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8 Best Bike Tour Booking Software | Bókun 2024 Guide

Sam Jefferies • July 23rd, 2024

When comparing tour operator software, bike tour guides should look for a system that:

Lets them not only sell tours online but also grow their distribution network via OTAs and partnerships.
Supports the whole booking experience — all the way through checkout and payment.
Provides the flexibility to list tour experiences or bike rentals.
Offers inventory management to monitor equipment and an online waiver solution to manage paperwork before check-in.
Provides the option for guides to offer add-ons or tour packages so travellers can opt into more customised experiences.

We’ve compiled this list of popular bike tour booking software so you can compare all the top options in one place and find the right solution for your business.

Our guide kicks off with a review of our booking solution, Bókun, explaining how bike tour guides use our software to grow their business online, organise back-office operations, and provide customers with a smooth experience.

To explore our software, keep reading or start a free 14-day trial (no credit card required).

1. Bókun

Customisable, all-in-one tour operator software to support business operations & growth

Bókun is a Tripadvisor brand that’s been working with tour operators for over a decade, supporting small one- and two-person teams and multi-loc, international brands. Our network includes hundreds of bike tour guides and rental providers just like yourself.

Our platform steers online growth strategies to help teams at all stages achieve new milestones; it offers tools to:

Sell bike tours and rentals on your website and OTAs.
Establish partnerships with other businesses in the travel industry.
Design stunning listings for your products, create tour packages, and manage all pricing and availability.
Manage your booking calendar and automate back-office tasks (like sending customer tickets or waivers).
Provide the best customer experience from the time travellers book until they hang up their helmets.

Bókun grows with you — you can configure Bókun to support your strategies as you’re able to take more bookings and business. Teams just beginning to sell online can create a booking website and explore OTAs, and then users can add more sales channels, partners, and experiences as they go.

Our tour operator software is also one of the most cost-effective options — it’s affordable for small teams, and low booking fees mean pricing doesn’t pose problems as you scale.

We offer all of Bókun’s core features at one flat subscription cost of $49/month. We don’t charge to add extra products or connect additional sales channels.
Our booking fees are the lowest among competitors: 1.5% for online bookings from your site, OTAs, and partners. You can always manage offline bookings for free.
We waive Bókun booking fees on Viator reservations so you can keep costs low while exploring Viator’s online sales channels.

In the following sections, we’ll show how bike tour operators have used Bókun to sell online and increase bookings. (Remember, you can always explore our platform by starting a free trial.)

Create a Booking Website

If you don’t already have a website, you can make one quickly and easily through Bókun’s one-click website builder.

Select your favourite layout from our website template gallery.
Plug in the fields with your brand logos, colours, and imagery, and then add some background about your brand.
Choose your preferred website name, and we’ll cover the steps to secure the domain.

Then you’re live! The booking widget is automatically installed on your site, so you can receive direct bookings immediately, 24/7.

Here’s a 30-second demo of how Bókun websites work:

If you already have a website, you can easily install our booking widget so customers can reserve tours and rentals on your site.

You can also learn more about this step in our guides below:

Grow Your Online Reach via OTAs & Marketplace

Bike tour guides can grow their online presence with Bókun’s OTA connections and Marketplace.

Our site integrates with hundreds of OTAs — popular names like Viator, GetYourGuide, Trip.com, Expedia, and Klook, for example, and more industry-specific sites like Biketours.com and Eden Bike Tours (for bike tour operators). You can also connect to Google Things to do through Bókun.

Remember, we’re a preferred partner with Viator, so you can sell tours on Viator without Bókun booking fees.

Note: Viator users can also push products from their existing Viator profile over to Bókun, where they’re instantly displayed on your booking website. We’re also connectivity partners with GetYourGuide to simplify set-up on that channel.

You’ll want to list tours on big-name websites because they receive hundreds of millions of monthly visitors, but bike tour operators should also explore the channels more specific to their experiences because teams often see success on these sites.

In addition to our OTA connections, Bókun Marketplace is home to thousands of travel industry partners, including hotel chains, resorts, attractions like theme parks and museums, travel agents, and other tour and rental providers.

This opens opportunities to:

Partner with resellers who will promote your tours or rentals and fill your calendar.
Resell others’ tours and services and receive a commission on every booking you make.
Offer tour or travel packages with partners — this lets you broaden your product line and gives you a competitive edge by offering experiences that others nearby don’t.

For example, bikers on the road all day probably look forward to heading out for food and drinks afterward (you gotta refuel!) — so why not incorporate that into your experience?

You could partner with a nearby food tour guide and blend experiences so you bike to where the food tour begins or between different foodie pit stops. Or, say you only provide bike rentals and not tours; you could work with the food tour guide to provide the bikes and helmets for the experience.

