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Tour booking software development

For tour operators, activity providers and experience companies who sell places on departures with a time, a capacity and a guide, and need the booking system to produce the manifest, handle the pick-ups, apply the minimum-number rule and let resellers sell the same places without overselling.

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The problem

What goes wrong today

Where it usually starts

A walking tour and kayaking operator runs six products with two or three departures a day in season.

  • Each departure has a capacity set by the number of kayaks or the guide ratio, a guide who needs the list of names, and a meeting point or a set of hotel pick-ups.
  • Bookings arrive from the website, from a hotel concierge who telephones, from two online marketplaces and from a reseller agent who sells vouchers.
  • Each channel holds its own count, so the nine o'clock kayak departure for twelve ends up with fourteen names and two people standing on the slipway without a boat.

Where it gets harder

The manifest is assembled the evening before by copying names into a message to the guide, who then does not know that a family of four was added at ten that night.

  • Pick-up times are worked out by hand from the hotel list.
  • The minimum-number rule, four people or the departure is cancelled, is applied by someone remembering to check at six the night before and telephoning each guest.
  • A weather cancellation at seven in the morning means twenty telephone calls and twenty manual refunds.
  • Gift experiences are sold at Christmas as a printed voucher and redeemed by email, and nobody can say how much voucher value is still outstanding.
  • Reviews are requested by a generic email that goes out, if at all, a week later.
  • The operator is excellent on the water and spends every evening in a spreadsheet.

Scope of the service

What the build covers

A custom tour and activity build normally covers:

  • Tour products with departures that each carry a date A start time, a capacity and an assigned guide
  • Per-person types such as adult Child and concession, and private group pricing for a whole departure
  • Pick-up points With times and meeting instructions sent with the confirmation
  • A manifest per departure that the guide sees on a phone Updating as bookings arrive and showing dietary, mobility and pick-up notes
  • A minimum-number rule That flags departures at risk and a cancellation workflow for weather or low numbers that notifies every participant and processes refunds or rebookings in one action
  • Gift experiences sold as vouchers with codes Value and expiry, redeemed against a departure
  • A reseller layer with agent logins where hotels Concierges and agents book against the same live capacity at their own commission or net rate
  • Deposits or full payment with a cancellation policy
  • A review request after the tour

How discovery works

Discovery follows a busy season day with the operator and a guide: how departures are scheduled, what sets capacity, how pick-ups are planned, who makes the minimum-number call and when, which resellers sell and how they are paid, and how a weather cancellation is handled today. Each becomes a named stage in the scope document: choose tour and departure, participants and pick-up, payment, manifest, run, review.

Deliberately out of scope

  • Fleet and equipment maintenance records, guide payroll and accounting. Those stay in the tools that own them and are connected where it earns its place. Connections to online marketplaces that resell tours are scoped as integration opportunities once we have seen what each exposes

When the scope grows

Scoping scenario

An operator with twelve products, up to thirty departures a day in summer, fifteen guides who need to be assigned by qualification, hotel pick-ups across a city and twenty reseller agents on different commissions.

That needs

  • Guide assignment with qualification rules
  • A pick-up route per departure, agent logins with net rates
  • A monthly reseller statement

That is a different build from a single boat trip with one departure a day, and the scope document says so plainly.

Deliverables

What you receive

  • Discovery notes from a busy season day, including the departure schedule, pick-up list and reseller arrangements
  • A written scope document naming each stage from choosing a departure to the review request, with what is out of scope
  • Design of the customer booking flow, the operations board, the guide manifest and the reseller login on phone and desktop
  • The build, deployed to your hosting or ours
  • Migration of products, future bookings, outstanding vouchers and reseller accounts from the current system, where relevant
  • Training for the operator, office staff, guides and resellers, with a short written guide
  • Handover material and full ownership of the source code and your data

Process

How a project runs

Each stage maps onto the project view in your client panel. Durations are set in your proposal, never on this page.

  1. Onboarding

    Access, contacts and a look at the departure schedule, the current booking tool or spreadsheet, the voucher records and the reseller list.

    Project stage: Onboarding

  2. Planning

    Discovery with the operator and a guide; products, capacity rules, pick-up logic, cancellation policy, reseller terms and the scope document are agreed with a milestone plan.

    Project stage: Planning

  3. Design

    Clickable designs of the booking flow, the operations board, the guide manifest and the agent login, checked on a guide's phone outdoors and the office screen.

