A Travellers’ Choice Award — and What Makes a Great Liverpool Tour

I don’t know exactly when it arrived, but while checking Tripadvisor recently, I noticed that my own listing now carries a lovely Travellers’ Choice Award!

My Dale Liverpool Tours listing has never been a big focus of mine. Much of my work as a Liverpool tour guide has been for other companies and their tours, so I usually direct guests to leave their reviews on those listings. I rarely ask for reviews on my own business account.

That makes this a lovely surprise. To everyone who has taken the time to leave feedback: thank you. It means so much, and it really does make a difference.

While my own personal tours and my listing hasn’t been named as a “best in the world/city” getting this little bit of recognition has also taken me back to a question that has followed me throughout my career: what makes a tour the best?

“The best tour in Liverpool” — according to who?

About ten years ago, on one of my first days as Head of Marketing for Liverpool City Sights, my colleague and now good friend Mally Beard gave me the password for the company’s Tripadvisor account.

As I remember it, he told me to take no notice of it, because “we all knew we were the best tour in the city!”

We laughed, but it planted a thought in my head: how could we prove that? And according to who?

At the time, I remember Tripadvisor listing 62 tours in Liverpool. We were 58th.

Objectively proving which tour is the best would be almost impossible. Different people want different things. But I knew whose opinions mattered most to me: the people buying tickets and spending their time with us.

In 2016, I helped design a brand new tour in Liverpool, the “City & Beatles Tour” alongside Phil Olivier and Lee Jones. Alongside developing the tour, I put together a strategy for improving our Tripadvisor standing, which the lads helped refine.

It centred on live guides, staff motivation, friendly competition and making guest feedback data visible to the team.

Within a year, we had reached the number-one position in Liverpool’s tour rankings on Tripadvisor. The culture of the company had changed too: guest feedback had become something we paid attention to together.

Years after I left, the City & Beatles Tour earned a place among Tripadvisor’s global top ten experiences in 2022. That was the achievement of the team delivering it at the time, but I took tremendous pride in having helped design the tour at the beginning of its journey.

Bringing that approach to the Magical Mystery Tour

The Cavern later asked me to join them, initially as a guide on the Magical Mystery Tour. Before long, I was also working in the head office as Marketing Executive.

I spent years going on about Tripadvisor statistics. I’m fairly sure people got fed up with me mentioning them.

My work also included behind-the-scenes tours of the Cavern Club, sharing the history of a place that means so much to Beatles fans around the world. At the time The Cavern Club was ranked among the best landmarks in the world, ahead of Buckingham Palace.

In 2022, I was asked to become manager of the Magical Mystery Tour. At a meeting in the Cavern Restaurant, Bill Heckle, the owner of Cavern City Tours, announced that I would be taking over and sorting out “all this Tripadvisor stuff”.

I quickly began putting the approach I had developed at City Sights into practice.

I stepped down as manager later that year for personal reasons and subsequently set up my own tour company. The system remained, with Victoria and Paul making further adjustments.

Between 2023 and 2024 I achieved something particularly meaningful to me: a company record for the number of five-star reviews received by an individual guide in a twelve-month period. I have that achievement framed at home.

Then came more recognition for the wider team. In 2024, the Magical Mystery Tour was named the eighth-best cultural and historical experience in the world in Tripadvisor’s awards. In 2026, it was ranked fifth worldwide and first in the UK in the Top Experiences category.

Those are achievements shared by the guides, drivers, office staff and everyone else who makes the tour happen. Having contributed as a guide, marketer and former manager, I’m proud to have played my part.

Liverpool tours on the world stage

There is something remarkable about seeing tours from your own city recognised alongside experiences from across the world.

Across different years, both Liverpool City Sights and the Magical Mystery Tour earned global top-ten recognition. For those of us following the results, it was a reminder of just how high the standard of tours in Liverpool could be.

I had helped develop one of those tours and worked on the other. To see both receive that recognition meant a great deal.

Now, finding a Travellers’ Choice Award on my own listing feels like another milestone in that journey.

What guest reviews mean to me

The question “what is the best tour in Liverpool or The World” will always come with subjective opinion, but my answer still begins with the same question Mally inadvertently left me with all those years ago: according to who?

For me, the most meaningful evidence is consistency. When guests keep taking the time to leave glowing feedback, year after year, it tells you that the experience matters to them.

Over the past decade, I’ve been fortunate to contribute to tours recognised among the world’s best. I now bring that experience to my work through Dale Liverpool Tours, with the same ambition: to give people a visit to Liverpool worth remembering.

To everyone who has joined one of my tours, recommended me or left a review: thank you for being part of that story.

Long may it continue!