Finding the right tour operator software can completely change the way your travel business operates. It can save you time by streamlining processes, make your customers happier by giving them a seamless experience, and can help to generate more revenue for your business.
How do you know which one offers the best features and functions?
To answer this question, you’ll need to have a deep understanding of your customer's journey and how they interact with your travel business. This will help you find the right tools you need for business growth.
With this in mind, we’ve selected the five essential elements that all tour operators need to look out for when choosing a software solution. Let’s take a look.
What Is Tour Operator Software?
Tour operator software is designed to cover every step of the customer journey - from the moment they land on your website to the moment they book and pay for a tour.
Therefore, effective tour operator software should include the following tools:
- Branded landing pages and websites
- Accepting and managing bookings
- Accepting and processing payments
- Scheduling tours and making it easier to manage tour business operations
- Managing customer information
- Streamlining back-office tasks
- Marketing your tour operator business
This software should be able to integrate with other software platforms so that you can manage all of your different processes more easily.
Although tour operator software can include many features, the core functionality behind this software is to accept bookings and easily manage your tours and activities.
A seamless tour booking experience is critical for your business operations as well as getting your customers to transition through the marketing funnel and for you to ultimately get a conversion.
Choosing the right tour operator software makes your life as a business owner a lot easier. It also helps improve the customer journey, which is important for staying ahead in a highly competitive industry.
Why Is Tour Operator Software Important?
As a small tour business, the software platform should become your best friend. Instead of having to rely on a team of employees to manage tasks, your software should do it for you.
This can save you time, effort, and money which makes it a lot easier to scale and grow your business.
When you choose the right software solution, it's important to understand what tasks in your current business workflow might need aiding, or what processes your competitors offer that you’re missing. This will help you identify gaps that the software can fill.
What to Look For In Tour Operator Software: 5 Essential Elements
Choosing the right tour operator software can be tricky, as there are so many considerations to make. While there are many different tools available, it's important that you choose a software solution that covers the entire travel customer journey.
This will help to streamline your business operations while improving the customer experience at the same time.
Your tour operator software should tick five essential boxes. We will cover these below.
1. Booking Tools
Effective booking tools are the first essential component of any tour operator software. In order to provide a seamless booking experience and sell more travel packages, you need a solid booking tool in place.
This will also help in providing an excellent customer experience.
The core feature of an efficient booking tool is to ensure the online process has clear paths. You will also need visible call-to-action (CTA) buttons.
Ideally, you want to choose a platform that offers a customizable booking button that can merge smoothly with your website. The booking software shouldn’t require any coding or complications - like adding widgets.
Instead, you should simply choose a button and launch it on your site. Otherwise, you might experience visual or display issues.
And what if you don’t have a website? Well, some booking software solutions give you the option to showcase your tours online without a site.
Of course, you might want more than just a “book now” button. For detailed tours and travel experiences, you’ll want a booking tool that allows you to create complete trip pages with day-to-day itineraries.
You should be able to include all the details you need in these booking landing pages and optimize them for SEO. Make sure they are also easy to share for your marketing strategy purposes.
As a travel business, your booking tool is what kicks off the customer journey. Offering a comfortable booking experience is necessary for attracting more customers and selling more tours.
2. Payment Gateway
Once you have set up your online booking system, the next step is to use a payment gateway so that you can accept payments and generate revenue from your site.
There are many different options available, it's important that you choose a solution that works with your booking system and won’t cost your business an arm and a leg.
First, establish whether the payment gateway integrates with your website. If it does, the booking and payment process is a lot more streamlined for customers, as they don’t have to leave your site to complete the payment.
By making your booking and payment journey a smooth and integrated process, you’ll be able to improve the customer experience in a big way.
The other essential aspect to consider is the charges associated with using a payment gateway. Make sure you opt for a solution that offers competitive booking fees.
Do you have the option to add your account on a payment processing platform, or will you opt for the prover’s payment processing? This is an important consideration.
Finally, understand what experience the payment processing software offers your customers. Ideally, you want a solution that offers as many different options as possible.
Ask the following questions to get a well-rounded understanding of what features are available:
- Do they have enough payment options?
- Does the payment gateway offer flexible payment options?
- Are credit cards and e-checks accepted?
- What about offline bookings? Can your clients pay in installments?
- Can they add discount codes?
The more payment options you have available, the more chance you have for collecting revenue.
3. Fees
When you choose your tour operator software, many platforms come with a bunch of added fees. For example, some platforms charge you for each individual booking, for refunds, support, convenience fees, and more.
The last thing you want is to run into unexpected fees while you’re trying to operate and grow your business.
Make sure that all fees are made clear up front, and that they are able to fit into your business model. Or better yet, choose a travel software platform that has free plans will an array of features available.
Take the following questions into account when comparing pricing plans: Is there an option to pass over the credit card fees to your client? In terms of monthly subscription fees, if you can have a free account, can pay monthly or annually?
It’s important to understand all of the software features to ensure that you only pay for the tools you need. There’s no point in subscribing to an extensive tour operator software solution if you only use/need a portion of the functions.
