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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.
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Learn how the right booking system can transform your tourism experience’s operations from streamlining processes to maximising bookings.
Depending on the system you choose there are a range of benefits that an online booking system can deliver.
An online booking system can help to:
Save time and money by:
Get easier access to data that allows for:
There are two main pricing models for online booking systems for tourism experiences.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
It can take time to gather your requirements and find the best match for your needs, but it is worth it when you start to see the benefits to your business operations.
VisitScotland have produced an online booking system needs assessment and functionality checklist for experiences businesses.
This spreadsheet lets you rate functionality requirements, and see what providers might best match your needs.
To get a copy of the needs assessment which includes a list of potential providers, please contact us.
The needs assessment will enable you to create a shortlist of 4-5 booking systems and set up a demo with each of them. Most offer this easily via their websites. Some even offer free trial periods (although this might be a bit tricker to set up on your own website).
You don’t need to prepare anything – this is just to start giving you ideas of what booking systems do, and how they might be able to help your business.
Looking at other business’ websites. Act as if you are a potential visitor, go through their booking process and check how easy or difficult it is, and what system they seem to use.
You can also speak to your peers through any business networks you are part of and reach out to your Destination Marketing Organisation (DMO).
Create a list of processes, tasks and tools carried out by each person/area.
Ask them:
Watch out for staff bias - they may be happy with how their job works right now and resistant to change, or not see the challenges with a task as it’s a regular habit.
Don’t just speak to one person - ask a couple of people who work in one area or ask the manager of the area as well.
Consider staff impact - automating processes and tasks will affect some staff’s job roles and responsibilities. Although you won’t know yet exactly what that impact will be, you need to begin considering 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
Don’t discount anything - during your audit you may come across an issue that the booking system definitely won’t fix. It is more time efficient to capture all of the issues during a single audit, and then come back later to the issues the booking system doesn’t fix, than to do another audit later on.
Review previous customer surveys and reviews for common issues and complaints, for example, how easy it is to change an existing booking.
Ask customer-facing staff for common customer issues and complaints.
Either contact us for the needs assessment template or create your own list of requirements using the findings from your audit.
Give each requirement a priority – what difference would it make to your business to have that feature? Be critical about your decisions – it’s not realistic to end up with a list of requirements all marked as essential.
National Wallace Monument
If you are using our template, you can follow the steps to easily filter out the booking system providers that don’t cater for your priority requirements.
Otherwise, 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.
Once you have a shortlist of providers, set up sales calls. The sales agent will likely show you a demonstration of the online booking system being used with a test account.
Sales agents will always highlight the positives of their system over the challenges, so make sure to do your own research and evaluation. Look out for an agent who is keen to know more about your business, provides a tailored demonstration suitable for your type of business, and shares useful information about how the system matches your requirements.
Review the final scores, rewatch any recorded demonstrations and in consultation with key staff members, select an online booking system.
Speak to the sales agent and find out more about how you move forward.
You’ll need to allow for staff training, and input 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 and to stop using the old system and export the data for reporting purposes.
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.
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
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.
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
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?
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:
Treezone
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.
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.
