Consulting and advisory services for the travel and tourism industry 

Open Air Consulting offers a portfolio of advisory services for travel and tourism businesses such as outbound tour operators, receptive tour operators, DMC’s, retreat companies, representation agencies, tour guides, outfitters, travel agencies and travel advisors.


Business Growth and Value Acceleration

  • Benchmark enterprise valuation

  • Sustainable scaling strategies

  • Team design and recruitment for optimal efficiency and affordability

  • Hiring and Onboarding: set your team up for success

  • Track enterprise value growth with the CEO Dashboard

  • Align business goals with personal financial goals

  • Design sales systems and conversion tracking

Operational Risk Mitigation

  • Corporate & regulatory compliance 

  • Assess customer concentration and external market threats/opportunities

  • Liability and legal protections (are they transferable?) 

  • Risk management systems audit

  • Quality of partnership contracts (protections and transferability)

  • Operational bottleneck analysis

Reducing Owner Dependence

  • Systems and SOP Development 

  • Tech Stack Development (booking software, CRM, financial management)

  • Employee engagement and accountability (KPI’s, communication)

  • Assess owner health and capacity

  • Leadership development: beyond delegating to empowering ownership

Pricing and Profit

  • Easy to understand cashflow management for key decision making 

  • Profit margin analysis by product/service category

  • Marketing and sales ROI

  • Financial storytelling: does chart of accounts represent business model?

  • Focus on your most valuable financial metrics to prevent overwhelm

  • Owner compensation and impact on enterprise value (how to pay yourself more now without lowering valuation)

Exit Planning and Succession Preparation

  • Transition preparation and selecting best form of exit or transition 

  • Calculate business sale proceeds (how much you’ll actually walkway with)

  • Executive summary of Business for Sale for potential buyers/investors

  • Organization of documentation required during due diligence

  • Advising on how to navigate the business sale and transition processes

  • Leadership and strategic planning 

  • Enterprise value tracking so you can identify the best time to exit

How we work

Open Air Consulting specializes in just one industry, which means we already have a deep understanding of your business’s operating environment and the external threats and opportunities. You don’t need to take any time making sure we appreciate the external forces impacting your business such as seasonality, climate change, political unrest, cross-cultural relationships, fluctuating currency exchange rates, airline industry turmoil and so much more.

We’re familiar with your business model and use our extensive industry knowledge to immediately spot trends that may present a threat or an opportunity to your business. Every day, we’re talking to travel-related business owners, brokers, investors and tourism professionals to keep up to date with this exciting and fast-moving industry.

Having said that, we’re a boutique advisory that doesn’t pretend to have all the answers. When appropriate, we refer our clients to a range of professionals to support through specific scenarios.

Our professional referral network includes:

  • Financial and accounting firms who understand seasonal/multi-currency businesses

  • Attorneys familiar with the tourism industry

  • Risk management and employee training consultants who specialize in outdoor/tour guiding businesses

  • Tax planning experts for U.S. businesses

  • Systems and Ops experts for tech stack implementation

  • Business brokers to take your business listing to market

  • Branding and digital marketing agencies

  • Private equity firms looking for travel businesses

  • Bankers and lenders serving U.S.-based travel businesses

  • Estate planning attorneys for buy-sell agreements

  • M&A attorneys for reviewing purchase agreements or investor contracts

  • Personal wealth managers (invest the proceeds of your business sale for retirement income)

We help you understand the impact these services have on your business’s overall value so that you can easily calculate the return on your investment. We help take the stress out of making big financial decisions, especially as you get closer to your exit.

HERE ARE SOME EXAMPLES OF WHAT our ADVISORY RELATIONSHIP LOOKS LIKE:

example scenario 1

During our ongoing value acceleration work, we discover that your liability waiver and insurance coverage has left you seriously exposed to litigation if a certain type of situation were to occur.

This means that your biggest asset—this business you’ve spent years growing—is not protected from potential lawsuits. Plus, this kind of risk exposure would be a big obstacle to closing a sale of your business in the future, since it would most certainly be discovered during the due diligence process.

The attorney we refer you to explains you’ll be spending an $10- $20K in legal advice to update the waiver, booking policies and upgrade your insurance policy over the next several years. That’s a cost you hadn’t anticipated, but in looking at your exit timeline and the value of protecting your business versus the cost of defending litigation, it’s easy to say YES to that investment today.

And you can sleep well at night knowing you’ve protected your most valuable asset.  

example scenario 2

Your company’s Profit and Loss statement shows really strong net profits of over 35%, and you’re expecting to get a high 6X multiplier on that profit when you go to sell the business, which would put millions of dollars in your pocket.

In our work together, we look at just how much time and effort you and your wife put into the business, and it adds up to way more time than two full-time employees.

We discuss how easily a buyer would spot that the P&L doesn’t reflect the true cost of running the business because of you and your wife’s contributions. This discrepancy could lead the buyer to justifiably offer you only a 1 - 2X multiple on profit, which means a far lower sale price than you expected.

Over the next year or two, our value acceleration work prioritizes reducing owner dependence, including making a couple of strategic hires. Sure, this adds $120K a year to your payroll, which lowers that net profit, but since you can now justify that 6X multiple, you’re able to sell the company for millions more than you would otherwise. The investment in your team clearly pays off.

And in the meantime, you and your spouse enjoy more free time and less stress!