Bókun Beginners Course: A Step-by-Step Video Tutorial

It’s so great to have you here. We hope this self-guided video resource will help you along your Bókun journey — whether you’ve just joined us or need a refresher. 

Throughout this course, our videos will act as tutorials for our most recommended features to help you get the most out of Bókun. You can move around each video and section as you please.

Goal: By the end of this course, you’ll learn how to correctly set up your Experiences (products), connect to various sales channels to boost your bookings, and finally, how to manage your bookings when they start rolling in.

Here are some additional resources that might be handy in addition to this course.

Goal: Complete the set-up of your experience from start to finish, following one of the two options listed below, and optimise it to suit your business needs.

In this section, we’ll take you through the most important step, making sure you have your experience (products)  live so you can start getting bookings.

There are two ways you can create an experience in Bókun, depending on if you’re doing it manually or importing straight from Viator. Select the relevant video below depending on your situation.

Manually Adding Products – recommended if you do not have an Viator experiences (1.1)

 Learn how to manually input details for each product, including descriptions, pricing, and availability.

Importing your experiences from Viator – express set-up (1.2)

If you have existing experiences in Viator, Bókun allows for importing products to streamline the setup process.

💡Tip: To sell online and connect to resellers with Bókun, you must have an Experience (product) created.

Now that your Experiences (products) are fully set up, it’s time to get you connected to various sales channels and help you get your first booking through Bókun. Here are some of our top recommendations

Goal: Try to connect to three resellers on the Marketplace, e.g. Viator, GetYourGuide and one more. Aim to create a bookable website either by creating a custom website or adding a Book Now button to your existing website.

Connect with Viator – to boost your bookings (2.1)

As a Viator Preferred Partner, we provide a strong and reliable connection and allow you to integrate fully with Viator.

Connect with GetYourGuide -to boost your bookings (2.2)

As a GetYourGuide Premium Connectivity Partner, we continue to provide digital flexibility for our customers who want to grow their businesses online and reach more eager travellers.

Get a Book Now button on your website – to drive more bookings (2.3)

Customers who switch from contact forms to booking widgets have seen bookings increase by over 400%!

Create your own branded, bookable website – in just a few clicks (2.4)

Discover how simple it is to create your own custom website in Bókun to easily accept bookings online.

Connect to partners in the Marketplace – get your products in front of millions of monthly travellers (2.5)

Find thousands resellers who can boost your bookings. 
💡 Did you know suppliers who started selling through the Marketplace in 2023 saw an average GBV increase of 43% 🚀

Bókun offers a variety of tools to easily manage your bookings. Here are some of our most popular tools.

Goal: Choose a combination of these tools to implement and make managing your bookings even easier.

Booking calendar – easily monitor all your departures (3.1)

A handy overview of all the departures available for your experiences in one place. You can make changes and assign resources with ease.

Close outs – close out availability in a single click (3.2)

You can close availability by date for all experiences, by date for specifically selected experiences or even by selected experience start times.

Resource Management – manage resources (3.3)

Create and manage resources such as guides, drivers, resources and equipment in these video series

Passenger list – get a glimpse of your passengers (3.4)

See a list of all the passengers who are booked for each of your departures for the day.

Another way to increase your revenue is to become a Reseller on the Marketplace and sell other businesses’ experiences.

Goal: Once you feel comfortable exploring the Marketplace, why don’t you consider becoming a reseller or bundling experiences with nearby operators to increase your revenue?

Become a reseller – grow your revenue further (4.1)

Some Bókun suppliers drive more revenue reselling other experiences than their own!

Feeling adventurous? Now that you’ve covered the basics, here are more advanced ways to grow your bookings through Bókun.

It’s recommended that you take time to get familiar with the basics outlined in the first four sections above, and ensure those are set up correctly before diving into these further ways to boost bookings.
To start, focus on two advanced tools and then each week, build upon bringing in a new tool.

Goal: By the end of this section, you’ll learn more about the ways you can continue to grow your bookings through Promo Codes, automated email messages, and more.

Payment Links – get paid fast (5.1)

For any bookings created manually (walk-ins), you can request an online payment from the traveller by sending an email with a payment link.

Promo Codes – offer discounts to drive more bookings (5.2)

Offer your travellers a temporary discount by using a Promo Code. For example, WINTER10, BLACKFRIDAY.

Offers – bundle products as an upsell (5.3)

A helpful tool for bundling two or more products together, providing a discount during checkout. Encourage your customers to book multiple experiences or products in a single transaction.

Referral Tracking – Track affiliates who resell your experiences (5.4)

Add Referral Tracking to increase your product distribution and your bookings. They are someone external to Bókun, e.g. a blogger or a hotel that resells your experiences on their website.

💡 Tip: Referral tracking in Bókun was named “Affiliates” until 30/09/2020. You may hear them being used interchangeably.

Automated Email Messages – Save hundreds of hours (5.5)

Send messages to your customers before or after their experiences, such as reminders, reviews and feedback requests.

You’ve completed our Bókun Beginners Course. We hope you feel ready to continue on your Bókun journey. Come back to this resource when you need a refresher or know someone who is starting their journey.

We’d love to know any feedback you have about this course and how we can make it better 💙