Aside from partnering with other tour operators, you could also connect with hotels or resorts to offer out-of-town travellers lodging with their bike tours.

There are plenty of ways to get creative here. Our network contains over 27K partners and supports over 150K contracts — with new contracts established daily!

Our system provides all the tools to manage sales channels and partners. You can add or remove sales channels anytime, see all partner contracts in a single area, and manage partner communications under Bókun’s roof.

Manage Experiences, Resources, Pricing & Availability

The Bókun Experiences tab provides all the tools to manage products, pricing, and availability. It’s extremely easy to use, and the product builder guides you through each step.

Product Builder

You can use this product builder to list bike tours or rentals. We’ll show you how.

First, start by choosing how people book with you — whether they:

Select a specific day and departure time.
Select just a specific day.
Buy a general pass to visit any time. (This option will be less relevant for bike tour guides and rental providers.)

If you offer bike tours, you’ll likely choose option #1 — travellers choose the day and departure time for the experience.

If you offer bike rentals, you may like option #1 or option #2. If you rent bikes for short stints (an hour or a couple of hours at a time), you can offer several departure times for travellers. If you offer options to rent bikes for the whole day, travellers can specify the day they want to rent.

Then, you fill out all of the details of your listing.

Provide a clear, descriptive, and catchy title. Travellers should be able to tell from the title if the experience is a guided tour or a bike rental.
Include a detailed description & itinerary — share details about the location or any pick-up or drop-off points.
Add high-quality photos & videos from past experiences to showcase your tours and bikes.
Inform travellers of anything they need to bring with them — say you don’t offer helmets or prefer customers bring their own; you can note that here.
Offer extras to enhance the experience — these optional add-ons can be anything from trail snacks to branded merchandise.

You can also create tour packages within your product line by combining experiences during set-up —after adding tour details, you specify if it’s a combo experience, then you can add the complementary experience and move into pricing and availability.

Pricing

We offer several options to price tours & rentals, and advanced tools to manage pricing.

You can:

Create one flat rate for your experience — this might be popular with a tour guide or rental provider offering all-day rentals.
Create pricing categories — tour guides may charge one rate for children, another for adults, and another for seniors or offer discounts to certain groups; rental providers may want to charge by the hour, by time slot, or by day.
Offer bulk discounts for customers who reserve multiple spots or rentals at once — this could attract families on vacation or groups of vacationers (think bachelor or bachelorette groups or teams travelling for corporate events).

Bókun also offers a dynamic pricing tool that automatically adjusts rates based on certain conditions. For example, you could create a rule to automatically discount tours and rentals during slow seasons or increase or decrease rates as you approach booking cutoff times.

Resources

You can assign and keep track of physical inventory for your bike tours and rental listings. Bókun’s resource management tool lets you specify the number of bikes you have available per experience — you can include specifications about bikes like the model name or colour — and make sure you have enough inventory to support bookings.

Availability

Finally, you can manage availability by product. Your tour and product availability auto-update across sales channels as you adjust your calendar and others make reservations. All travellers can see real-time availability, so you can avoid double bookings or overselling.

Bókun makes managing your calendar simple with availability rules — you choose:

Start and close out dates — if you offer guided experiences, you’d specify close and start dates for each one. If you offer rentals, you can keep these constant.
Days of week tours and rentals are offered — again, you might be more choosy here with guided experiences, but rentals you may keep open on most days.
Departure times — circling back to our example above, if you offer all-day rentals, you won’t need to specify multiple departure times. But if you provide guided experiences or rent bikes for shorter durations, you can add those time slots here.
Minimum and maximum number of participants — again, this will be less relevant for rental providers.
Booking cutoff times — also less relevant for rental providers.

Availability rules populate your calendar, and then you can adjust or change specific days.

Manage Back-Office Operations

Next up is our suite of tools to manage the booking process, your booking calendar, staff, customer communications, and other back-office tasks.

Integrations with Payment Gateways

Bókun connects with Stripe, PayPal, Raypd, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Worldpay, and even Klarna to give customers various payment options at checkout.

Customers can confirm their booking time and complete the checkout process all in one fell swoop — no waiting around for confirmation from your team (and you don’t have to field every booking request!).

Customer Portals

Our system automatically sends customers booking confirmations after they complete checkout (more on these automated emails below). Then, customers can access their booking portal to view all upcoming reservations and modify or cancel bookings. They don’t have to contact your team if they forget a detail or need to reschedule — your booking calendar automatically updates when customers modify or cancel reservations, so you’re in the loop.