    Project stage: Design

  4. Development

    Built in stages: products, departures and capacity first, then participants, pick-ups, payments and manifests, then cancellation workflows, vouchers and the reseller layer.

    Project stage: Development

  5. Client review

    The team runs a test fortnight on real demand, including a weather cancellation, a reseller booking and a departure below minimum, and tells us where it does not match the water.

    Project stage: Client review

  6. Revisions

    Capacity rules, manifest layout, cancellation messaging and reseller terms are adjusted from the review and re-checked against the scope document.

    Project stage: Revisions

  7. Ready for launch

    Products, bookings and vouchers migrated, resellers onboarded, payments, refunds and messaging tested end to end, checklist signed off.

    Project stage: Ready for launch

  8. Delivered

    The operator runs the season on the new system; optional maintenance and hosting continue under their own agreement.

    Project stage: Delivered

Integrations

Commonly integrated

Systems this kind of business usually asks us to connect. Each integration is confirmed during discovery; none is assumed.

  • Card payment providers for payments, deposits and bulk refunds
  • SMS and email providers for confirmations, pick-up times, cancellation notices and review requests
  • Online marketplaces and reseller platforms, scoped per provider as integration opportunities
  • Weather data services for departure-risk flags
  • Mapping services for pick-up routes and meeting point directions
  • Accounting software for takings, refunds and reseller commission
  • Waiver and e-signature tools for participant declarations

How we would approach it

Worked example

Concept demo

A city operator with thirty daily departures, hotel pick-ups and twenty resellers

The situation

An operator with twelve products and up to thirty departures a day in summer assigned fifteen guides by text message, planned hotel pick-ups by hand each evening and sold through twenty hotel concierges and agents who each telephoned the office, so the busiest departures were routinely oversold.

Why it is a custom build

This needs a custom build because the reseller layer and qualification-based guide assignment sit on top of shared live capacity, which generic ticketing tools handle one channel at a time.

The scope we would propose

  • Departures with capacity and a guide assigned by qualification, so a kayaking departure cannot be given to a walking guide
  • A pick-up route built from each departure's hotels with times sent to participants the evening before
  • A live manifest on the guide's phone
  • A minimum-number flag the evening before with a one-action cancel-and-rebook flow
  • Agent logins where each reseller books against live capacity at its own net rate and sees only its own bookings
  • A monthly reseller statement
  • Gift experiences with a live outstanding balance

Concept demo: a scoping scenario written to show how we would approach the work. It is not a delivered client project.

Pricing

What affects the price

Every proposal is priced on scope. These are the factors that move it most for this kind of build.

  • Number of products and departures per day, and what sets capacity
  • Guide assignment rules and whether guides need their own logins
  • Pick-up logistics: fixed meeting points, hotel pick-ups or routes
  • Cancellation policy, minimum numbers and weather workflows with bulk refunds
  • Resellers: number of agents, commission or net rates and statements
  • Gift experiences and voucher handling, including outstanding vouchers to migrate
  • Marketplace connections scoped as integrations
  • Hosting choice: your own hosting or ours

Start from a package

Tour activity booking package

Departures with capacity, participant types, pick-ups, guide manifests, minimum-number and weather cancellation, vouchers and reseller logins for tour and activity operators.

Custom build
View the package

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

When is the package enough and when do we need a custom build?

The tour and activity booking package covers departures with capacity, participant types, pick-ups, manifests, minimum-number and weather cancellation, vouchers and reseller logins with configuration. A custom build is the honest answer for qualification-based guide assignment at scale, pick-up routing across a city, marketplace connections or multi-site operations. Discovery tells you which before anything is quoted.

How does a weather cancellation work?

The operator cancels the departure once; every participant is notified by message, offered a rebooking onto another departure or a refund according to your policy, and refunds are processed through the payment provider in a batch. Reseller bookings on that departure are flagged to the agent at the same time.

Can hotels and agents sell our tours without overselling?

Yes. Each reseller gets a login that books against the same live capacity as your website, at the commission or net rate you set for them, and sees only its own bookings. The manifest shows the source of each booking, and a statement per reseller is produced for the period you choose.

Who owns the system afterwards?

You do. Source code and data are handed over at delivery; hosting and maintenance are optional and separately agreed, and the system can move to another provider.

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