Digital Guidebooks is a new company built by innovative minds that have been hard at work in the experience operator space for over sixteen years. The platform exists because of one observation: the most valuable moment in the guest relationship happens during the experience, and almost no one has built tools for it.
Most of our work over the past decade has been with food tour operators. We love food tours. We have spoken at Global Food Tourism Association events, sat on panels, run workshops, and built alongside operators who care deeply about their cities and their guests.
The during-the-experience layer was first proven in food tours, but the framework applies anywhere a guide and a guest spend meaningful time together. Multi-day operators, travel agents, and curated trip planners are folding the guidebook into their own playbooks, and we are excited to keep building alongside them.
"Every other tool in tour tech exists before the experience or after it. The during moment , when guests are most engaged, most grateful, most likely to act , has been ignored for a decade."
The observation that started Digital Guidebooks
We have been early before. Websites for rez tech, corporate group strategies, and now the during-the-experience layer. The pattern is the same: we build what operators need before the market recognizes it.
The team begins working in tourism technology, building websites and digital tools for experience operators across the U.S.
A highly optimized, conversion-focused website launches for tour operators, one of the first of its kind in the industry, at a time when conversion rate optimization is still new to tour tech.
The earliest digital guidebook ships: a simple digital list of beers sent to guests on a brewery experience. No app, no printing, just a link.
The tour operator website platform launches as a monthly SaaS product and is acquired six months later by a major North American reservation technology provider, folded into their core offering.
The first working guidebook prototype takes shape, expanding the concept into a structured format with stops, descriptions, and guide information.
Chicago Food Tours runs an early version of the digital guidebook on their tours, capturing emails from guests during the experience. The result: a 79% increase in email capture compared to their pre-tour signup form. Read the case study →
The team begins helping operators pursue corporate group experiences, an underserved revenue channel most operators overlooked.
Guidebooks soft launch with a small group of operators. Real-world testing proves the core loop: tips go up, emails get captured, reviews follow. A Savannah operator captures 5,000 emails in a single season, up from his typical 1,000.
The DIY corporate group kit launches and helps hundreds of operators build and sell corporate experiences. Expanded testing of the guidebook platform begins. The kit is still available at UpLevelTourism.com.
The Digital Guidebooks public beta opens to all operators. The Founding Member program launches, inviting a small group of operators to shape the platform's direction with direct roadmap input, quarterly strategy calls, and a price lock for life.
A decade ago, our founder pitched the digital guidebook concept to Chris Andrews of Bienville Bites in Mobile, Alabama. Chris did not wait for a platform. He built his own version in Canva and has been running it on every tour since.
“You were the first person I knew of with this concept. We’ve been talking about this for almost a decade now. So obviously I was thinking about you, and I created it in Canva. You were onto it a long time ago.”
Chris Andrews, Bienville Bites Tour
Chris built his version in Canva: a single document with the tour’s restaurants, a five-star review link, a Venmo link for each guide, and recommendations for places off the route. The results have been hard to argue with. Tips climb to the point where his phone lights up with Venmo notifications the moment a tour wraps. Reviews for his Fairhope tour tripled in a year. And his email list has grown exponentially, because he is capturing addresses from every guest at the table, not just the one who booked the tickets.
Related reading
Using Canva to Create a Tour Guidebook →
Canva produces polished, branded guidebooks. It cannot collect emails, route tips to a guide, or update in real time after sharing.
Years working in
tourism technology
Of operators helped
with corporate groups
Obsession: the during-
the-experience moment
The team behind Digital Guidebooks has spent years contributing to the conversation around experience operator growth, presenting at leading industry conferences and webinars, and publishing research that has shaped how operators think about revenue, technology, and the guest journey.
Conference presentations, podcast appearances, webinars, and published articles on revenue growth strategies for tour and activity operators.
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