There are a few considerations for food tour operators when comparing online booking software. First (and most obviously), you need something that makes booking accessible and easy for customers. All booking software should offer this at the bare minimum. In addition, you want a solution that provides:
- Opportunities to grow online bookings — not just make booking accessible. Connections with online travel agencies (OTAs) and reseller networks expand your reach and help grow your business.
- Tools to improve the customer experience — through the booking process, during their visit, and in all communications with your team.
- Tools to effectively manage your tours and bookings as you grow and sell across multiple booking channels. These save time on back-office tasks, keep operations organised, and prevent costly errors.
We put together this review guide with five of the most popular booking software for food tour companies so you can compare and find a good option. We start by reviewing our solution, Bókun — booking software specifically designed for tour operators and activity businesses — and explain how our platform fulfils these criteria.
You can also explore our platform for free with a 14-day trial (no credit card required).
Best Booking Software for Food Tour Companies
1. Bókun
Tour operator software to manage bookings, improve customer experience, and scale business
Bókun is a booking management platform tailored to tour operators — also called tour operator software . We work with tour operators in all growth stages and can support teams who offer private food tours, multi-day foodie getaways, and the works.
With Bókun, you can:
- Bring business online, create mouth-watering listings for all your experiences, and enable 24/7 bookings.
- Reach new customers and drive bookings by connecting with OTAs and the Bókun Marketplace (our network of over 27K tour operators, hotels, resorts, travel agents, and more).
- Simplify the booking process and plan ahead to offer the best experience for customers.
- Manage all bookings and operations under one roof, keep everyone connected, and track income.
What sets us apart from other booking software for tour operators is pricing — we offer:
- We don’t charge Bókun booking fees on reservations from Viator.
- Low booking fees (1% to 1.5% for online bookings). We never charge to manage offline bookings.
- Low starting subscription cost for START users — $49 per month.
We’re also a Viator partner and offer perks for those users — including automatic product imports (so you can quickly add Viator products to Bókun) and a number of free product checks each year.
Here’s a quick walkthrough of our platform and features so you can see what it’s like to manage bookings with Bókun.
Bring your food tour business online & enable 24/7 bookings
We provide two options for you to receive direct bookings:
Option one
If you already have a website, you can embed our booking widget so customers can reserve tours directly from your site.
Option two
You can use our one-click website builder to create a branded, bookable site. We provide a library of website templates so you can design your site without complicated coding or CSS. Add branding elements like logos, custom colours and fonts, images, and more.
Then, within our product management feature (called “Experiences”), you can create stunning listings, manage availability, and set pricing.
Create listings for every experience you offer
The product builder will walk you through the steps to create your tour listing (but we also provide templates to help). Descriptive details and high-quality media help your food tours stand out and get customers’ stomachs growling.
In the screenshot above, you can see each field to create your listing. You should include:
- An engaging name to grab customers’ attention.
- The length and locations of your tour. Is this a one-stop shop, are you visiting multiple places, or are you offering a multi-day experience?
- A detailed itinerary and description of what to expect during the tour. What types of foods will you be trying? How many courses? Are you offering any unique activities during your experience? For example, a winery might include a grape-treading activity so customers could learn about traditional wine making during their tour.
- Photos and videos — as these are arguably the most valuable way to showcase your food tour experience and pique customers’ interest .
- Notes on what to know before booking. You could use this to provide information on allergens or include disclaimers about alcohol. For example, customers may need to know if tours will have gluten-free options or if food is prepared in a facility that processes wheat (or peanuts, milk, eggs, shellfish, and other common allergens).
- Details for the day of — what to bring, where to meet, where to check-in, etc.
- Reviews from past customers — our platform connects with TripAdvisor to display customer reviews on your listings.
You can also offer “Extras” (add-ons) with your tours to spice up customers’ experiences.
Going back to our winery example above, this tour operator could upsell customers with small bites to complement their wines. Or, they could offer the above-mentioned grape-treading activity as an add-on. Conversely, if you offer a “Taste of Italy” food tour, you could offer an optional wine sampler to pair with your dinner. This feature offers a lot of opportunities for food tour companies who can get extra creative in their add-ons.
You can customise booking forms for your experiences to gather details from customers before they visit; these forms are helpful in inquiring about allergies or special dietary requirements so you can prepare accordingly.
