I tour about once every two to three months. Three or four cities a year. Same general shape: pick a date six to eight weeks out, book accommodation, announce on my socials and on the two ad sites I post on, then refresh the announcement in my Instagram bio every couple of weeks because of course the dates moved or I added another stop.
Then the same handful of clients in the destination city would message: when are you back? — even though I'd posted it three times in three places. Some of them genuinely missed it. Some had subscribed to my newsletter (which I sent quarterly, badly, and apparently ineffectively). Most just preferred to ask me directly.
I started building a small page for myself a few months ago. Just a list, really. Here are my upcoming stops, with dates, in one place. I put the URL in my bio, told a couple of my regulars about it, and stopped fielding the same three questions every week.
A few other providers I trade notes with saw it. They wanted one too. So I built it properly, and now it ships with BlushDesk.
This post is what I actually use mine for, and the handful of small things I wish someone had told me before I started touring.
What it is, in one sentence
It's a public page at blushdesk.ch/t/your-handle that lists your upcoming tours. That's it.
You can pick from six visual styles — I'll get to that — but underneath, it's a list. Cities, dates, statuses. A button to subscribe to the dates in their calendar. A small form so a client can tell you "I'd love this slot" or "let me know next time."
The URL never changes. You add a new stop, the page updates. Subscribers see the new tour in their calendar without lifting a finger. That's the whole thing.
A small detail that matters: the handle is its own thing
This bit confuses people, so I want to flag it.
Your booking form lives at blushdesk.ch/f/something. Your tour page lives at blushdesk.ch/t/something-else. They are not the same slug. You can — and probably should — give them different handles.
My booking form is /f/giulia-bookings. My tour page is /t/giulia. The booking form changes occasionally (I rename it when I overhaul my intake). The tour page hasn't moved in months, and won't. That stability is the whole point — once a client has subscribed to my tour page or saved the URL, it works forever.
Pick something short, lowercase, no underscores. Your stage name works if it's available. If not, add a city or skip the vowels. I would not stress about it — what matters is that it stays the same once you've shared it.
The status field is the most useful thing I added
Every tour has a status. The status changes how the public page reads, and more importantly, how the call-to-action behaves:
- Bookable — open. The CTA goes to your booking form, pre-filled with the dates.
- Soliciting — interested? Tell me. The CTA captures intent without committing. Use this for cities you're still deciding about.
- Tentative — pencilled in, visible, no CTA. Use sparingly; tentative cities don't convert.
- Almost full / Fully booked — visible for credibility, the CTA gets clients onto the notify-me list for next time.
Here's why I care: Soliciting is genuinely useful. Before this, if I was thinking about a city but wasn't sure I could fill it, I just... didn't post about it. Now I list it, mark it Soliciting, and see who replies. If three people say they're interested, the trip pays for itself and I commit. If nobody replies, I quietly remove it. No public retraction, no awkward "trip cancelled" post.
Pick a layout. Try one. Switch if it's wrong.
There are six. Same data, six personalities. Some friends call this overkill — and they're not wrong — but they each genuinely fit a different vibe and I've seen all six chosen by different people:
- Editorial — magazine cover. Big serif type, lots of white space. The default. Probably right for most people.
- Marquee — theatre lobby. Massive city names, one at a time. For show-offs (affectionate).
- Atlas — a stylised route map with pins on a curve. Most distinctive of the six. If you tour a lot, the geography is part of the story.
- Departures — airport board. Flight codes, status pills. Fits if your brand already has a travel thread.
- Postcard — handwritten on warm paper. Softer, personal. The right answer when "elegant" isn't the goal.
- Schedule — clean chronological list. Built for skimming. The least dressy.
Pick one. Look at it. If it doesn't feel like you, switch. It's three clicks in settings and your URL doesn't change.
If you want to see them side-by-side without signing up, there's a demo at /t/example — flip between the six layouts and the six themes in a bottom-right switcher, with synthetic data so you can see exactly what each one feels like.
What I actually do, on a normal tour
For anyone wondering whether this is a content marketing thing you have to maintain — no, it's basically zero ongoing effort. My workflow:
Two months out: add the tour. Pick dates, city, status (usually Bookable; sometimes Soliciting if I'm still feeling it out). Save.
That's it. I don't repost anything anywhere. The page updates. The Twitter bio link still works. Subscribers will get one email, on the day I publish, if they've opted in.
On the road: nothing. The page automatically marks the current tour as active and shows a "currently in [city]" badge at the top. I take a screenshot for my stories on day one and that's my entire on-tour social presence.
After the tour: I open BlushDesk and look at the Pending tour interest list — the people who tapped "notify me" or "I'd love this slot" while the tour was live. I message each one personally. Not a template. A real message. This part takes me about fifteen minutes and tends to convert better than anything else I do.
That's it. That's the entire workflow.
When something changes
The whole point of the page is that you don't have to re-announce a stop just because a date slipped. But sometimes things change badly enough that subscribers genuinely need to know — the flight moved, the city changed, you have to cancel.
When you edit dates or the city on a published tour, an optional toggle appears under the form: Let subscribers know. Off by default. When you flip it on, a short message gets pre-filled in your voice — first person, light apology where it fits, a "reach out if your plans need to shift" if it's a date move. You can edit every word before saving. One email per subscriber per tour per day, max, so a flurry of small edits doesn't turn into spam.
Cancellations get the same affordance inside the delete dialog. Same pre-filled honest copy, same one-email cap.
I use this almost every tour. Touring schedules move; the version of "I'll be in Berlin May 20-27" you announced six weeks ago is rarely the version that survives. Telling people who asked to be told is the difference between a small inconvenience and a soft betrayal.
The thing I didn't expect
I thought the value of the page would be saving me typing — and it is. But the unexpected thing is that the Soliciting status changed how I plan tours.
I used to commit to a city based on vibes and hope. Now I float the dates as Soliciting two months out, see who responds in the first ten days, and decide based on that. I've avoided two trips this year that wouldn't have paid for themselves, and committed harder to two others that filled before I even booked the flight.
That's the bit I wish someone had given me three years ago.
A few other small things
- Embed it on your own site. If you have a website, there's a paste-and-go iframe snippet in tour settings. Updates automatically when you change anything.
- Subscribe in calendar is the most underused feature. Tell your regulars to subscribe once. They will never ask "when are you back?" again. (Or they will, but at least you can blame them with a clear conscience.)
- Notify-me captures are gold. People who tap "notify me when you're back in X" on a fully-booked tour are about three times more likely to actually book the next time you're there. Don't ignore that list.
- The default is published. When you create a tour, it's live immediately. There's no "publish" step. I find this scary and convenient in equal measure.
Honest disclaimer
I am the person who built this, in part because I personally wanted it. That makes me biased. The shape of the feature is opinionated and reflects how a handful of providers actually tour — including me, the ones who tested early builds, and the friends who told me what was missing.
If you tour in a way that this doesn't quite fit, I'd love to hear about it. There's a contact form in the dashboard. Real people read it.
Otherwise — tour smart. Stop announcing.
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