Could be test marketing but not necessarily. Even if it’s a town she’s done well in before, if she put up tour dates a couple weeks ago and got no bookings, I wouldn’t blame her for not wanting to fly out and get a hotel completely on spec.
Have you ever contacted any of them before their planned arrival? A woman I wanted to see had a tour to my city published for a few weeks. A couple days prior, I was just about to contact her to schedule when she put out a new tour schedule with a different city on those dates.
I emailed her anyway to say I’d planned to see her when she was here and I’d catch her on the next one, let’s pre-screen. She didn’t have anything booked yet in the new city on her calendar either, so she flew in just to see me.
Another time I set something up with a touring provider a couple weeks out. When I met her she said I was the only one she had scheduled for this stop so she cut the trip way shorter than planned. I hadn’t sent her a deposit so I told her I would have understood completely if she didn’t want to come to town for one appointment but she said she didn’t want to cancel on me.
Anyways, as long as they’re not keeping deposits for appointments that never happened, I really don’t blame them for not traveling to a city where they don’t have any bookings. It’s a business decision.
Also, are you seeing this on personal sites or ad malls? There are providers on the malls who have no intention of meeting anyone in person because they only do video chats and/or only fans. But they post extensive touring schedules to get their ad in front of more people. There have been threads about it recently.
And yes, it could be a simple deposit scam. Do your research.
For me, it’s 💯 a test. I change dates if the interest wasn’t there yet and ended up booking a local date instead.
Like I’m trying to tour Philly, but I don’t get much serious interest leading up to the visit.
I don’t collect deposits often, unless I am certain and booking travel is involved