Products automatically display on your website when you create listings.
Manage how & when people can book with you
With Bókun, you can easily prevent overbookings (or double bookings), while ensuring you’re prepared for every visitor.
When creating your product listing, you’ll choose how customers book with you — if they choose a date and time, just a date, or they buy a pass to visit during your operating hours. (Most food tour operators require customers to choose a date and time so they have a proper headcount.)
For each experience, you can specify:
- Start and closeout dates (the times of year you offer each tour).
- Open days (the days of the week you offer each tour).
- Departure times (the different start times for each tour).
- Minimum and maximum capacities.
- Booking cutoffs (the last day or time customers can book before departure) — this is especially beneficial for food tour companies that need advance notice on how many people to expect and how much food to prepare.
You can set availability rules with each product so that it auto-populates into the future (and you don’t have to update your calendar week by week).
Then, you can see all products and availability rules within your “Availability Calendar”. From this calendar, you can quickly close out specific days or departure times to update availability without changing recurring rules.
Note: Product availability automatically updates across all sales channels and partner sites — you don’t have to manage this across multiple platforms and you can feel confident that customers aren’t booking unapproved or already-reserved times.
Read more about availability management in Bókun.
Set pricing & use dynamic pricing to maximise booking conversions and revenue
You can offer your tours at one flat rate, or you can create a price catalogue to offer different rates for different customers.
For example, if you have a modified version of your tour to suit kids (let’s call it the kid’s meal), you could offer lower prices for children than adults. Or, you could offer discounted pricing for seniors, active military, veterans, first responders, etc.
You could also offer discounts for customers who book in bulk with our tiered pricing feature — a family booking for more than one person could receive lower rates for booking multiple spots.
Our platform also has a dynamic pricing tool that lets you set automation rules to adjust rates for different scenarios.
For example, you could set a rule to lower pricing for tours about to close that haven’t reached capacity, so you can fill up tours and increase earnings. On the flip side, you could set a rule to increase prices for experiences booking out quickly or reaching capacity.
You can also use dynamic pricing to offer general discounts or lower rates for tours during certain times of the year.
Dynamic pricing can increase booking potential, so you have the best chance at winning customers’ business and maximising revenue from bookings.
Connect your preferred payment processor & accept online payments
Our platform integrates with dozens of payment gateways so customers can make online payments when booking tours. We partner with Stripe, PayPal, Worldpay, Google Pay, Apple Pay, Klarna, and more — you can connect multiple payment processors and give customers several options to pay.
We do not charge transaction fees for online bookings — these fees are determined by the payment processor you choose.
Drive new business by connecting to OTAs & establishing partnerships
Our platform connects with Viator, GetYourGuide, Expedia, Klook, Civitatis, Tiqets, and more so you can sell your food tours on popular travel sites.
These sites see millions of monthly visitors, so you can get in front of people planning vacations and things to do who are interested in your experiences. Then, they can book with you directly from those sites — and you can see and manage those bookings in Bókun.
As mentioned above, we offer free bookings from Viator, so you never pay fees for those bookings.
You can also connect with other businesses (via the Bókun Marketplace) to promote each others’ tours and services. Our Marketplace is home to thousands of businesses in the tourism industry, so you can connect with hotels and resorts, travel agents, and other tour operators to establish partnerships.
There are a few ways to leverage the Bókun Marketplace:
- Connect with resellers that will promote your tours and earn bookings for you; this lets you get in front of more customers, fill up tours, and book out your calendar.
- Find suppliers and resell their products for a commission; this is a great way to increase revenue.
- Create combo experiences with other suppliers and sell your tours together. For example, say you offer a French Gourmet Food Tour around the Latin quarter in Paris, you could partner with someone who offers guided tours of the Panthéon and offer customers both experiences.
Our Marketplace can help you consistently book out your calendar and promote fast growth — in 2023, suppliers connected to the Bókun Marketplace generated over $42k, on average.
Offer the best (most convenient) experience for customers
Providing convenient booking methods is one way to get off on the right foot with customers — but Bókun provides features to support the entire customer journey, helping you earn more positive reviews and happy customers.
First, our automated communications feature lets you stay in touch with customers (and saves your staff time) by sending booking confirmations, follow-up emails with tickets and waivers, reminders before tours, thank you’s after customers visit, and more.
