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  5. Online booking system for experiences

Making visitor attractions bookable

9 minute read • Last updated: 2 July 2025

An online booking system is software that lets you take bookings and payments from customers online.

By offering features and functionality such as automated bookings, an online booking system can help improve the efficiency of your business and support you during growth.

With customers looking to book their tourism experiences online, choosing the best system for their needs and yours is vital.

Find out more about the benefits of using an online booking system, the costs involved and other factors you should consider when choosing a system provider.

In this article:

  • Case studies
  • The benefits of an online booking system
  • The cost of an online booking system
  • How to decide on an online booking system
  • Features to look out for

Catch up on our online booking systems webinar

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How to choose a booking system for your tourism experience

Learn how the right booking system can transform your tourism experience’s operations from streamlining processes to maximising bookings.

Case studies

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SaltDog Marine case study

Ian Ashton from SaltDog Marine walks us through their transformation from manually handling bookings via Facebook to running an automated system.

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Glengoyne and Rosebank distilleries case study

Liz Gunn, Head of Sales & Marketing, gives an inside look at how the team uses an online booking system, to improve the visitor experience and more.

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Gallus Pedals case study

Gallus Pedals’ Martin Heaney gives insights into selecting an online booking system that is simple to integrate, cuts down admin, and supports growth.

The benefits of an online booking system

Depending on the system you choose there are a range of benefits that an online booking system can deliver.

  • Improved customer experience

    An online booking system can help to:

    • provide quicker on-site processing of customers
    • control customer numbers and customer flow
    • increase clarity and consistency of booking terms and conditions

  • Greater efficiency

    Save time and money by:

    • managing bookings smoothly across different platforms
    • less time spent on admin tasks
    • no need to duplicate availability and pricing across multiple platforms
    • quicker updating of products and pricing

  • Use of data and insights

    Get easier access to data that allows for:

    • evaluation of your busy and quiet times (assists staffing)
    • keeping in touch with customers post-visit
    • improved financial management

The cost of an online booking system

There are two main pricing models for online booking systems for tourism experiences.

  • Fee per booking (commission) model

    The system takes a commission on each individual booking. This can be useful for smaller businesses that have quiet seasons, as you only pay when you receive bookings.

    Fees are usually between 1 and 8%, and there could be an additional fee for credit card merchants.

  • Subscription model

    A fixed price for using the online booking system, usually payable monthly or annually. This option helps you to budget your technology costs for the year and some companies may offer tiered pricing – a lower cost for less features and limits on the number of bookings or users.

    Costs usually begin from around £10 a month for a basic system.

    Some subscription-based models may also include a small booking fee per customer, as well as the subscription fee.

Further considerations about fees and costs

Depending on the online booking system provider and the pricing model they operate, there are several associated factors you may also need to consider when deciding which is right for you.

Communicating fees to customers

Some customers can be put off by an additional booking fee and abandon their purchase. You’ll need to bear this in mind when deciding whether to mark the fee up for customers as a booking fee or just make it part of the overall cost.

Credit/debit card compatibility

If your booking provider is also the merchant of record, you will only be able to accept the credit and debit cards they accept. If you expect to get bookings from European customers, make sure the system accepts their common cards – e.g. SEPA or iDeal (popular with Dutch and German travellers).

Additional charges

Some online booking system providers may charge a fee for website bookings only, whereas some may also charge for in-person bookings, for example taken at reception.

Certain providers may work with you to charge a higher booking fee but share some of the money back with you.

Forecasting expected sales against system costs

When it comes to reviewing the pricing of each booking system, you will need to have an accurate estimate of your expected sales over a set period. This will allow you to estimate the ongoing cost of the booking system if it includes a price per booking.

Find more advice on pricing
  • Arival guide to booking system pricing
  • Arival guide to choosing a booking system (free if you create an account)

How to decide on an online booking system

  • Gather your requirements

    Begin by making a list of your current processes, tasks and tools.

    Think about:

    • the main challenges of your current systems
    • what you need from a new system
    • common customer feedback/complaint topics

    Remember to get staff input and consider the impact on their day-to-day responsibilities. Although you might not know yet exactly what that impact will be, you need to begin thinking about what you will do with affected staff – can they be given new responsibilities or will their hours be reduced? Learn more about HR support for staff

  • Prioritise your requirements

    What difference would it make to have a booking system that deals with each of your identified needs?

    Be critical about your decisions – it’s not realistic to end up with a list of requirements all marked as essential.

  • Identify which systems can meet your requirements

    VisitScotland have produced a free needs assessment tool that helps you to rate your functionality requirements, and shortlist providers that might best match your needs.

