Melbourne ghost tour - tours as businesses

Last Friday after a large meal of mock meat and noodles at enlightened cuisine, lids, me and our friend nick went on Melbourne’s haunted ghost tour. It was something I had been interested in going to as I’m interested in spookiness and also the darker side of Melbourne's history. It ended up being a pretty good night out, But the whole time I was thinking about the business aspect of running a tour rather than if I could feel any ghostly presence. I’m sure a lot of people would have been concentrating on what he was saying while I was trying to add up the amount of payers and the possible costs associated with running the tour.

The tour was basically a two and a half hour walk around various back street of Melbourne city, our guide pointing out first banks, market places, morgues and cemeteries. As well as stopping at places like the Mitre tavern, Queen Vic market and this creepy car park that once upon a time was a Cobb & Co coach station, to tell the stories of the ghosts that haunted the places now. The tour was pretty interesting and the tour guide was very good, but the main failing was the sheer amount of people on the tour. There were at least 50 people on the tour, which would be enough to drive the spookiness out of most experiences. We also had a security guard along with the tour that more once had to remove some drunk idiots who had attached themselves to the group .

The tour started at ‘Melbourne’s haunted bookshop' which the tour guide is the owner of. But it's clear that the tour itself is the main bread winner. As a business idea, the very successful tour is a great one. At $20 a ticket and around 50 payers on a Friday night. That is $1000 for two and a half hours of your time, the only cost being the security guard and possibly insurance. There is also a tour that he runs on Tuesday night, that covers other melbourne locations. Clearly this is a tour that does very well. Probably a lot of the success comes from the fact it’s been going for ten years and word of mouth is very well developed. Getting feature on Getaway and that guys big break show probably didn’t hurt either.

I honestly think that running a tour would be a good business idea if you can find something you’re passionate and knowledgable about, and there is interest from people to experience it. One other one that springs to mind is the chocoholic’s tour of Melbourne. It is both a bus drive and walking tour that covers places like Suga, koko black and Hagues. I used to work at the shop Suga for about a year making lollies, and there was a standing deal with the operator of that tour that we would have a batch of lollies ready to be made just as the tour came in. She had also written a book about all the places that the tour visited and it was for sale in most of the locations. This was a very good tie in idea.

Likewise I’ve seen those 'Pam’s guide to discount Melbourne' books around and she also operates one of those bargain shopping tour companies. A book and tour seem to tie into each other quite well. I think that the success of the Haunted tour is down to the tour guides obvious knowledge, but the fact that he has a shop gives him a lot of credibility. It's also plain to see that the tour is the basic life line to keep the shop afloat. So maybe an idea for someone already operating a shop in some field is to branch out themselves into a tour, or even featured talks. Clearly if done right it can be a good way to prop up the main businesses income and add credibility to the enterprise.

It also looks like it could be pretty fun to do.

-rocket

rocket@stayhuman.com.au