We provide a library of email templates you can customise with branding elements, review links, and discount codes — then schedule these emails to be sent at specific times or after certain actions.
For example, you could set reminder emails to automatically send three days before customers are set to arrive for their tour. Or, you could use the abandoned cart template and schedule these emails to be sent when customers leave your site before completing checkout.
Our booking platform also has a native CRM to plug in customers’ first names and add a personal touch to emails before sending them out.
Our solution also provides self-service portals that enable customers to cancel bookings with a few clicks (without having to call or email your team). Our system will send customers an automated email confirming their cancellation.
Cancelled reservations automatically update on your side, so your calendar stays up-to-date. We also send notifications when customers cancel bookings. This way, you can reach out and inquire about why they cancelled, if they want to reschedule, etc.
With our ticketing features and mobile apps, you can streamline customer check-in and avoid delays.
Design unique tickets for customers (with QR or bar codes) so tour guides can quickly check customers in upon arrival. We provide mobile apps with ticket scanning functionality; staff can check tickets from their phones or tablets and avoid everyone huddling around one table or check-in area.
Manage your operations in a centralised, organised system
Bókun lets you manage all bookings from our dashboard. You can see incoming bookings from your website, sales channels, and partners, and manage offline bookings from our system.
Your calendar updates in real-time, so you always know what’s on your schedule.
You can add staff members to this platform so they can access the booking calendar, see the tours they’re scheduled for, and stay connected with in-office staff and other guides.
Our mobile apps also keep staff organised in the field. They can access the booking calendar and reservation details to see who’s scheduled for tours and ensure they’ve checked in everyone before starting.
Our booking system also offers a reporting dashboard where you can dig into bookings and revenue.
We offer pre-set reports to show you:
- Total number of new bookings — to gauge how busy you are from month to month.
- Bookings by sales channel — to determine your best-performing sales channels.
- Bookings by partner — to see which partners bring in the most bookings.
- Bookings per product — to measure the popularity of your available tours.
You can also dig into current and past bookings to learn more about your customer base — who’s booking, how they’re booking, and when they’re booking.
These reports can help you identify and plan for slow seasons, adjust sales strategies, improve your experiences, and more.
Try Bókun booking software for free
We offer user-friendly booking software to help food tour operators establish an online presence and grow their business — you can leverage our tools and increase online reservations by creating a booking website, connecting with popular travel sites, and partnering with other travel businesses in our network.
Our platform offers all the features to manage the customer experience and behind-the-scenes operations so you can put your best foot forward, identify areas of improvement, and pinpoint ways to scale.
- Our tour operator software (and all of the features mentioned above) is available starting from $49 per month.
- We improve savings with free Viator bookings and charge low booking fees (1% to 1.5%) for other online and direct bookings.
- You can manage offline bookings on our platform at no charge.
You can try Bókun for free by starting our 14-day trial — you can build your site, add products, connect with OTAs, and more. Our customer support team is around to help if you have any questions!
Alternative booking software for food tour operators
In addition to Bókun, you might see some of the names below while researching online booking systems.
2. Bookeo
Bookeo is a popular online reservation software because they have solutions for multiple industries — their tailored package for tour operators includes tools to: enable online bookings from your website, connect with OTAs, manage real-time availability, and accept online payments. They also have time-saving features to automate back-office tasks and keep staff organised.
This reservation system might work best for smaller teams exploring online strategies because it’s fairly straightforward and easy to use. (That said, it is missing some important features, like a reseller marketplace, so you might eventually “outgrow” this solution and want something more advanced.)
Features
- Online booking widget (that connects to existing sites)
- Product management
- Availability management
- Customisable booking management calendar
- Staff management
- OTA connections & channel management
- Integrated POS payment system
- Integrations with online payment processors like Stripe
- Automated communications to send booking confirmations, reminders & follow-ups
- Portals for customers to reschedule or cancel reservations
- Waitlisting tools
- Upselling tools
- Options to sell merchandise, gift cards, & vouchers
- Options to offer virtual tours — for example, if you provide cooking experiences, you could offer those via live stream and cook with customers around the world.
- Reporting
Pricing
Bookeo offers three packages for tour providers:
- The Standard plan is $39.95/month — it supports 20 products, 20 staff logins, and 1,000 (food tour) bookings per month.
