Photo Tours Site

Hi everyone!
Let me tell you a bit about myself first. I'm obviously new at https://photography-on-the.net but have some experince in the photography. I was interested in photography since I was a kid. We had a dark room made in the bathroom and was doing it with my brother. Then I've got my first DSLR camera around 10 years ago. I'm a professional IT developer and photography is my hobby rather then a business. I tried probably most type of shoots: portraits, landscapes, street photography, still life, nude, sports, events and of course travel photography. Wherever I go for more than a couple of days I take my camera with me, as I enjoy mixing adventures and photo. I visited several photo meetups as it always fun to talk to like minded people and share experience and ideas. Some time ago I visited my first photo tour and was amazed. It was in Vietnam and was just several hours long but during that time we visited fish market and couple of other authentic places. There was tons of moment to take shoot of. So I really liked the idea and then decided to try some more. I wanted to find a place with where I can find and compare different photo tour provides, place where I can pick the best one for me without having to visit every photo tour provider website. Somehow I was not been able to find a good one. So I recalled my profession and decided to create one. The main goal of which would be gathering most of decent photo tours in one place. Main topics are wildlife, landscape, adventure, cultural and traveling photography. The places range from Alaska, Canada and Iceland to Asia, Australia and New Zealand.
Me and my wife hours to put everything together and launch this startup. We already found several awesome photo tour providers who were glad to put their info to our website. We also added some functionality like filter by location and sorting by price or even price by day which look pretty handy to me.
So why do I write this long post here?
Basically I would like to get some feedback from professional and passionate photographers about this service. Any ideas how to make it better is much appreciated.
If you can also recommend any good photo tour operators I would be grateful as well.
Here is the web site http://www.phototourch​oice.com

PS. I understand that most of you guys probably would prefer to spend extra money for your equipment and organize the photo trip yourself rather then spending $2-3k for the special photo tour however I believe that there are people who still would like to be guided by professional photographer who can help them improve their skills and spend a week or two among people who share their passion.

Thank you,
Alex

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AlexVg wrote in post #18132363
Here is the web site http://www.phototourch​oice.com

Basically I would like to get some feedback from professional and passionate photographers about this service. Any ideas how to make it better is much appreciated.

Most of the thumbnails that each tour service provider has given you to post are not natural looking; they don't look real. They appear to be the product of way too much processing, and end up looking like paintings instead of like photos. This could be a turn-off to photographers who want to create realistic looking images with their cameras instead of creating photoshop art.

AlexVg wrote in post #18132363
If you can also recommend any good photo tour operators I would be grateful as well.

NatureScapes
FranzFoto
Doug Gardner

I don't think they would pay anything to be represented / listed / featured on your new site, but if you offer this service to tour operators for free, they may want to be included.

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AlexVg wrote in post #18132363
...Basically I would like to get some feedback from professional and passionate photographers about this service. Any ideas how to make it better is much appreciated...

...rather then spending $2-3k for the special photo tour...

Here are my two thoughts. First the website doesn't make it clear that the tours are from different companies and therefore different styles of operations. If one tour gets a bad rep then they would be branding to any other service listed on the site.

I think you need to allow the companies add a bit of their own letterhead styling to their listing so viewers will understand each tour is a separate and independent tour company.

Second to list tour costs and features with such little info as basically costing $2-3k means absolutely nothing to me as a tourist. Will I need to rent a car to get to the beginning location or will I get picked up at any hour? What if the flight arrives the day before can the company book an additional night to accommodate my travel plans? Is this only for die hard serious photographers up at 4am shooting non-stop until dark or is the tour company's style more relaxed and pampered?

I guess my point is there also needs to be some type of editorial review and or third party description to make this valuable for the customers. I've worked in the hospitality tour business before and know each company has it's own philosophy, style of doing things, and what its good at even if all the brochures at the hotel's kiosk look fairly similar.

Let me also add, having taken workshops and participated in similar outings that there needs to be a way for participants to know the others as trips have a way of catering to the lowest common denominator. I took one workshop completely billed as highly advanced it had very good reviews and speaking with a former instructor the outline was exactly what I wanted. Got to the class and the others were absolute idiots causing a complete waste of my time and money I was so extremely pissed and honestly it wasn't the instructors fault you could see he had been prepared to go in-depth and got stuck answering beginner questions throughout the whole workshop. It was advertised as a highly advance class.

We use to see this all the time where the person booking the tourists would talk to the customers and get a feel for their experience and athletic ability only to find out repeatedly that they lied and really had no business being on the trip, money can not buy you skills and athletic performance.

Again just my 2¢