How to get tourism leads using Apollo.io

Building a list of qualified tourism contacts normally costs hundreds of dollars if you buy data directly. There is a faster way. Using Apollo.io with a specialist data supplier, you can get 10,000 targeted tourism contacts for around $10. This guide shows you exactly how to do it.

At UniCamel, this is the same method we use to help clients connect with tour operators at scale. One of our clients, El Tawfik Tours, generated 170 qualified leads in six months using outreach built on this approach, with $120,000 closed from a single tour operator relationship. You can find more about how we work at uni-camel.com.

What is Apollo.io?

Apollo.io is a B2B contact database with millions of company and people records. It covers travel agencies, tour operators, destination management companies, hospitality businesses, and more. You can filter by industry, company size, location, job title, and email status.

The key is not to buy data directly from Apollo. That gets expensive fast. Instead, use it to build and export your filter URL, then hand that URL to a supplier who scrapes it cheaply on your behalf.

Step 1: Build your company list

Always start at the company level. The goal is to define the exact type of business you want to reach before you start pulling individual contact details.

Go to the Search section and select Companies. The most important filter is Industry. Type "travel" in the search box and you will see options including Leisure, Travel and Tourism, and Hospitality. Leisure covers travel agencies and tour arrangement companies. Hospitality covers hotels. If you are targeting tour operators, select Leisure and then exclude companies that also carry Hospitality or Restaurant as a secondary label. This removes hotels and restaurants from the list.

Next set your company size. If you want partners with enough volume to send recurring group bookings, filter for 50 or more employees. Adjust this based on the scale of partner that fits your business.

Set location. For US-based tour operators, filter to the United States. You can add or exclude specific cities and states as needed.

Add keyword filters. Type "DMC" or "destination management company" into the keyword field. People describe their businesses differently, so use both variants to capture more of the right companies.

Step 2: Find the decision makers

Once your company list is clean, move to the People section. Apollo carries all your company-level filters across automatically.

Add job title filters. Target titles like CEO, Founder, Business Development Manager, Head of Partnerships, and Sales Director. These are the people who make or directly influence partnership decisions.

Under the Email filter, select both verified and unverified. A portion of unverified emails will fail validation later, so starting with a larger list means more usable contacts after you clean it.

You can also filter by the decision maker's personal location, which is separate from the company's location. This is useful if you want to reach the right person across distributed teams.

Step 3: Export using a supplier

When your filters are set and you are happy with the list, copy the URL from your browser. This URL encodes your entire filter selection.

Send that URL to a data supplier. They will scrape the list on your behalf and deliver it as a spreadsheet. The cost is roughly $10 per 10,000 contacts — a fraction of what Apollo charges for the same data through its own export plans.

Before you start outreach, validate the email list using a tool like NeverBounce or ZeroBounce. This removes invalid addresses and protects your sender reputation.

Who should use this

This approach works for any tourism business building B2B partnerships. DMCs use it to find international tour operators who will send them travellers. Hotels use it to find tour operators for group bookings and series contracts. Travel technology companies use it to reach the agencies and operators who would use their platform.

If you sell to the travel trade, your buyers are already in Apollo. You just need to know how to find them. See how we structure this for hotels at the UniCamel hotels page or for DMCs at the destination management companies page.

Real results

The Colombia Trip used this targeting approach as part of their outreach and connected with more than 80 interested tour operators. Alaya Panama, a hotel, generated 50 to 60 positive responses from tour operators. Both are clients of UniCamel. You can read their stories on the case studies page.

Frequently asked questions

How much does it cost to get tourism contacts from Apollo?

Using a supplier to scrape your Apollo filter URL, you pay roughly $10 per 10,000 contacts. Buying data directly through Apollo's own export plans costs significantly more for the same volume.

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What industries should I select in Apollo to find tour operators?

Select Leisure under Industry. Then exclude companies that also carry Hospitality or Restaurant as secondary labels. This isolates travel agencies and tour operators from the broader hospitality category.

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What job titles should I target for tourism partnerships?

CEO, Founder, Business Development Manager, Head of Partnerships, and Sales Director. These roles control or directly influence partnership decisions. Avoid marketing or admin titles as they rarely have authority over supplier relationships.

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Do I need a paid Apollo account?

To build detailed filters and access the full database you need a paid account. The free plan has strict limits on contact views and exports.

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Should I verify emails before outreach?

Yes. Run your list through NeverBounce or ZeroBounce before sending a single email. Unvalidated lists have high bounce rates that damage your sender domain and reduce delivery rates for all future campaigns.

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What do I do with the list once I have it?

Enrich it to confirm current employment, segment by company type and location, then build separate email sequences for each segment. Sending one generic message to the full list produces poor results.

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Start building your list

You now have the full process for finding tourism contacts in Apollo and getting them for a fraction of the normal cost. The next step is to apply the same targeting logic to LinkedIn Sales Navigator, which covers a different portion of the market.

If you want this done for you, UniCamel builds targeted tourism contact lists and runs outreach campaigns on your behalf. Fill in the short form on the tourism representation page, and we will tell you within 48 hours whether we can get you results.