Wix, SquareSpace, WordPress, and Weebly are all top-rated, commonly known website builders used by an array of business owners. Many tour operators consider these names when they are ready to bring their business online.

While these software systems are popular for various reasons (ease of use, affordability, accessibility, etc.), they’re not the best solutions for tour operators because they don’t provide adequate tools to enable or manage online bookings.

Even if they offer booking widgets for travellers to reserve tours and time slots online, they don’t have channel management tools for tour operators to centralise bookings across sales channels or manage reservations effectively.

This means tour operators have to manage bookings from their website and other sales channels separately; they’re stuck jumping between platforms and updating multiple calendars (dealing with overbookings and other mishaps along the way).

Website builders are designed to do precisely what their name describes: help you build a website. They aren’t developed to offer or support booking management like tour operators require. Instead, tour operators need to look beyond a basic website builder to a different software category: tour operator software (it sounds too simple, we know).

As the name suggests, tour operator software is developed as an “all-in-one” solution for tour and travel experience providers.

These solutions combine a website builder, booking and availability management, channel management, resource management, staff scheduling, CRM, and business reporting. Plus, many tour operator softwares include reseller marketplaces where you can learn about and partner with other travel businesses to expand your reach and promote business growth.

Although these software systems include a plethora of other tools beyond website builders, the pricing is similar when you compare solutions across software categories — many tour operator software brands will include the website builder for free or offer perks for using their website builder.

For example, here at Bókun, the website builder is included in your subscription plan, and we cover the charges to secure your preferred domain name and bring your site online.

So, we’ve put together this guide to discuss the website builders available in tour operator software. We’ll show you our website builder and review the other primary features available in tour operator software.

At the end, we’ll list ten other top-rated tour operator software with native website builders — with links to additional resources and review sites — so you can compare the other recommended solutions in this category.

  • Bókun
  • Checkfront
  • Rezdy
  • TicketingHub
  • Ventrata
  • Xola
  • Trekksoft
  • FareHarbor
  • TRYTN
  • Regiondo
  • Travefy

Start a 14-day free trial of Bókun to explore our platform and features.

Bókun’s One-Click Website Builder

Our website builder is straightforward, so anybody can build a stunning, professional website that reflects their brand and travel experiences.

You don’t have to be a tech-savvy designer or amateur developer to design a high-quality website. In fact, most tour operators can fully build their site in under an hour.

How to design your booking website

Here’s how our website builder works.

First, we provide a gallery of website templates from which you can choose the theme you like best. After you scroll through the options, and select a website design, the builder will open.

Select Website Template

You’ll immediately see a templated version of your site pages with “plug and play” fields. These show you where to add brand elements like logos, custom colours, imagery, slogans, contact information, and a background about your business.

For example, in the screenshot above, the “Company Name” field across each template clearly shows where to type your website name.

You’ll click between site pages — your homepage, Contact, and About Us — working through each “plug and play” box, adding the appropriate images or details as you go. There’s little to no guesswork during this process.

Next, our system lets you connect your social media accounts and link with Tripadvisor to feed reviews between sites.

Our booking engine widget is automatically embedded across all Bókun sites, so there is no extra set-up to enable direct bookings. You can preview the booking widget while browsing templates and website themes so you know what the module will look like for website visitors.

We also offer more advanced tools for users to make deeper customisations; you can change themes between pages, adjust button colours, customise the menu and navigation, and more.

After customising the website template and connecting accounts, you can save your design and specify your desired website name (a.k.a. your URL or domain).

Then, our system checks your website name’s availability and secures the domain. After we’ve confirmed your domain, you can publish your new website to bring it online!

Remember, we cover all charges to acquire your domain name and bring your site online.

Although domain costs can vary, this usually amounts to significant savings for business owners — and also saves them from the time (and headache) of learning how to research, acquire, and maintain domain names.

How to design & add product listings

To list your tours and experiences on your site, you’ll head to Bókun’s Experience tab and access the product builder.

The product builder walks you through the steps to design listings, so this process is easy, too. (You can even create product templates to speed up this process.)

Take a look at the product builder below — the left-hand sidebar shows you all of the fields our system prompts you to complete.