- The Large plan is $79.95/month — it supports 40 products, 40 staff logins, and 2,000 bookings per month.
- The X-large plan is $199.95/month — it supports 60 products, 60 staff logins, and 3,000 bookings per month.
Note: Bookeo does not charge booking or transaction fees.
3. TripAdmit
TripAdmit offers tour operator software to help teams reach a wider audience and manage online and offline bookings. This solution is popular with teams in the UK and Middle East but they work with food tour operators around the globe.
In addition to their primary booking management tools, they also partner with Eastern Airways, Air Cairo, Vistara, Air Serbia, and Jazeera to offer an airline distribution network, where you can promote and sell your tours to their passengers.
Features
- Online booking widget (that connects to existing sites)
- Content management (to create and manage product listings)
- Price & inventory management
- Availability management
- OTA connections & channel management
- Airline distribution network
- Native online payment gateway
- TipDirect (so customers can leave tips for tour guides)
- Options to sell vouchers
- Automation tools to streamline admin tasks
- Reporting
Pricing
TripAdmit requires tour operators to use their online payment gateway, and they charge transaction fees for each online booking. These fees vary depending on the package you choose.
- The free plan includes all the above-mentioned features — TripAdmit charges a 5.9% transaction fee in this plan.
- The Pro plan includes all features and a customer success agent to help you get started — TripAdmit charges a 4.9% transaction fee in this plan.
- Large teams that choose the Enterprise plan can negotiate transaction fees.
4. Travelotopos
Travelotopos is a popular booking software for EU-based food tour operators. They have experience working with teams of all sizes — small tour operators looking to grow and large organisations — and offer a user-friendly solution for tour operators to earn (and increase) online bookings.
Their booking engine connects with your website and supports six languages so you can sell your food tours to a wide customer base. They also have a preferred partnership with GetYourGuide and a B2B marketplace to expand your reach further.
Features
- Online booking widget (that connects to existing sites)
- Offline reservation management
- OTA connections & channel management
- B2B marketplace to partner with hotel chains, travel agents & other tour operators
- Resource management
- Options to offer coupon codes & promotions
- Customisable vouchers
- Business intelligence tools
- Integrations with third-party systems (e.g., payment processors, social media, GA4, Google Ads)
- Reporting
- Mobile apps
Pricing
Travelotopos charges a one-time set-up cost of $270, 3% booking fees for online reservations, and 1.5% booking fees on agent and reseller reservations.
5. TripWorks
TripWorks is a popular booking software for mid-size and scaling food tour companies. They offer a more advanced solution with a suite of marketing tools to help tour operators strategically grow their online presence. For example, the platform lets you create and manage PPC campaigns across social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.
TripWorks’ solution connects with your website so you can enable customers to book with you directly, but they also offer connections with OTAs and a reseller marketplace to drive new bookings.
Features
- Online booking widget (that connects to existing sites)
- Reservation management
- Product management
- Availability management
- Connections with OTAs & channel management
- Reseller marketplace
- Options to sell gift cards & vouchers
- Dynamic pricing
- Digital waiver solution
- Native POS
- Integrations with Apple Pay & Google Pay
- Marketing tools to build PPC campaigns & improve your reach on social media
- Integrations with marketing & business applications
- Reporting
Pricing
TripWorks offers two plans, but they do not disclose pricing for either.
- The recommended plan (the Standard plan) includes 30+ core features.
- The more advanced plan for enterprise teams provides access to the full feature set.
They do not charge booking fees, but instead, credit card processing fees for online reservations (2.9% + 30¢).
You can get started on the TripWorks platform for free. They allow you to build your site, add products, and move through set-up without costs. Once you’re ready to start accepting bookings, you can “turn on” the platform.
Note: We recommend TripWorks for larger tour operators because of the pricing structure. While they don’t charge subscription fees, they do charge credit card transaction fees for online bookings — and the website fine print warns that TripWorks will impose a $49/month inactivity fee on tour operators if they don’t meet the threshold for monthly credit card transactions. TripWorks requires customers to process at least $5k in payments each month (or $30k over six months).
Bókun offers top-rated, user-friendly booking software for tour operators to establish and grow their online presence, offer the best customer experience, and manage operations and staff. Start a 14-day free trial to explore our platform.
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