Most tour organizers will agree that they can only work as efficiently as their tools allow them to. There are several steps involved in registering clients for a trip, and tools help to streamline the process.
At this point, tour organizers might look to various religious tour management tools and communication channels as the technology to help. However, there is always some sort of disconnect between the booking, registration, payment, and management processes – information has to be extracted from emails and manually compiled into a central data point.
Ideally, the answer is to find a single platform that can handle the various functions rather than using several disjointed tools. To get a better perspective, let's look at the efficiency of some of the tools commonly used to register clients for a religious tour.
There is a lot at stake during tour registration. Once you have clients ready to sign up for your religious trip, it is your responsibility to provide a seamless experience when collecting their information and payments. Any hint of unprofessionalism and you could lose the booking.
During registration you need to:
Most tour operators won’t go in-house to build this sort of functionality into their website. It is a costly process, not to mention expensive, and doesn’t make sense.
These are some of the religious tour management tools you might find yourself using instead to:
Google Forms work well as you can design a custom form requesting the specific fields of information you need from attendees.
After sending them the link, they complete the form and submit the data, which automatically populates a Google Sheet database. This database can be the dashboard that gives you an overview of who has registered for the tour.
Provided you have a Gmail account and know how to initiate the set-up, forms are easy (and free) to use. The downfall is you don't receive a notification when someone signs up by submitting their form. This means you have to check back frequently to ensure you don't miss anything.
Google Sheets allow for collaboration, so they are a useful tool for the organizer team to work on collectively. However, they do have slower loading times if several people work on them at once.
Also, they don’t offer quite as many formula options as excel, and there is a bit of a learning curve to overcome if you need to perform any complex formatting or data analysis.
Excel offers better functionality but the team won’t be able to collaborate on it.
Your website may be able to receive credit card payments directly if you have signed up with a company like Square that offers online payment processing. However, you need a trustworthy website to integrate this onto. There are also fees to consider both ends of the transaction.
Your bank account won’t incur as many charges for you or your clients, but payments can take a few days to be processed, and anything international can become complex.
PayPal app is a bit more flexible in the sense that you don’t need to integrate it into your website. However, both parties need an account connected to their bank account. The fees should also be considered.
In each case, you have to review statements and carry the payment information across to your database.
Email is a natural choice for communicating with participants after they have registered to go on your faith tour. You get one on one interaction with each client and have the means to send and receive any important information.
Of course, anything you receive needs to be recorded on the database. For example, you need to note down if each person has paid or sent through the documents you require, such as a passport or indemnity form.
It is also not suited to group messaging. The responses you receive from a bulk mail may clutter your inbox, which means you could miss out on key information participants send through.
Social channels may be suitable for sending mass updates if all of the participants are from the same faith or church group and know each other. However, if they don't, they may want to keep their details private until they meet everyone on tour.
Taking from our cues, you may have guessed that there is an easier way to register your religious tour attendees. WeTravel provides a professional platform that travel organizers can use to register and communicate with participants, capture and manage booking information, receive deposits, as well as collaborate with a team.
Without having to overhaul your website, you can embed a Book Now button directly onto it. Or our platform will walk you through designing a beautiful booking page to give you a link that you send to interested participants.
In either case, your attendees will fill out a form (which you have customized) with all of their details. From there they will input their payment information and pay a deposit, either by card or transfer.
Once they submit the details, you will be able to access it from the platform's dashboard. Attendee's information and financials will be organized according to trip, and available in one place at the click of a button.
You can send out bulk and private emails directly from the dashboard, as well as set automatic reminder emails to go out on milestone dates. Attendees will also be able to upload the documents you require from them.
After you set user permissions, your team can also get access to information on the dashboard where they will be able to work collaboratively.
With the right religious tour operator management tools to assist you, registering your clients can be really simple for everyone. Your attendees, your employees, and your tour operator business will all benefit.
To get a more in-depth view of how WeTravel works, watch the short video below. We are also available on live chat should you have any questions.
