Conversations with the people building tomorrow's tour industry Hosted by Joe Martin An ongoing record Conversations with the people building tomorrow's tour industry Hosted by Joe Martin

★ ★ ★An original conversation series★ ★ ★

TOURInnovators

presentingconversations with the people building tomorrow's tour industry

Hosted by Joe Martin. A long-form interview series with the operators rewriting the rules. We talk about what they built, why they started, and what the rest of the industry can learn from them.

Read Episode 39 →

Read the latest, then dig in

★ In the Field ★

Joe with operators around the world.

Industry conferences. Operators' home cities. Tokyo, Rome, Tromsø, Buenos Aires, Nairobi. The people in these photos are some of the operators Joe has spent time with along the way. Every story matters.

39Episode

★ Episode 39 · Atlanta, Georgia ★

From beer to bites: Justin Hall built a tour company on what he loved.

Justin Hall · Southern Culinary Tours · Recorded May 2025

Justin Hall didn't start with a business plan. He started with a question: how do you turn the way you spend your weekends into the way you make a living? More than a decade later, Southern Culinary Tours moves three thousand guests a year through Atlanta's food scene, and the answer to that question has gotten more interesting.

Read the full conversation →

★ The Lineup ★

More conversations.

Cultural Women-led Award-winning

Nightlife Bachelorette

36Episode

USA

Kris Hoff

Happy Times Tours and Experiences

Prague City Adventures

Cultural Women-led Award-winning

Cultural Storytelling

See all episodes →

You don't need permission. You just need a city worth showing.

Chris Staudinger · Pretty Gritty Tours · Episode 34 →

★ The Voices ★

Voices we've heard from.

Each pin is an operator we've sat down with. Click one to meet them. The map fills in as we hear from more, and we're always looking. Know someone we should be talking to?

An imperfect atlas

Know an operator we should be talking to somewhere we haven't been?

Nominate them ↓

Recommend an innovator.

This is a working catalog. If you know an operator doing something the rest of the industry should know about, tell us. We read every nomination.

The most interesting ones become the next conversation.

Operators outside the US
Women-led companies
Corporate-group, accessibility, sustainability builders
Anyone working on something we haven't covered

I didn't have a business plan. I had a question. How do I keep doing the thing I'd do anyway?

Justin Hall · Southern Culinary Tours · Episode 39 →

Arival

Presenter

Speaking and contributing writing on corporate-group revenue at multiple Arival conferences.

TourPreneur

Featured guest

Long-form podcast conversation on the untapped opportunity in corporate group bookings.

Experience This!

Industry panel

All-star panel on attracting and retaining high-value corporate clients.

Travel Trends

AI Summit presenter

Workshop on harnessing AI for compelling tour-operator marketing.

Rezgo

Workshop host

Messaging and conversion workshop for tour operators worldwide.

Joe is inspired by the people he meets.

Joe's a world traveler who's stood at both poles and stepped foot on all seven continents. Some of his favorite hours of all of them have been on tours in Puerto Rico, Tokyo, and Rome.

"You can't get a redo on this year. So write it before you live it."

That's the heart of his TEDx talk on naming your years before you live them. The same idea runs through his book on productivity and intentional living, his speaking, and the work he does helping tour operators rewrite their own businesses.

Tour Innovators is the show that came out of all of it. The operators in this series have already done what Joe's been talking about for years. They refused the version of the industry they were handed. They built one that fits the lives they want to live.

Most operators are trying to scale guides. We're trying to scale moments.

Jonathan Mayuga · Pro Party Crawls · Episode 37 →