Give your experience a short but descriptive name

You’ll add a name for your experience, specify the duration and location(s), add a detailed itinerary and description, include photos and videos from past tours, and more. Our system even lets you offer add-ons with experiences or create tour packages by combining two or more products.

Then, the product builder walks you through the steps to:

  • Choose how travellers book with you (for example, if they buy a day pass or reserve a time slot) and set availability rules
  • Set rates and dynamic pricing rules
  • Assign resources and specify allocation rules

After you save products, you can choose which listings appear on your site and the order in which they’re shown. This lets you control your offerings and group similar products, creating organisation and flow for travellers browsing your product list.

Note: tour operators already selling on Viator can push products from Viator to Bókun to skip the setup and instantly display those experiences on their site.

Offer the best booking experience!

Finally, once you’re up and running, travellers can visit your site, view your travel experiences, check availability, and book online with you 24/7. Our sites are desktop and mobile-friendly, so travellers can book with you from any device. We also include multilingual settings for travellers to translate your site into their native language.

Bókun integrates with various online payment gateways — Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, Raypd, Worldpay, Braintree, Klarna, and more — so you can give customers a variety of secure payment options, and they can complete bookings in one fell swoop.

You earn more bookings and provide a better booking process for travellers — making all parties happy!

Check out a quick introduction to our website builder below:

 

Learn more about the steps to create your Bókun website in our resources below:

Bókun’s All-in-One Tour Operator Software Features & Benefits

Bókun homepage: More Bookings. Better Experience.

As explained above, tour operator software is an all-encompassing solution for travel experience providers.

These systems let you manage all of your bookings and sales channels — and all of the behind-the-scenes that let you provide five-star experiences and run operations smoothly — in one solution. This has a variety of benefits:

  • It keeps teams organised, eliminates tedious manual processes, and allows all staff members to work more productively. For example, Bókun’s booking calendar automatically pulls new reservations from all connected sales channels (your website, OTAs, partner sites) and updates availability across calendars. This way, staff don’t have to manage multiple calendars and risk double bookings; they can easily see what’s on the schedule and focus on more value-adding activities.
  • It improves customer satisfaction; not only can customers easily book with you, but these systems can prevent instances where you have to reschedule or cancel on customers. These systems also let you offer modern conveniences like mobile tickets so customers can conveniently check in upon arrival (without confusion or long lines that can start you off on the wrong foot).
  • It allows business owners to condense their tech stack and minimise operational costs — which is important for any business owner, but hugely important for teams looking to increase profits and scale.

We’re a Tripadvisor brand, and our tour operator software, Bókun, incorporates dozens of features to manage bookings, staff, supplies, customers, finances, and more. It includes:

  • The one-click website builder, as discussed above. (We also provide online booking engine widgets for teams that already have a website; they can enable direct bookings and feed them to the Bókun booking calendar.)
  • Product management, also discussed above.
  • Booking and availability management. You can view all reservations in a centralised booking calendar, and Bókun auto-updates connected calendars in real time as new reservations roll in.
  • Channel management so you can sell tours across online sales channels and route bookings back to Bókun. We even have partnerships with major OTAs, like Viator and GetYourGuide, to offer extra cost-saving perks and help you achieve greater success from those sales channels.
  • Bókun Marketplace, our reseller marketplace with 27K+ businesses in the travel industry. You can connect with other tour operators, travel agents, destination management companies (DMCs), hotels, resorts, car rental companies, and more to establish partnerships, grow your distribution network, and get in front of more potential customers.
  • Resource management to store details about the supplies and equipment needed for your travel experiences, assign resources to products, and specify allocation rules. Our system supports various allocation rules and lets you combine them to optimise resource utilisation.
  • CRM to capture customer information and maintain an organised contact database. Beyond contact information like names and email addresses, our system also keeps a booking history log so you can learn more about your customers and their preferences.
  • Automated communications to dispatch booking confirmations, abandoned cart emails, mobile tickets and reminders before tours, follow-ups, and more. We provide a gallery of email templates for you to customise and schedule, but you can also add other types of emails, like newsletters, to automatically send those to your Bókun customer base.
  • Customer portals for customers to view, modify, or cancel reservations at their convenience, without emailing or calling your team.
  • Mobile tickets and ticket scanning to simplify traveller check-in and ensure smooth experiences from start to finish.
  • Reporting dashboards to measure revenue (across various categories), analyse sales channel and partner performance, compare product popularity, pinpoint busy vs. slow seasons, and more.
  • Mobile apps (for iOS and Android mobile devices) to keep all staff members connected and updated.
  • App store to customise the software and supplement our core features.

