The Small Business Toolkit
The tools behind our businesses. The ones we’d actually recommend.
We’ve spent more than a decade building and running businesses in travel and tourism. From finding customers and managing teams to marketing and monetizing our websites, these are the tools that have earned a place in our everyday operations.
No endless software lists. Just useful recommendations, honest opinions, and what we’ve learned along the way.
Real businesses. Real experience. Honest recommendations.
From the team behind Like A Local Tours (established 2014) and Like A Local Guide.
Affiliate disclosure: some links on this page are affiliate or referral links. If you sign up through one, we may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. We focus on tools we pay for and use ourselves, and if we include something we haven’t personally used, we say so plainly.
Why trust our recommendations?
A decade of actually operating
Since 2014, we’ve run Like A Local Tours, working with real payroll, real vendors and real bookings. That hands-on experience shapes every recommendation in this Toolkit.
We use what we recommend
Everything marked We use this is software we pay for and use to run our businesses, not something we found in a roundup.
We say when we don’t
If a tool is here for comparison rather than from firsthand use, it’s labeled Worth considering and we explain what we use instead.
Find Customers
Sales, prospecting and lead generation
The hardest part of a small business is reaching people who don’t know you exist yet. For us, that means corporate and private-group bookings.
Snov.io
Find business contacts, verify email addresses and run outreach campaigns from one place.
- Best for
- Small teams doing their own B2B sales without a sales department.
- How we use it
- Like A Local Tours uses it to find corporate leads, verify contact details and run personalized outbound email campaigns for corporate and private-group bookings.
Good to know: Prospecting software can’t fix a vague pitch. Get clear on your offer and your ideal customer first, then buy the tool.
Marketing & Email
Staying in touch, automatically
Most small businesses lose more money to people who forgot about them than to people who said no.
Drip
Email automation that keeps customer relationships going without manual follow-up.
- Best for
- Small businesses that want automation without an enterprise price tag.
- How we use it
- Drip runs our newsletters, ongoing customer emails and review requests. We set each sequence up once, and it keeps the relationship going without anyone following up with every customer by hand.
Good to know: You pay by list size, and a small engaged list beats a large indifferent one. Clean your list before you import it.
Operations & Team
Running a team that changes every day
The unglamorous half of the job. These are the tools that stopped us doing things twice.
Quo (formerly OpenPhone)
One shared business number for calls and texts, with routing you can change yourself.
- Best for
- Teams where several people answer the same number and staffing changes often.
- How we use it
- Our whole team shares one number, and guests text it like any other number. We built our own automated routing that connects each guest to the right tour guide, and we regularly adjust it ourselves as our guide roster changes.
- Why we recommend it
- It has saved us a lot of time and money. Changing the routing takes minutes and we do it ourselves, which matters when staffing is different every day.
Good to know: The value shows up the moment a second person needs to answer the same number.
Notion
A flexible workspace that works as a wiki, project tracker and lightweight CRM.
- Best for
- Teams that need one home for processes, scripts and planning.
- How we use it
- Our ops manual, tour scripts and planning all live in Notion.
Good to know: The blank page is the hard part. Start with one process you repeat every week.
Trainual
Document how your business works so new people can learn it without shadowing you.
- Best for
- Businesses that hire and onboard new team members regularly.
- How we use it
- It’s how we train new guides without repeating ourselves.
Good to know: Worth it once you’re hiring regularly. Before that, a written checklist may be enough.
Accounting & Payroll
Money in, money out, and paying the team
Bills, books and payroll: the tools that keep the numbers straight.
BILL
Accounts payable and vendor payments, with approvals and records in one place.
- Best for
- Businesses with recurring vendors and invoices.
- How we use it
- Invoices and vendor payments, without the paperwork.
Good to know: Pays off when you have recurring vendors and more than one person approving spend.
Xero
Cloud accounting for income, expenses, reconciliation and reporting.
- Best for
- Small businesses that work with a bookkeeper or accountant.
- How we use it
- Our books live in Xero.
Good to know: Talk to your bookkeeper first. Switching accounting systems mid-year is more work than it looks.
Visit Xero Official site, not an affiliate link
Gusto
Payroll, benefits and HR for US businesses.
- Best for
- US employers with a small team.
- How we use it
- It’s how we pay our team and keep onboarding and payroll organized.
Good to know: US-focused. If you pay people in several countries, you’ll need something alongside it.
Visit Gusto Official site, not an affiliate link
Website Monetization
Already getting website traffic? Make it work harder.
Stay22 turns the hotels, attractions and experiences you already write about into bookable links. We use it across Like A Local Guide, on our destination guides and on individual venue pages, to monetize travel content.
- Best for
- Travel bloggers, publishers and destination sites whose readers are planning trips.
- Good to know
- It monetizes intent you already have. If a page isn’t reaching people who are planning a trip, a booking link won’t create that.
We use this Built for travel content
A monetization layer built for travel content: hotels, attractions and experiences.
Referral link: we may receive a bonus if you qualify and reach the booking milestone.
Tours & Bookings
Booking and reservation software
Your reservation system is the one tool you can’t casually swap out, so we’re especially clear about what we have and haven’t used.
Bokún
Booking, channel management and OTA distribution for tour and activity operators. Owned by Tripadvisor.
- Best for
- Tour operators comparing reservation platforms, especially for online travel agency distribution.
- Why it’s here
- We haven’t used Bokún to run a tour company. Like A Local Tours uses FareHarbor. Bokún is here because it’s one of the platforms operators most often shortlist, and it’s worth evaluating as an alternative.
Good to know: Compare it with FareHarbor and others using your own booking volume and channel mix. Ask about contract length, payment processing and what happens to your data if you leave.
Behind the Toolkit
Tested in the day-to-day of running real businesses
Like A Local Tours has run walking food and culture tours since 2014, and Like A Local Guide grew out of it. We hire and train guides, pay vendors, answer guests, run email and keep a travel website paying for itself.
This list is what has stuck through all of that.
Why this list is intentionally selective
There are hundreds of business tools we could recommend. We’d rather share the ones we’ve actually used, explain why they’ve worked for us, and be upfront when we’re considering an alternative.
As our businesses evolve, this list will too.
For travel businesses
Want more travelers to discover your business?
We help independent restaurants, hotels, shops, attractions, tours, and local experiences get featured in our curated destination guides. Listings and upgrades start at $75/year.