Hey there,

Last week we launched a massive update to the Gondola dashboard.

Every single page got a redesign. Products, Blogs, Reviews, Leads, Echo Social, Analytics, Settings. They all look and work the same way now, so once you know one page, you know them all.

And the dashboard works on your phone now.

Update a tour, check a new lead, or see how many people are on your site right now, from the dock or the parking lot. (The website editor still needs a big screen.)

The biggest upgrade is Analytics.

Google Analytics has become really hard to use. So we put the answers you actually want right inside Gondola.

Here's what you can see now.

What guests do on your site.

How many people click your booking buttons, send you a contact request or join your newsletter, and how that changes over time. You can even see which banners, menu links and footer buttons get the clicks.

Which tours are most popular.

See how many visitors each product gets, and how that interest moves with the seasons. Handy when you're picking what to promote next.

Where your visitors come from.

Search, social, email and other websites, all broken down for you.

A promotion link builder.

Sharing your website in an email, a newsletter or a social post? Make a tracking link in a few seconds. Then see how many people that promotion brought to your site, right in your dashboard. It's the same thing you could do in Google Analytics, minus the headache.

Your product list shows more too. Next to each product you'll see how many people visited it in the last 30 days, whether it's showing on your site, and how its booking is set up.

Your reviews, all in one place.

See your Google, Tripadvisor and other reviews together, how many come in each month, and your overall rating. Then choose which reviews show on each product.

If anything in the new dashboard looks off, just reply to this email and tell me.

So why now?

This update gets the dashboard ready for Genesis, our new program that kicks off October 1.

Genesis operators are about to get a lot more in here: booking data from their booking system, and attribution, so they can see which marketing actually brings in the bookings. We're also adding SEO and AI Visibility tracking so that you can see how your brand is performing over time, as well as lots of new features to help optimize and manage your site. We had to rebuild the dashboard to make room for all of it.

One heads up: the first founders cohort of Genesis closes this week. If you've been curious about it, watch the free webinar before the doors close.

We also stopped sending the monthly keyword ranking reports, because they stopped meaning anything.

Some of you noticed. Here's the short version.

For years, rankings were a decent stand-in for bookings. Rank near the top for "sunset cruise" in your town and your phone rang.

That relationship is broken.

Your customers now ask ChatGPT or Google's AI. They get an answer that names two or three businesses, and they book one of them. Your ranking doesn't tell you whether you're one of those names.

So I'd rather not send you a report that looks nice and doesn't move bookings. What matters now is who's on your site, who clicks Book, and whether the AI engines recommend you. That's where we're putting our effort, and it's why the new Analytics looks the way it does.

If you want to see how the AI engines decide who to recommend, and what you can do about it, that's what the webinar covers. It's also where you'll hear all about Genesis.

→ Register and watch the free webinar here

See you at TP Connect?

If you haven't heard of it, TP Connect is the yearly conference from Tourpreneur, the community for tour and activity operators. This year it's November 17 and 18 at The Historic Seelbach in Louisville, Kentucky.

It's a fantastic place to learn, and most of that learning comes from other tour operators. There are no keynotes this year. Every session is a round table: a short talk, then an hour of honest conversation about the problems you're working on right now. The attendees pick the topics.

→ See the TP Connect conference page

It's a really great community, too. If Louisville isn't in the cards, join the Tourpreneur Facebook group. It's full of operators helping each other out every day.

→ Join the Tourpreneur Facebook group

We'll be there with a table of our own, all about AI visibility: how ChatGPT and Google decide which tours to recommend. Bring your questions, and we'll look at your website together.

And I have a couple of extra tickets for our customers. If you're a Gondola customer and you'd like to go, reply to this email and I'll get you in. First come, first served.

To your success,

Vitaliy