    To get a copy of the needs assessment which includes a list of potential providers, please contact us.

  • Create a shortlist of system providers your best options

    If you are using our needs assessment tool, it will help you to create a shortlist of 4-5 booking systems. If you are not using our needs assessment tool to create a shortlist, you’ll need to reach out directly to providers and share your list of priority requirements and ask them how well they cater for your needs, or check yourself using their websites.

    Remember to think about:

    • what systems do competitors use
    • what works best from a customer perspective
    • recommendations from peers or any business networks you engage with

  • Evaluate and trial your best options

    Once you have a shortlist of providers, set up a system demo with each. Most offer this easily via their websites.

    Some system providers offer free trial periods – although this can be more complex to set-up.

    Look out for providers who:

    • are keen to know more about your business
    • provide tailored demonstrations suitable for your type of business
    • share useful information about how the system matches your requirements
    • provide system training and ongoing support

    Sales agents will always highlight the positives of their system over the challenges, so make sure to do your own research and evaluation.

  • Choose and set up your new system

    Review the final scores from the VisitScotland comparison tool (or your own investigations), rewatch any recorded demonstrations and in consultation with any key staff members, select an online booking system.

    Plan in time for staff training and the inputting of data to the system - if you have an existing system, it might not be possible to transfer data directly to the new system. Set a date for the transition to stop using the old system and export the data for reporting purposes.

Features to look out for

When choosing an online booking system you must understand what functionality features will be delivered. Not all systems will offer the same.

The importance you should place on different features and functionality will depend on your business type (eg tour, visitor attraction, activity, etc) and the requirements you have.

Here are some key features to keep in mind.

Travel distribution partner access

Look for an online booking system that allows for multiple channels to book the same inventory. It can be time consuming if you work with lots of partners and have to upload your product details manually.

Some systems offer business to business (B2B) bookings for partners with live availability and price information. The booking is also tagged as a partner booking, so you can easily see bookings by this channel in your reporting.

The benefits

  • Single booking system
  • Direct access to availability for partner
  • Access to customer data - partners can check and update themselves
  • Reporting - both get bookable reports, revenue and accounts payable

If your booking system doesn’t give them access and you don’t have a back-office system where you can make bookings for them, you might be able to use your website booking system. Most systems support either coupons, or promotional or discount codes. By creating a unique code, you can get partners to book through there.

Sector-specific systems

There are many systems which are tailored to a certain type of business – e.g. day tours or attractions.

A system that focuses on (for example) outdoor activities could have more features to support equipment management and rentals, while (for example) a system for day tours may have features to manage and help tour guides.

Tracking sales channels

As well as having your business listed through travel distribution partners, you may have set up free listings for your business through other partners such as VisitScotland.com, Google and Tripadvisor.

Where you are able to add a booking link, make sure that each link is trackable. This means you can accurately see what channels your sales are coming from.

Find out more about free business listings

Application Programming Interface (API)

An API lets two different applications (or systems) talk to each other and share information automatically. Within tourism and events, an API lets a travel distribution partner access your online booking system.

Some booking systems are open to APIs, and some still have limited access.

Ask your sales agent how long they’ve had the API (newer APIs are more up-to-date), what partners the API connects with, and what features it has.

You should also ask if the API allows you to share live availability and pricing with OTAs. Is it a two-way API connection ie when someone makes a booking on your website does it automatically update the OTA and vice versa?

Back-office or manual bookings

Sometimes there is a need to take a booking in-person or for a group with special requirements.

Most online booking systems provide an admin interface that allows you to add bookings directly into the system - this is known as back-office or manual bookings.

The benefits of having the manual booking feature are:

  • Staff training - all staff use the same system so easy to train new team members.
  • Standard process – less chance of an error when the process is the same every time.
  • Central real-time inventory – avoid overbooking the time slot with accurate availability.
  • Customer information stored - easy to access information as in the one place.
  • Reporting – can do sales reporting across all channels and compare trends.

Channel managers

You may have heard of channel managers - these allow you to manage and allocate your product by channel or partner with price information. It also allows partner access to manage booking information.

It provides a one-to-many connection between your booking system and your partners. You load your products into one place and an API connects your partners to your channel manager, rather than you having to connect to each partner individually.

But these are only used by larger businesses - if you’re a small business with a few partners and your online booking system already connects to them, then you don’t need a channel manager.

Get our booking system needs assessment

VisitScotland have produced an online booking system needs assessment and functionality checklist for experiences businesses. This lets you rate functionality requirements, and see what providers best match your needs.

Go to the form

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