Hi all! My name is Alexandra Kenin and I run a tour business called Urban Hiker San Francisco, or Urban Hiker SF.

I’ve sold over 8,000 copies since the book came out in November 2016. While working on the book has been fun, and I’m working on a second book, Urban Trails East Bay (Berkeley, Oakland, and other cities east of San Francisco), this is more of a branding play than a money maker. I’ve only made $5,000 total for the book for the countless hours I spent on it.

Bonjour! My name is Claire Robinson; I am French, and I am the founder of StructurInfo. My main business is Travel Blogging. But I am not your typical travel blogger. I do not work with sponsors or tourism boards. I select and pay for my own trips. I will not share with you how ‘to be paid to travel’. However, I do travel a lot and enjoy writing about it :-)

Pre-quarantine, my revenue averaged $9,000 per month. And 2020 started with huge growth before all travels stopped. I am still working hard to deliver practical information because travel will start again, and I love it when customers share how much fun they had planned their trip with my guides and how wonderful their road trips were, for example in New Zealand:

Manoj: Kamlesh Ramchandani and I (Manoj Tulsani) are the founders of Rayna Tours and Travels. Fueled by our deepest interest in travel and entrepreneurship, we kicked off our business journey a decade ago from a small travel counter inside a five-star hotel in Dubai.

Kamlesh: We’ve been in the industry for over a decade and have now become a niche provider of destination management services in Dubai. As a one-stop, customer-oriented business for all travel needs, our main organizational goal is to design and craft travel services and packages in such a way that each of them ideally responds to the dynamic market trends as well as our clients’ specific travel requirements. We offer our full suite of travel solutions through our wholly-owned Rayna Group.

My name is Mark Johnson. In 2017, I launched Hobnail Trekking Co., an adventure travel company that specializes in treks to Mt. Everest Base Camp and other epic locales in the Himalayas, as perhaps the least qualified person on the planet to do so. By the end of 2019, we will have sent 23 Americans on this life-changing journey.

I am Nune Tatunts from Yerevan, Armenia, a small landlocked country in the Caucasus region. The Caucasus is sandwiched between Russia, Turkey, and Iran. My background education is tourism. In 2014 I started my work in the Arara Tour. That time it was a 1 person company, an idea, founders, and me.

Well, 2020 was crucially bad for tourism because of COVID-19. While 2019 was quite fruitful, the company made around $13,000 in revenue per month. Doubling 2018’s revenue, which can be considered as a great success.

Front Desk USA is a full color customized map publication distributed at no charge to the hospitality (hotels) industry. With over 1,000 hotels currently using Front Desk USA maps nationwide and tens of thousands being viewed by hotel guests each day, Front Desk USA is the, “go-to” visitor information guide for hotels.

Front Desk USA maps is a unique business opportunity that operates primarily in the hospitality industry. Hotels love our maps because their guests need local information that is important to their visit. Restaurants love our maps because marketing directly to the hundreds of hotel guests each night is good for the bottom line. We rely on local representatives/publishers to promote the map, distribute the map and find sponsors for the mobile guide and printed versions of a larger map in specific areas. Publishers can make up to $10,000 a year on each map they publish. Multiple maps areas are common for our publishers with the average around five maps.

Hi, I’m Jessica Baumgart, and in 2017 I founded Delicious Denver Food Tours to connect Denver locals and visitors to my city’s amazing food scene.

When I first launched the business, I was guiding every food tour myself. By month three, I had broken even and was turning a profit. This was also when I started hiring my first tour guide. Now 1.5 years into running the business, I manage a team of tour guides, and the business is producing $20,000/month in revenue.

If you have ever met me (which is pretty unlikely), then you probably learned relatively quickly that I’m really into airplanes. And by ‘really’ I mean borderline obsessed. My name is Corey Rust, and I own the Troutdale, Oregon based air tour business Envi Adventures.

Now, our best month was over $30,000 in revenue, and that is only in our second year. For a dumb guy like me, it makes me happy to know that I’m providing a service that people from all over the world are interested in. Not only that, but we have been able to generate a brand that people are beginning to recognize and connect with on a different level. Personally, I think that’s the most exciting part.

My name is Joe Griffith and I’m the founder and owner of Wander New Mexico Food Tours. We offering walking food tours of downtown Santa Fe and Albuquerque.

Enchiladas, posole, and a Silver Coin margarita at Del Charro, a stop on our downtown walking food tour

We are 3 young Italian travelers in love with eagerness to explore the world and their country who think that traveling should be allowed to everybody, despite how big the pocket is.

I’m Matt Wilson and my co-founder Jared O’Toole and I own Under30Experiences, a travel company for people aged 21-35. We run small group travel excursions around the world to destinations including Costa Rica, Iceland, Thailand, Greece, and US National Parks.

We’ve been named on Inc Magazine’s list of the fastest-growing private companies in America and number 198 on Financial Times 1000 list of America's Fastest-Growing Companies. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, we were closing in on $5M in revenue and plan to be back to that level and more soon.

Hi, I’m Nico Jacquart and I’m the CEO and Co-founder of Secret Food Tours, a global food tour company with tours in more than 50 cities worldwide.

Our most popular tour is Paris Food Tour where you will taste some of the best chocolates and macarons in Paris, learn how to pick some traditional French cheeses and pair them with wine. You will also visit one of the nicest areas of Paris, Montmartre.

“A private tour with a local guide is the best way to experience a destination. Since our founding, we’ve focused on creating truly memorable private tour experiences for travelers, while helping local tour guides offer customizable tours in over 1,000 destinations globally,” said Melhus, the CEO of ToursByLocals, in a statement.

Intrepid Group, which claims to be “the world’s largest provider of adventure travel experiences,” is riding a wave of robust growth, with a 17 percent increase in revenue in 2018 globally and 29 percent growth in North America. The increase brought the company’s global revenue in 2018 to $280 million.

Kiwi has grown fast without venture capital or marketing gimmicks. The online travel agency's story shows what it takes for a startup to scale today. Its story also reveals the long shadows cast by the mighty travel conglomerates.

In that short time, he’s gone from a top seller at Flight Centre to starting his own online travel agency called RoundAbout Travel that turns over $6 million a year, even in the GFC climate. Not an easy feat.