Creating a website for your tour company is an important step to gaining customers and awareness about your brand. Travellers often discover new tour operators online, and they want to be able to learn about you and what you do, check out what tour experiences you have on offer, and book!
We know the prospect of building a tour operator website can be daunting, so we’ve laid out some of the best tools for tour company website designing.
Why you need a website for your tour company
If you’re wondering whether your tour company really needs a website, the answer is YES! Don’t put off creating a website for your travel organization. You may have the best tour experiences out there, but if no one knows about them then you’re unlikely to get very far as a travel business.
While social media, email campaigns and word of mouth can help, having a functional and targeted website should be a key part of your marketing strategy.
Tools for building your website
There are many tour operator website builder tools that you can use, and different travel website templates. We’ve laid out the 5 most common approaches to getting your tour operator website design up and running!
Weebly
Weebly is a popular travel website builder because it’s so easy to use, and you can even run a free website, as long as you allow their small Weebly ad in the footer of your website. From there, you can choose from various paid options depending on what kind of tour operator website design you would like.
Starter - $8 per month (Mainly for personal use, but comes with a free domain)
Pro - $12 per month (Mainly for groups and organizations, includes more features for building your ideal site)
Business - $25 per month (For small businesses or those that want to have a store)
Learn more here.
Squarespace
Squarespace websites are well known for their clean and eye-catching designs. If your ideal tour operator website design is clean and minimal then Squarespace might be the tool for you. There are plenty of different tour and travel website templates to help you out, and it’s an easy to use system. If you want to customize it even more, there are Squarespace developers who can help you.
Personal - $12 per month when billed annually or $16 month to month
Business - $18 per month when billed annually or $26 month to month (Includes extras like a professional email, promotional pop-ups, and e-commerce functions)
Learn more here.
Wix
Wix is a popular website builder allows you to drag-and-drop elements to build your website. This makes it a great option for anyone afraid of getting bogged down in code! They have starter layouts for small businesses, and from there you can customize with the page-builder as you see fit.
They have a larger range of different plans than the other website tools on the list (see them all here) with features ranging from a simple site to one that allows e-commerce and email campaigns.
Learn more here.
WordPress
Wordpress is the most commonly used platform on the web, and it allows for endless customization depending on what sort of theme you use and your own capabilities. It is a slightly steeper learning curve, but you’ll be rewarded with endless options for additions to your site.
There are two different options for Wordpress. The first is with hosting through Wordpress itself (in other words, Wordpress.com) which doesn’t allow for as much freedom) or you can find domain hosting and use Wordpress.org, which is a content management system that allows you to then build your website with a theme.
There are even themes now that have drag and drop capabilities!
Learn more here.
Hire an outsourcing firm
This is less of a tool and more of an option. If the idea creating your tour operator website yourself fills you with dread, you might want to turn to a developer.
While this will cost you more, there are some reasonably priced options out there and you will receive a fully customized website in return.
They may choose to make it on one of the above platforms (likely Wordpress or Squarespace) but you just get to direct and then all the hard work of getting the travel website design correct will be done by them before they hand it over to you!
Buying a domain name
Many of these builders will sell you a customized domain name (the web address) when you sign up, but you can also buy a domain name elsewhere, and then use these tools for the website design for that name. NameCheap is one option, or consider Domain.com, or GoDaddy.
How to get customers to book through your website
You’ll notice that several of the above website design tools have e-commerce options, or in other words, options to add a store. However, running your own store for you tour company can mean that you’re subject to whatever fees the website builder imposes on you, and you need to manage all the bookings, store design, and issues yourself.
Instead, you can use a payment platform built directly for tour operators and travel companies, like WeTravel.
WeTravel allows you to create an itinerary page that can then be linked to from your website, either by clicking a book now that directs them to the WeTravel page, or a page with your branding intact, or you can even have a pop-up box appear when they click to book!
The feels are an industry low, and you can easily manage bookings and payments through the specially designed system.
Find out more about how WeTravel works here.
So what are you waiting for? Get started on your tour operator website design today!
