As a tour operator, you juggle multiple tasks at once—from sales and marketing to operations and hiring/training staff. The wheel of business keeps turning and you’re at the center of it. You depend on your booking platform to accept bookings, manage waivers, send reminders, and give you a bird’s-eye view of your business’s finance. You use a slew of other software tools to help with customer review management, email marketing, staff shift management, etc. And you connect everything via integrations and perhaps Zapier.

But what if you could have all these features in one place? What if you could have a booking platform that does it all? Here are some things to look for in an ideal booking platform, broken down by table stakes and nice-to-haves:

Table Stakes #1: Revenue Generation

We believe that the #1 priority of a booking platform is to help you drive sales. Sales via your online booking widgets, through third-party resellers, as well as through your own sales/back-office team. The platform must have robust functionalities around:

• Online booking widgets
• Reseller integrations
• Back-office dashboard

Let’s dive into each of these areas:

Great Customer Experience Starts with the Widget

A booking widget is an embeddable pop-up modal or link on your website that let’s the customer complete a booking on the internet. Some key things to look for in a booking widget is 1. How is the user experience as they go through the checkout flow? 2. How quickly does it load? and 3. How optimized is it toward converting the customer?

Asking multiple questions upfront during the checkout process may help with operations down the road, but may also lower conversion. Getting the customer’s email and phone is crucial not only for abandoned-cart scenarios but also for waiver and emergency text.

Is the user experience similar to what you’d expect from a top-tier e-commerce brand? Or does it look and feel like software built 10 years ago using technology that were then already 10 years old (circa 2000)?

The most optimized booking widget divides the checkout process into a few digestable steps, with a progress indicator to handhold the customer, and presents a modern, mobile-friendly and incredibly fast-loading user experience.

Rely on Resellers To Help You Sell

Resellers include not only third-party sites like Viator and GetYourGuide but also social media influencers and bloggers and event organizers. While larger players charge a hefty commission for selling tickets of your activities on their site, you can rely on smaller resellers to help you sell tickets in exchange for a smaller agreed upon commission. In fact, the more channels you have, the more resilient your business is to changes in the market.

Your booking software should allow you to create multiple reseller accounts and give each access to a reseller dashboard where they can see their sales, commissions, and payouts.

Entrust Your Team to Sell from the Back-Office

A call comes in from a customer wanting to book your activity/event. Your team member needs to be able to quickly look up availability, inventory, jot down the customer’s information in case of uncertainty, and perhaps make a booking on behalf of the customer in real-time. In situations like this, the staff must be able to depend on the booking platform to quickly navigate to and from key parts of the application and help relay relevant information to the customer.

In case an event is full, does your booking platform allow you to create a waitlist that will automatically trigger emails to those in the queue with a payment link? Does it show you historical no-show rates so that you may make an informed decision on whether or not to overbook a particular event?

Does your booking platform allow you to take a deposit (e.g., 20%) and then the rest of the payment at a later date?

Table Stakes #2: Back-Office Operation

The back-office houses all of your sales and customer support staff. It’s where you talk to your customers, helping them book, reschedule, or cancel their bookings. Staff members may have differing permissions depending on their title and role. Coordination between staff members is crucial to ensure that the customer has a seamless experience.

Here, the key features to look for all revolve around the way they enhance your business operation and the staff’s capacity to collaborate with each other: calendar, manifests, booking management, customer-relationship management, and so forth.

Table Stakes #3: Financial Reporting

Do you want to quickly find out which activity is selling the best, which staff member is selling the most, and which day of the week has the highest demand so that you can perhaps raise prices on that day?

Do you need to run a multi-year comparison to see how your business has been growing over time and which activities have plateauing demand?

Having a powerful built-in reporting tool means that you can generate reports in real-time and make data-driven decisions on the fly, with your team and with resellers.

Nice-To-Haves #1: Reputation Management

Rather than relying on a different software to manage your customer reviews, it would be nice if your booking platform could automate review collection/filtering and harvest more 5-star customer reviews on Google/Yelp. Reputation is crucial when first-time customers are considering booking with you.

Look for a booking platform that has built-in reputation management, helping you gather more reviews so that you can get direct feedback from your customers, adjust operation, and surface those coveted highest rated reviews to Google and Yelp. According to Power Reviews, over 99.9% of online shoppers read reviews at least sometimes to inform their purchasing decisions.

Nice-To-Haves #2: Brand Engagement and Customer Loyalty Programs

Nothing can replace the feeling of a repeat customer. When that happens, it means they like your activity enough to re-experience it, perhaps this time with a friend or family. It means things are working and you deserve a high five. Repeat customers by definition have a higher lifetime value to the business.

Ask your booking platform what they do to help you increase brand engagement and customer loyalty.

That was a lot to digest. We hope this article has given you a good starting point on what to look for in your next booking platform. If you are looking to transition your business to a modern booking platform without breaking the bank, we’d love to chat with you. Contact us today.