First tour, need advice

[RyanTurner]

Hi Guys,

 

I'm new to the traveling "gig" and would greatly appreciate some helpful direction..

 

I'll be traveling in the next week from Miami to all the major Southeastern US cities-

(e.g., New Orleans, Knoxville, Lexington, Asheville, Charlotte, Greenville, Myrtle Beach, Charleston, Savannah, Atlanta, Jacksonville, Orlando) just to name a few.

 

Tentatively, I plan to be in New Orleans the week of July, 16.

 

Any suggestions, advice, thoughts, would be awesome!

 

Cheers,

 

Ryan

[Kevin Slater]

What specific questions do you have?

 

My general advice is: place your ad three days before you get to each city (clearly stating the dates you'll be there). I don't know why, but it seems they need to ruminate on your ad for a few days before calling.

 

And I'll catch flack for this, but hit the big cities (NYC, DC, Boston) before going to these smaller ones. It's known as the Sutton rule: when asked why he robbed all them banks, Willie Sutton replied "because that's where the money is."

 

Ask away with questions, and you'll get plenty of (often divergent) replies on this board.

 

Kevin Slater

[Decatur Guy]

You've got a lot of cities on your plate. How long did you plan on touring?

[nate_sf]

Hi Ryan, welcome to the Forum.

 

I agree with Decatur Guy, you've listed a lot of cities. My suggestion would be to stay in each place at least two nights... don't move to a different city each night. You'll need the flexibility to accommodate people's schedules, and ideally accommodate incalls during the day so you'll need to think of how you time check-ins and check-outs. Also at least in my experience you'll do mostly incalls, so you'll want to choose a hotel that you are comfortable seeing guests in.

 

Other things you were wondering about?

[good ol boy]

Stop and smell the roses, enjoy yourself too. I agree with Mr. Slater. As a customer, put the ad up in advance. I am a rentboy person and do not check other website daily even weekly. So give people a chance to plan.

[seeker630]

With regards to advertising, I would suggest a Men4RentNow ad, kept up todate with the citiess and dates. In North Carolina, the Rentboy listings are so few that I seldom bother to check them, and previous discussions here have indicated that outside the major cities (New York, Chicago, etc.), Rentboy isn't used that much.

 

Good luck.

[RyanTurner]

Hi Everyone!

 

Thanks for all the great advice and tips. To answer the questions regarding my plans or thoughts on how I will be executing the itinerary. Yes, I do have a lot of cities on the list, but I don’t necessarily plan on working in each city. This trip originally was just a summer vacation to go exploring and hit the open highways. I decided to try something completely new and outside my realm as I hope to meet new and familiar faces while traveling.

 

I don’t have any limits on how long I’ll stay in each place I visit it really just depends on the overall experience in terms of things to do. (Kevin) I agree that a couple nights in each city is enough. Unless, of course I’m having a great time then in which case I’ll stay longer or if someone is looking for an overnight. The only specific plans I do have is to be back n Miami by August 1st because I am flying out to Fire Island that weekend.

 

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to meet everyone on this trip who might be interested. First, timing could present an issue and secondly because I won’t be able to take incalls. Since I will have my car and gps I don’t have any problems traveling. (Nate) Do you have any other suggestions by chance? It sounds like you’ve definitely had some experience in this department.

 

Ryan

[nate_sf]

Glad you found the suggestions from everyone here useful. I don’t have as much experience touring as others who post here do but can offer what I know.

 

Seeker is right, rentboy is used mostly in the big cities and men4rentnow is used more in the smaller places and in the west. I haven’t toured in the SE but sounds like m4rn would be the best bet. I’d suggest going for the “Gold” ad because it allows you to specify two different travel cities in addition to your base city, and for that matter you can change your base city to one you are travelling in too. Also you can choose whether or not to specify particular dates for your travel dates; if you don’t know specific dates you can still list them as travel cities. The Gold ad also lets you change the text in your ad frequently, so keep it updated with your travel plans.

 

Kevin has a point though that you should clearly state the dates you will be in a city. Since you’ve got a bit of a free-flow travel plan in mind this might be hard to do, but I’d suggest pinning down at least a few specific dates along the way – perhaps in the larger cities as Kevin suggests. I’ve found that people look very closely at those dates because they need to plan whether they can see you or not… trying to figure out if they’ll be in town, if they can get away from work, whether they’ll have the kids for the weekend… any number of things. It’s harder for them to make a commitment if they don’t know when exactly you’ll be in town. I don’t think you need to map out every single day, but just set a couple of specific dates somewhere along the way and then you can still be flexible with the days in between.

