This is the second interview feature in our How to Run Events for Tourists series looking at the individuals behind successful tourist events.

Fed up with endless auditions, actor Tom Brace decided to turn his talent to entertaining a more receptive audience – tourists. Tom and his business partner, Ferry Hunt, founded See Your City 18 months ago, starting off in London but recently expanding to Edinburgh and York, acquiring a TripAdvisor Certificate of Excellence along the way. See Your City runs popular tours including the Harry Potter Walk, Cheese Crawl and Ghost Boat.

Recalls Tom: “I went to drama school but realised what I really loved about acting was interacting with the audience. I worked for a little while at The London Dungeons, which is where I started learning about the history of London. I already had all the important dates and events embedded in my mind so when the opportunity arose to become a tour guide I was prepared!”

While Tom was working on the ground, Ferry was working office-side within a tour company. They decided to team up and pool their skills to launch their own venture.

“Ferry was working with the staff and on marketing so he knew the industry. We decided to focus on inbound tourists rather than domestic trade and contacted every single travel agent that we could. We also uploaded all of our products onto popular listing sites like Eventbrite.

“We made sure our marketing material would appeal to the German, French and Italian markets by having extra translations and visuals. Although the tours are conducted in English, we knew we still needed to tailor the marketing to get the bite.”

Developing the content of the tours to make them attractive was also important. Tom and Ferry wanted to step away from the dated idea of a walking tour, with a guide simply intoning facts.

“We’re both from Yorkshire and we wanted to inject as much personality and imagination into it as possible. We wanted to make it really personable and ensure we got to know the customers en route.

“We thought, ‘What would we like to do if we were the bosses?’ We were the first to introduce the quiz system into our Harry Potter tour. We use a sorting hat to sort the participants into houses and they can win prizes for their houses. It‘s fun for us so it’s fun for them. Now we’re the leading Harry Potter tour in London.”

According to Tom, having a passion for the subject matter makes a real difference. See You City only runs tours that reflect the guides’ own interests.

“When we thought about introducing a cheese tour, we went around the office and asked everyone what they thought. Everyone was like, ‘I like cheese’, ‘I really like cheese’ so we said let’s do it. Then we got picked up on the Claudia Winkleman show on Radio 2, which was a great plug, and the Cheese Crawl has become really popular.”

Part of the strategy for growing See Your City’s reputation was consistency and reliability: “It is our ethos that customer service is the most important thing, so we don’t cancel tours,” says Tom. “We found that a lot of activity providers would cancel their events if it wasn’t profitable, but we see lower numbers as small marketing fees. The first tours we did were just with two or three people but it consistently grew and today, for example, we’ve got 100 guests split up between four guides.”

He adds: “When we started in April 2017, the turnover was barely enough to pay mine and my buddy’s rent but April this year was a big turning point. Turnover now has increased by about a thousand per cent. It only took 12 months, which is really quick.”

Rapid expansion into new destinations has paid off for See Your City, but it has been a steep learning curve in terms of finding out what works and what doesn’t.

“We need different marketing strategies for different locations and different seasons,” says Tom. “When we opened up in York, which is where both of us are from, we advertised it in exactly the same way as we did in London but we noticed that online marketing didn’t work. We just had to get out on the ground and flyer the whole place. We also realised we couldn’t charge London tour prices. As soon as we did that it picked up rapidly.”

He adds: “When we launched in Edinburgh, we decided to take a different approach. We contacted a local deal site called 5pm.co.uk and sold 8,000 tickets. Even though we had to give up quite a lot in commission, it was good because it kept the guides up there in work.”

See Your City now supports 15 members of staff, including 13 tour guides, and is eyeing up further new locations including Manchester and Glasgow.

As Tom remembers, “When we took on our first tour guide it felt like a risk because we were going into this unknown and didn’t know how much work we could offer him. It was also a risk from the point of view of us putting our trust in him, but he was great. I really love the way the guides take ownership of their tours, adding on facts you didn’t know.”

Despite the company’s growth, Tom and Ferry are clear about sticking to their original values – even if that means taking customer service calls at home in the evening.

Tom tells us, “I believe you should always try and keep it personable. Never try and go into a big corporate thing. We don’t have set hours to take phone calls, I sometimes get calls during dinner saying, ‘Hello, we’re at the meeting point’ but it’s all about giving the consumer a good experience. If there’s a tour running at that time, there should be a number for them to call. You’ve got to keep your feet on the ground and keep working hard, otherwise someone else will come along and overtake you.”

Looking for something fun to do in London, Edinburgh or York? Get your walking shoes on and check out See Your City’s events on Eventbrite. 10% of profits go to the Cystic Fibrosis Trust.