5 software features tour operators could actually use

The chasm between tour operators and SaaS companies serving tour operators has never been greater.

This week, Bokun, a reservations technology platform ("res tech") announced that they were unilaterally shrinking booking windows for all the operators who use their product to just 4 hours. The company justified the change with the claim that it will bring about a 16% increase in bookings.

Meanwhile, operators like my friend Fiona Sweetman at Hidden Secrets Tours said it best on the Tourpreneur closed Facebook group, “[This is] all based on tech people reading data, not operators understanding human engagement.”

As an operator myself, I've started to feel as if people running support software for tour operators either fundamentally misunderstand the important things to a tour operator, or intentionally act in a way that's counter to operator growth in order to reach short term success for their own corporate beneficiaries. I'm choosing to believe the former, and that's what inspired me to write this:

IT'S THE TRIP-FILL, STUPID.

The blunt language (inspired by Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign) is needed, because when Bokun claims a 16% increase in bookings is a good thing, every operator I know will wave the figure aside to get to the important bit: the trip fill.

Suppose I have a tour with a capacity of 100 guests per departure. I offer departures twice daily.

• In November, I receive 1,000 guests across 10 departures.
• In December, I receive 1,160 guests across 60 departures.

This is a 16% increase in bookings. —"Great news!" Bokun thinks. Here are the numbers that actually matter:

• November: 100 guests per departure
• December: 19 guests per departure

This is just one example where res-techs, OTAs, and others fundamentally misunderstand our business. If following industry standards, the tour above likely has a breakeven of 30-50 pax, so December was devastating, even in spite of the overall sales increase.

Here are some features operators would like to see that would actually create long term business success for both parties.

1. Variable discounting based on trip fill

If someone calls me on the phone and says they want to do a tour this weekend, I look at my booking calendar and offer them the tour that's under minimum guest numbers, not the tour with only one space left. Why can't I do this with technology?

The only organisation I've seen do this is Intrepid's Urban Adventures. See below how they mark their prices down on the 13th and 15th of March? One could suppose those are the dates they most need to fill — for many customers, going on the 13th or 15th instead of the 14th of March doesn't make a heap of difference.

Full disclosure — I was the licensee for Melbourne Urban Adventures from 2017-2018 before leaving to focus fully on Walks 101.

Let me assume something about the above example: they don't currently have a booking on the 14th, but do have bookings on the 13th and 15th. Having a customer book on the 14th could literally increase their operating costs by 33%, whereas adding another customer on an already-departing tour only increases the operator's margin. It's a small tool that would make the world of difference.

2. Create a better guide management tool

Every res tech company has some kind of guide management feature, but most all of it is woefully lacking. This drives us to spreadsheets (ugh) or to 3rd party scheduling software. Here at Walks 101, we're customers of Deputy. Prior to that, we used WhenIWork. Each software costs $50-100/month.

Software like this allows us to manage the complex schedules of guides who often are freelancers, students, or parents. The guide can enter their own availability, and swap shifts without needing to ask management. It's an imperfect system, because our data now lives in 3 places:

1. The res-tech platform
2. The staff management system
3. Our own internal reporting system (spreadsheets & WhatsApp, in our case)

If I have a guest with special needs and I want to let my guide know in advance so they can plan their route — where do I do it? I'd like to put it on the customer file, but my guide won't see that. I can put it on the shift on the staff management system, but what if the guest with special needs changes their departure date? I have to remember to update both systems.

What happens if I schedule a staff member for a tour that gets 0 bookings? I have to manually remember to call them and stand them down, or I incur the costs (in Australia, casual employees who report to work as scheduled are guaranteed a minimum 3 hour shift. Even if this didn't apply, it creates an incredibly unhappy team when they show up for work that isn't actually there).

Res tech systems have all the information that's needed to have a robust staff management suite — they should either create the features, or allow complex integrations with services like WhenIWork & Deputy.

3. Better customer communication tools

Guests will reach their tour operator using every method short of carrier pigeon (phone call, SMS, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram DMs, Instagram comments, Facebook comments, Viber, WeChat, I could go on...). Yet when I open up a customer profile on res tech platforms, I can't see these communications.

ZenDesk correlates all these features (for a whopping $149 per user) but again, we're creating a situation where data lives in many places.

The solution? No res tech companies allow data to freely flow into their software using a tool like Zapier. Rezdy (of whom I'm a customer) allow me to push data from their platform to ZenDesk, but what I actually want is to have all my customer comms live in one place — the res-tech platform.

Without this, the reservations agent, operations manager, or guide won't be able to see the long discussion I had with the celiac on the tour who requires special menu selections on our food tour.

4. Support pre-discounted links

Most res-tech stores have a promo code and/or discounting option, but few have the ability to automatically apply the discount to users who enter through special marketing channels (such as a Google AdWords campaign). There's ample evidence that this is a powerful way to increase direct bookings, yet it doesn't exist in any res tech companies I've seen.

5. Multi-segmented reporting

Tour operators today have so. many. variables. that effect their business. In some cases, we could have two dozen OTAs sending us bookings, a direct sales channel, and a wide variety of local partners selling our tickets.

With such seasonal businesses, it's easy to mis-attribute an up-turn or down-turn in sales to the changing of seasons, when really we're leaking business because an API link to an OTA became dislodged, or a dormant booking channel suddenly came to life.

At a bare minimum, we need to be able to compare month-over-month figures segmented against each sales channel. Ideally, we can break this down to week-over-week, Sunday-over-Sunday, hour-over-hour, then zoom out to quarterly, calendar years, financial years, and decades.

We want to be able to manipulate our reports to break down by product, by guest demographic, and by booking window.

Conclusion

In my career, I've had the benefit of working with a number of res tech companies (Checkfront, Trekksoft, FareHarbor, and now Rezdy). Each one has its plusses and minuses, but I hope that this list can be helpful for these companies and beyond in understanding what will benefit our businesses and ensure long-term success for both of us (and continue to justify the $6,000 I spend annually on res tech).

What have I missed here? I've love to hear from other operators about what features you think are sorely missing. Please leave a comment below, and maybe we'll hear some responses from the res tech giants.