Sell tours with seats, deposits and balances

Travel booking software lets travellers choose a tour and a departure, book and pay online, and then keeps everything about that booking in one place. Your team sees every seat, every payment and every traveller’s details, and the documents each departure needs come out of the same system.

For a tour operator, the hard part isn’t the booking button. It is everything around it: a seat count that has to be right across your website, your agents and your office; deposits and balances on different dates; rooms that depend on who is travelling with whom; and a ground team that needs names, passports and diets in good time to confirm hotels.

We build that as one system, around how your tours are actually sold. It suits small-group tours, fixed departures, pilgrimages, school and college trips, adventure treks and holiday packages: any trip with limited places, a price per person and money that arrives in stages.

Travellers compare departures, not just tours. Once they like a tour, the question is which date, and how full it is. So every tour page lists its upcoming departures with the price, the seats left and whether the departure has enough travellers to run.

Each departure has one seat count. When a traveller books online, an agent books through the portal or your team takes a phone booking, the same count goes down at the same moment, so the last seat can’t be sold twice. A seat is held while the traveller pays and released if they don’t finish.

Departures are marked as confirmed once they reach the minimum number of travellers you need to run them, which is often what turns a hesitant traveller into a booking. Departures that are still short show how many more travellers they need, so your sales team knows where to push. A full departure offers a waitlist, and if a seat opens, the next person on it is told straight away.

Most tours are paid in stages: a deposit to secure the seat and the balance a set time before departure. The system follows your booking terms. The deposit is taken online at booking; the balance date is worked out from the departure date; reminders go out as it approaches; and travellers pay from a link on their phone.

Your team sees who has paid, who is due and who is late, without opening a spreadsheet. Late balances are flagged before they become a problem, and your terms decide what happens next.

Payment plans can be more flexible where your terms allow. A pilgrimage or a long trip can be split into several instalments, each with its own date and reminder. Travellers in India can pay a reminder by UPI in a few taps, and a family booking can be paid by more than one person, with each payment recorded against the same booking.

Cancellations follow the same terms. The system works out what is refundable on the day a traveller cancels, records the reason and returns the money through the same payment provider. Changes such as a different room or an extra night are priced and charged in the same way.

Travellers want a firm price in a currency they know. Each tour can have its own price list in rupees, pounds, US dollars, euros or Australian dollars, so a traveller sees and pays a fixed amount, not a conversion that might change between the deposit and the balance.

Prices carry their own rules: early booking offers, child prices, single supplements, seasonal rates and group discounts. Payments go through providers such as Razorpay for UPI, cards and net banking in India, and Stripe or PayPal for cards abroad.

Invoices follow the tax rules that apply to you, such as GST in India or VAT in the UK and Europe, set up with your accountant. Indian operators selling overseas tour packages must also collect TCS, and the invoice works it out and shows it.

Rooms decide more bookings than most operators expect. Travellers choose a twin, a double or a single room, and the single supplement is added where it applies. Solo travellers are a large share of many small-group tours, and the cost of a room alone is often what decides whether they book.

Solo travellers can choose to share instead. They are matched with another solo traveller on the same departure, and the rooming list updates on its own. Extra nights before or after the tour, airport transfers, optional excursions and travel insurance can be added at booking or later, each with its own price and limit.

Each traveller gets a secure account for everything the trip needs. Before departure they add their passport details, with a check that the passport is valid long enough for the trip; follow the visa guidance and record the visa once it is granted; and add insurance, emergency contacts, dietary needs, medical notes and room preferences.

The account shows each traveller what is still missing, and reminders go out until it is done. Your team sees the same list for the whole departure, so a missing visa is spotted weeks ahead, not at the airport. The final itinerary and joining instructions arrive in the same place, so nothing is chased by email.

Many operators sell through partner travel agents in other cities and countries. Agents get their own portal: they check live availability, book seats for their clients at their agreed net rates, see the commission on every booking and download itineraries and invoices under their own name.

Agents answer their own questions about dates and seats, and their bookings use the same live seat counts as everyone else’s. You decide which agents see which tours and at what rates, and every agent booking shows who made it. Commission statements are ready at the end of each month, so paying agents no longer means adding up emails.

The ground team needs the same facts as the office, sooner. For each departure the system produces rooming lists for every hotel, passenger manifests for guides and drivers, and a summary of diets and medical notes.

These update as bookings change, so a late booking or a change of room reaches the hotel the same day. The ground team downloads them directly instead of rebuilding them from forwarded emails, and suppliers’ confirmations can be recorded against each departure.

We start with a season of your bookings. Your tours and price lists, your booking terms, a copy of your current seat spreadsheet and the documents you send to hotels and guides tell us how your business really runs.

We also talk to the people who use it every day: your sales team, a few partner agents, the ground team and, where possible, some past travellers. You will need accounts with the payment providers you choose, your tax details for invoices, and one person on your side who can decide on rules such as deposit amounts and cancellation terms.

Before launch we move your existing bookings across and check them against your records, so travellers and agents find their bookings waiting when they sign in.

Travel runs in seasons, and so does the software. Between seasons we add new tours and pricing rules, adjust to changes from payment providers or tax rules, and build what your team asked for during the busy months.

We watch the system through each on-sale period and each departure month, and your team reports problems straight to the people who built it. Reports show which tours and departures sell, how early travellers book, which agents bring the most travellers and how many balances arrive late, which helps you plan the next season’s dates and prices. As sales grow, the same system takes on more departures, more agents and more currencies without starting again.