 

And now I’ll sound like a parent and this probably goes without saying, but whatever you do, once you make an appointment don’t cancel it for any reason except for being sick and out of commission. Although you are combining this with a vacation and having fun, the escort appointments are professional commitments. Your clients are often going to a lot of trouble to make arrangements to see you, so be sure to keep the appointments, show up on time rested and ready to go. Hopefully that advice is not too patronizing, but there is a lot of discussion on the forum here about escorts cancelling appointments and you don’t want to be the subject of that discussion! Not to mention letting someone down.

 

And of course be sure to post your plans in the Escort Travel section of this website too.

 

Hope you have a fun and productive trip!

[Decatur Guy]

Nate Bruno -- I think I'm falling in love with you!

[MFLV]

Me too! ( falling in love with Nate)

[JoeyBryant]

What specific questions do you have?

 

My general advice is: place your ad three days before you get to each city (clearly stating the dates you'll be there). I don't know why, but it seems they need to ruminate on your ad for a few days before calling.

 

3 days is way too soon to travel that distance. If I was planning to go on a tour to as much cities (and as far away from home) as Ryan was going on...I'd want to advertise 2-4 weeks before going places...or longer. Because it could take the client 2 weeks to figure out his schedule/finances, especially for something longer (which is what you want). Especially since anywhere I go outside of Denver is minimum 400 miles (500-900 miles is the norm) I don't even think about going anywhere without advanced notices.

 

In fact, one may have to 'test out' cities for months before actually going. It's certainly a challenge because on the one hand you don't want to play with clients thinking you're coming and not, on the other hand you don't want to waste gas, hotels, time, etc and end up not getting a profit.

 

That said...don't go anywhere if you don't have clients who are ready to book. Sure, you're likely to get something unexpected...but don't risk it. Make sure each place has someone booked with a day and time. Can't tell you how many times I've gone places with no inquires, expecting to get booked at the last minute and didn't. These days...I won't budge unless I know someone is waiting on me.

 

And now I’ll sound like a parent and this probably goes without saying, but whatever you do, once you make an appointment don’t cancel it for any reason except for being sick and out of commission.

 

Yeah that's certainly true. It's a terrible feeling to have to cancel on a client when they are anticipating your visit. But that's why too it's important to kind of just stick with certain areas rather than trying to take on too many destinations. I tend to keep it to like 3-4 places at a time. But at the same time, besides being sick...if you feel you're going to be forcing yourself too hard to make it to the destination it would be grounds to cancel. Way I see it is, yes the client may have arranged their schedule accordingly, but ultimately it's the escort who is traveling hundreds of miles to get to the destination and saftey should be first and foremost.

 

Most times I was glad I didn't chicken out and cancel, but it always bears mentioning that some 'clients' don't care about cancelling on YOU when you've made trips. Makes you consider requiring deposits...but that's a whole other topic in itself.

[Edward]

If you have to cancel, give as much advanced notice as possible.

[flguy]

Ryan, Don't spend too much time in N.O. The southern gentlemen of Georgia and the Carolinas want to welcome you to our area. Enjoy your tour and sightseeing and hope to see you soon.

[RyanTurner]

Ryan, Don't spend too much time in N.O. The southern gentlemen of Georgia and the Carolinas want to welcome you to our area. Enjoy your tour and sightseeing and hope to see you soon.

 

Tomorrow I'm going to seriously look at some of the places I considered visiting... Now that I'm on the road, regardless this being my summer vacation road trip, it's starting to feel like I bite off more than I could handle.

I might indeed be heading to Georgia and the Carolinas sooner than planned. Stay tuned FLGuy!

 

PS New Orleans is AWESOME!!!

[jawjateck]

woohoo! Look forward to the travel update. Welcome to Jawja!

[JoeyBryant]

I love to tour and travel. But invariably what has put me off from doing much in the past few months is the tendency for it to have too much speculation, and my patience for it isn't as tolerant. I'm on tour now, and been in contact with a client now for a couple of weeks now, including over the weekend where I took time out of spending Saturday afternoon with friends to respond to his texts about meeting up on Monday. All confirmed and everything.

 

I get here and less than 30 minutes prior to appointment time he's talking about stomach problems. Puh-lease! Maybe it's true, but even if it is true...it's part of what goes on during tours. Some cities have a tendency to do it more than others. Some don't do it at all, but few ever tells you about it, you just find out on your own.

 

Not to discourage you from tour and you should certainly go, but don't be afraid to ask for a deposit and test their intentions. If they stop responding after you ask for one, then that weeds them right out because they are half-assed committed to seeing you. I'm at the point where I prefer not to take risks and spend money on 'prospects' out of town, to where I plan to eventually ask ALL travel clients for deposits. It's a way better peace of mind. I expend energy getting on the road and answering their emails, I don't have time to throw away my earnings on people who can't commit.

 

Next time I go on a tour, if they can't give part of the fee upfront then I'm not going. Call it shipping and handling.