How Shoreline Tours Survived and Thrived Amid Global Travel Disruptions
Riding Waves: How "Shoreline Tours" Endured—and Evolved—Through Global Upheaval
On a chilly March morning in 2020, Sara Levin found herself staring at a sea of cancellation emails. Her inbox, once bustling with booking confirmations and partnerships, now buzzed with uncertainty. Sara was the founder of "Shoreline Tours," a small but spirited tech startup out of Santa Barbara, California, dedicated to modernizing coastal tourism through a dynamic booking platform. The venture had been riding high, with spring bookings stacking up—until the world locked down.
This is the story of how one founder and her tight-knit team navigated the most turbulent year in modern travel, fighting to keep their dream—and their customers—afloat.
The Spark: From Weekend Surfer to Tech Founder
The idea for Shoreline Tours took root the same way Sara learned to surf: by failing fast and getting back up. A recreational surfer and former operations manager at a local hotel, Sara saw first-hand how fragmented the coastal excursion market was. Booking a kayaking trip meant phone tag; finding a sunset cruise was a gamble of outdated flyers and clunky websites.
“I just wanted to make it simple for people to discover and book amazing coastal experiences from their phones,” Sara recalled.
She recruited a friend from her college coding club, pooled savings from weekend gig work, and by late 2018, they had an MVP: a barebones web app listing hand-picked tours from trustworthy local providers. Early beta users loved the streamlined discovery and instant booking. But building trust among tour operators—many wary of third-party systems—was slow and sometimes disheartening.
The first year was full of scrappy experiments. Sara personally visited boat operators, offered to digitize their bookings free for a month, and responded to every user email herself. Revenue was laughably small (she still holds onto their first $29 Stripe payout as a lucky token), but the feedback was golden. Iterating quickly, they inched toward product-market fit, just as word-of-mouth in the Santa Barbara community brought organic growth.
Momentum and Milestones: Gaining Traction—Then Hitting Turbulence
By late 2019, Shoreline Tours had onboarded over a dozen local tour businesses. The team of three celebrated their first $1,000 revenue month with burritos on the beach, feeling momentum build as peak travel season approached. They launched a revamped mobile interface, allowing travelers to compare real-time availability and prices—a first for many local operators.
- January 2020: Hit 250 bookings in a single month.
- February 2020: Closed their first partnership with a regional hotel chain to offer exclusive guest discounts via Shoreline Tours.
- March 2020: Fully remote work trial began, originally planned as a "culture experiment." Within weeks, the world shut down for real.
When COVID-19 forced global travel closures, bookings plummeted to zero almost overnight. Refund requests dwarfed previous month’s sales, and even core operators—now struggling to survive—paused all marketing expenses. Sara’s team, who had just started feeling "startup buzz," now met daily to game-plan for simple survival.
“We had two choices: go dormant and hope for a return… or double-down to find a way we could help our partners right now,” Sara said.
Realizing that their value lay in digital enablement, not just booking, they pivoted fast. Within three weeks, they built and rolled out simple online storefronts for tour operators to sell merch, offer virtual classes, and sell gift certificates for future trips. These features—once wishlist afterthoughts—suddenly became lifelines for businesses locked out of in-person tourism.
Feedback was immediate and grateful. Though bookings remained flat, new revenue streams helped Shoreline sustain both its brand and its community ties. As restrictions eased, Sara’s team developed content around safe travel, including guides for socially distant beach experiences and “bubble excursions” for small groups. By summer 2021, their agility had paid off: returning tourists already knew and trusted Shoreline Tours.
Lessons in the Surf: What Founders Can Learn from Crisis
Surviving a category-wide shutdown brought hard-won wisdom. Sara’s reflections offer clear insights for fellow founders, especially in uncertain industries:
- Your Community Is Your Anchor. By centering their operators’ needs—pivoting to digital storefronts, not just bookings—Shoreline showed partners they were in it together. Many operators became fierce advocates, leading to deeper post-pandemic collaborations.
- Build for Flexibility, Not Just Growth. Early scrappiness, manual onboarding, and regular user calls looked inefficient at first, but they let Sara’s team rapidly sense and respond to what partners truly needed during the crisis.
- Celebrate Small Wins, Especially When the Surf Is Down. The team’s habits of marking even tiny victories (like successful virtual class launches) kept morale alive and reminded everyone why they started—especially on the hardest days.
"Pandemic or not, you survive by truly solving problems—not just sticking to your original playbook. Founders need to stay fluid, always learning from real voices in their market."
Current Wave: Looking Forward, Staying Humble
Today, Shoreline Tours is quieter than some of its glossier VC-backed peers, but it’s profitable, focused, and growing. Operators rely on Sara’s team for far more than bookings, and travelers discover experiences with a new lens on authenticity and safety. What began as a scrappy tech project has become a resilient coastal community hub.
Sara sums it up with a smile: “We didn’t plan for wild storms, but we learned we could float, paddle, and ride whatever waves come next.”
What is your biggest takeaway from this journey? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