4. Management Tools
The main focus of eminent tour operator software is improving the customer journey and making your life as a travel business owner a lot easier.
One of the major benefits of using quality tour operator software is that it can automate manual tasks, making your management functions easier, faster, and with a reduced margin for error.
Take a look at all of your operations and day-to-day processes - does your tour operator software make your administrative tasks easier? And how does it fit into your existing workflow?
An important factor to consider is how the software can integrate with the other tools you already use.
For example, you’ll definitely want your booking system to integrate with your accounting software. This makes it a lot easier to transfer and communicate data between each platform. You’ll also want to have the option to easily export data.
Pay attention to whether your software generates straightforward reports. This will help you gain meaningful insights, which will help you make more informed decisions.
There are also many essential details to consider in the booking process that could affect your business. For example, you’ll want your tour operator tool to be able to facilitate changing booking details or uploading important legal documents to safeguard your company. Does it allow for easier communication with your clients?
The more customizable your software solution is, the better.
5. A Clear Customer Journey
As mentioned above, providing a seamless customer journey is critical. If your tour operator software impacts the customer experience negatively, it has the potential to impact your business in a big way.
The software should reflect the quality of the experiences you offer. If your booking process is tricky or overly complicated, this may add a sour note to your clients' experience before the tour even starts.
It may even drive them to use an alternative booking platform.
Using the best tour booking software can ensure your brand’s user experience shines through with easy-to-navigate interfaces, a completely branded and trustworthy path to conversion, mobile-optimized solutions, and more.
Basically, you want the platform to make your customers' lives and booking experience more convenient. Instead of adding additional steps to their journey, it should provide a smooth and seamless process for them - from the moment they land on your website to when they complete paying for their tour.
So, before choosing your software, make sure that you understand the customer journey. Understand each step a customer takes when booking on your site, and notice any possible inconveniences.
This will help you identify areas of the customer path that you can improve with the right tour operator software.
How To Choose The Right Tour Operator Software
Here are some important considerations to make into account when finding a solution that works best for your tourism business.
Is There A Demo Available?
A lot of tour operator software providers offer a free demo to let you experience their platform firsthand. This helps you understand whether the software is the right fit for your business.
A demo allows you to see the software in action and helps you evaluate whether it will work for your specific operations. If you have a lot of data that you need to carry over, or if the software will make a big difference to your current workflow, then vigorously evaluating the platform in a demo is paramount.
Better yet, look for a solution that offers a free version. This lets you use the software without having to commit to a subscription. This makes it a lot easier to get started without paying heaps of cash.
Is It Easy To Use?
The whole aim of tour operator software is that it is designed to make your life easier. If the software is too complicated to use, then it’s only going to make your business operations more difficult.
For example, when you choose a tour booking tool, look for a solution that requires zero coding or technical knowledge. You should be able to set it up and start accepting bookings and payments off the bat.
Pay attention to how easy the software is to navigate and whether it works with other tools your business relies on. A user-friendly solution is a lot easier to incorporate into your existing business operations.
Do Your Research
Before you commit to a new platform, make sure to do some external research. Look up reviews and testimonials on the software from actual users. You can find these reviews on sites like Trustpilot or G2.
Reading these reviews will also help you understand what the software does well and what the shortfalls are. This is important for understanding how well it will work for your business.
The more honest and thorough reviews a software solution has, the better.
Is There Adequate Support?
Even the best tour operator software solutions might need you to access customer support at some point. Knowing that you have a comprehensive customer service team available is a huge benefit to any software solution.
Ideally, support should be available around the clock. This means that you can sort out any issues as soon as they happen. 24/7 support is especially important for tour operators, as your clients might be based all around the world in different time zones.
Understand what level of support you will receive and how you will be able to access the support function.
What Integrations Are Available?
A major consideration for your business is whether the software solution will work with all of the existing tools and processes in your travel company.
If you can easily fit this software into your workflow, then running your business and your general processes will be much easier.
Be sure to check out all of the available integrations (e.g. Zapier) to see what will work and what won’t. This is especially important if your business relies on other essential software tools that need to be incorporated into your workflow.
Consider Your Business Growth
A common mistake that tour companies make when upgrading their software is not considering their business growth.
Sure, your tour operator software might work well right now, but will it still deliver the same results as your business grows? Will the software be able to scale and evolve with your business?
Try to find a solution that can handle your current bookings, as well as future booking projections or goals. You won’t want to have to change your booking system as soon as your business experiences significant growth.
Understand The Software’s Downfalls
Understand what areas might be lacking from the software. This will help you establish whether you will need to pay for additional tools to fill these gaps, or whether you need a stronger platform to meet all your requirements.
Conclusion
Setting your business up with the right tour operator software will make the world of difference.
This software should help you improve your customer's experiences, manage your business with ease, and increase your revenue by selling more tours.
By covering the five core elements discussed above, you’ll be able to provide a positive experience for your customers and set your travel company up for success.
Choose a comprehensive tour operator software solution that ticks all of the boxes mentioned above. And remember to book a demo first to see the software in action, and watch firsthand how impactful it can be for you as a tour operator, and for your business.