 

Although our solution packs a lot under its hood, we prioritise ease of use, so getting acclimated with the navigation and features doesn’t require a learning curve. Anyone can get on board and take advantage of Bókun’s benefits.

We’ve even earned a 4.5-star rating on Capterra for our system’s ease of use.

Bókun supports tour operators at all growth stages with packages and budget-friendly pricing accessible to all teams.

Our START plan includes all the above features, including the website builder and advanced website customisation tools, for $49/month. This plan works for most tour operators, and it includes everything they need to manage operations.

We offer the industry’s lowest booking fees at 1.5% for online bookings from your site, OTAs, and partner sites. Plus, our Viator partnership allows us to waive Bókun booking fees on those reservations, so you can keep costs low while growing your business via Viator. We never charge to manage offline bookings.

We also offer upgraded plans, PLUS and PREMIUM, for scaling teams; these include enterprise-level tools like sub-vendor management and access to Zapier API.

We provide all new customers with a 14-day free trial so they can explore our platform and features to decide if we’re the right solution before committing.

You can learn more about our plans here or begin your free trial here.

Alternative Tour Operator Software with Website Builders

Below is a list of other top-rated tour operator software with native website builders or website-building services (even custom development services). These brands offer one-click website builders similar to Bókun, so they’re all easy to use and comparable to what we’ve shown above.

Each option listed also offers an all-in-one toolset to manage bookings and back-end operations, but we’ll link resources within where you can learn more about the brands that interest you.

  • Rezdy is a global software brand with packages for teams at all growth stages — and all packages include the website builder. Though they advertise their solution for teams of all sizes, due to pricing, they’re primarily popular with mid-size or larger teams.
  • TicketingHub is a solution for larger attractions and event management teams dealing with high-volume ticket sales. They appeal to businesses in the travel, leisure, and entertainment industries.
  • FareHarbor is a well-known name and Booking.com partner. They’re popular for offering user-friendly tour operator software, but booking fees are high (up to 6%). FareHarbor is one of the first unique names on our list, as their customer support team provides a website-building service for $5K/year (or $499 monthly). Their team will build and host your site, optimise the site for SEO, connect Google Analytics, and perform periodic technical audits. They also offer SEO add-ons to help improve your site’s performance in search engines and see greater conversion rates.
  • Xola offers “modern” tour operator software with a homegrown booking engine developed to improve conversions and prevent abandoned carts. It is marketed for tour operators looking to drive direct bookings. Xola’s team also offers a website-building service, but it’s a little different from FareHarbor: their team creates a WordPress site and embeds their booking widget. They do not share costs for this service.
  • TRYTN stands out from all options on our list, offering custom website development services in addition to tour operator software; this is best for teams seeking a bespoke site (and having the budget for one).
  • Our honourable mention, Travefy offers travel agent software to help teams create unique itineraries and travel experiences. Travefy’s software also has a built-in travel agency website builder to showcase your brand, previous trips, and client testimonials.

Getting started with Bókun

We understand that a website is a necessity in today’s digital age — and the first step in establishing your online presence. That’s why we include our website builder in our core feature set. There are no extra costs to use this feature, and we cover all charges to keep your domain name active.

Our tool makes creating a new website simple; there’s no coding or confusing, time-consuming customisation required. (We provide options to make deeper customisations for teams with the know-how.)

On top of this — and what differentiates tour operator software from a basic website builder — we provide the tools to enable direct website bookings and effectively manage bookings.

Building a website is one thing, but actually enabling bookings and knowing how to manage them is a separate challenge.

Bókun’s functionality lets you:

  • Bring your site online
  • Enable and manage direct bookings
  • Promote tours and sell across other online channels
  • Establish partnerships with other travel companies
  • Centralise bookings across all sales channels
  • Keep availability accurate and up-to-date
  • Manage customer experiences from the first touchpoint through day-of experiences
  • Schedule staff and resources for experiences
  • Automate back-office processes
  • Report on business performance

See how easy it is to create a beautiful website for your tour business by getting started with Bókun today.

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