be interested in your tours.
To expand this business idea, start adding other types of women's tours too.
You could do girlfriend getaways, spa weekends, shopping destination tours and more.
Once you get this business idea going you will probably be amazed at all the great opportunities you can find in your area that would lend themselves to great tour destinations.
