What are scheduling tools

Congratulations! You've just bought your online tour booking software and optimised everyday business operations on a single platform. With your online booking system, you can allow customers to book tours from anywhere in the world and let your business remain open 24/7. You don't have to worry about payment methods or managing bookings or cancellations anymore — the tour booking system does it for you.

Online tour booking systems, such as TripAdmits, are designed to be extremely user-friendly and easy to integrate. For the most part, the entire online scheduling process is automated with the help of our scheduling tools. Customers will be able to make bookings using these tools that appear in an overview and an upcoming schedule, known as a manifest. With TripAdmit's online booking engine, you'll be set up in no time.

However, tour/activity providers or OTAs are required to complete a few simple steps using our simple, yet effective scheduling tools before the bookings start to fill up. Here is our guide on how to ensure your online booking system is ready to go!

1. Set up Tours and Activities

The first step is to create your tour, activity or any service that you're providing. This requires entering important details about:

-what the tour/activity includes

- pricing

- and availability for each tour, activity or service.

This information is crucial in letting customers browse through offered tours/activities and see pricing details and availability for each one, so ensure that you take your time filling in all the important specifications.

Once they have selected their desired tour/activity, they can check the calendar and choose the duration for the booking, according to the available dates. After the tour/activity has been successfully booked, it automatically pops up in the Smart calendar scheduling tool, upcoming schedules and daily/weekly/monthly manifests.

2. Add to Website or Channel Manager

Once you've created your tour/activity and entered all the relevant information, you must add it to your own website or a third-party channels, such as Online Travel Agencies, allowing the customer to purchase it.

TripAdmit works with companies to get their created tours and activities on their own website by deploying our team of expert engineers to bridge the tech gap. Once up and running, your users can book directly from your website, and the payment goes straight to your bank account.

By adding the created tours/activities to your own website, you will enable direct bookings, reduce the commission rate, and customers will be able to browse easily and select their preferred choice.

TripAdmit users also have the option of adding their tour/activity to a third-party channel and OTAs such as Expedia, Booking.com, Reserve with Google, and many more. Although the commission rate is higher, such websites have good web traffic and your tours/activities reach a far greater audience, ultimately bringing in business.

3. Bookings & Schedule

Once the tour has been set up and a purchase point defined, you will begin to see bookings coming through the calendar scheduling tool. Customers are able to select dates and times according to the tour/activity's availability, and this process is completely automated. Upon purchase, the client will receive an admission ticket confirming their booking.

Similarly, for tour/activity providers, the booking can be seen on the booking overview screen on the TripAdmit platform. Our scheduling tools generate a monthly, weekly and daily manifest view and allow you to see all of their upcoming tours at a glance.

4. After Booking Functionality

Cancellations and refunds are a normal part of every business. With the help of our online scheduling tools, TripAdmit makes it easy for tour/activity providers to manually move bookings between dates and times that suit both them and their customers. Any cancellations and refunds are conveniently dealt with, and the total cost of the booking is refunded to the customer if it has been made directly from your own website.

Summary

Going digital with your tour/activity company will definitely reap major benefits, and you'll see these almost immediately. Although a tour operator software sounds daunting for the less tech-savvy people, booking systems like TripAdmit have made the process convenient for their users with the help of the best scheduling tools.