Customisable Booking Calendar

Manage all reservations from a single dashboard — our calendar populates online bookings from your site, OTAs, and partners, and you can add offline bookings to this calendar to update availability.

This calendar gives you a bird’s-eye view of what’s ahead. You can assign tour guides directly from this view, and staff can see their schedule and details of the experiences they’re managing.

Mobile Apps for iOS & Android

Our apps let guides access the booking calendar from their mobile devices out in the field. They can see current tour details, such as who’s scheduled to arrive and last-minute cancellations, so they can manage no-shows and keep tours on schedule.

These apps also include a ticket-scanning feature, so tour guides can quickly check customers in and confirm arrival.

CRM & Automated Customer Communications

Bókun includes a CRM, so you don’t have to purchase this separately and integrate systems. It automatically captures all customer information and stores it when travellers contact or book with you. Then, this CRM lends to our automated communications tool.

As the name suggests, this tool can automatically send customer emails, so you don’t have to manage all of these yourself. We provide templates you can customise and schedule to send at set times or after specific actions. For example, you can automatically send:

Booking confirmations (and emails to confirm when customers reschedule or cancel)
Tickets (design these with QR or bar codes)
Upsells to push extras
Reminders before upcoming experiences
Thank you’s after experiences
Referral or review requests
Discount or promo codes
Email newsletters
Abandon cart and other retargeting emails

Reporting & Analytics

Bókun’s reporting dashboard lets you monitor bookings and revenue and analyse sales channel performance so you have valuable insights to guide decision-making.

For example, you can see:

How many bookings you receive over different time periods — the report is set to the current month, but you can adjust to pinpoint busier or slow seasons.
Details of bookings — you can learn more about your average customer and see what types of groups you attract (couples, corporate events, families, solo travellers, etc.).
Which experiences or bikes are booked most often — then you can learn about customer preferences and build out your product line with more of what customers want.
Which sales channels and partners bring the most bookings — then you know what to invest in more of.

This dashboard also lets you monitor incoming revenue and link with accounting systems to analyse cash flow in external reporting tools.

Bókun App Store

The Bókun app store includes a variety of add-ons (both free and paid), so you can customise Bókun to your business requirements.

Some of our additional features include:

Digital waiver solution
Adventure photos
Advanced reporting
Subvendor management
Portals for travel agents

We also offer integrations via Zapier so you can connect with other applications in your tech stack.

Offer the Best Customer Experience

Booking software makes travellers’ lives more convenient simply by allowing them to reserve and confirm tours online. They can book on your site or the travel sites they already know and use to research vacations and destinations.

If customers have to call to book — or send a contact form and wait to hear back — you risk losing them in the sales process to competitors who offer more convenient booking experience.

Bókun helps you offer the best customer experience by:

Automating important communications so customers receive these emails promptly and can easily access booking details and tickets from their mobile devices.
Giving customers the freedom to modify & cancel tours at their convenience (and from mobile devices).
Simplifying customer check-in — customers can complete waivers and save tickets before arrival, so they’re ready to hit the ground running when they arrive.

Customise Bókun As You Go

Remember, Bókun is highly scalable, so you can adjust it to meet current requirements as you grow.

Set up Bókun with the sales channels you’re interested in, and add or remove channels as you go.
Create partnerships and manage these with growth.
Update your website anytime with new brand elements, images, or colours.
Add to your product line and manage pricing and availability.
Supplement our core features with apps and integrations and adjust these as needed.

Getting Started

Our features and navigation are modern and user-friendly, so Bókun requires no formal training and has little to no learning curve — most tour operators can get started in a day.

We offer a free 14-day trial to test our platform and ensure it’s right for your business.
During your trial, you can build your website, add products, connect with Viator, and manage offline bookings.
After the trial ends, you can opt into the PRO subscription for $49/month.
You can easily select add-on modules through the Bókun app store.

Get started with your free trial here — no credit card required!

Alternative Online Booking Software for Bike Tour Operators & Rental Providers

In addition to Bókun’s tour operator software, you may also run into these names during your research:

Peek Pro
TripWorks
Rezgo
Beyonk & BookingHound
Rezdy
Origin
Roverd

You can also compare the top tour operator software here.

2. Peek Pro

Peek Pro is one of the more advanced booking platforms on the market, with dozens of features to support online growth strategies. In addition to expected tools like OTA integrations and a reseller network, Peek Pro has advanced marketing tools and even features to apply for business loans.

Bike tour guides may like Peek Pro because they offer real-time inventory management, digital waivers, and tools to track the condition of bikes and equipment between customer experiences. Peek Pro also has convenient tools for customers; they can select their bike from your inventory before arrival and check bikes in and out with mobile apps.

The catch with Peek Pro is pricing — many small businesses may find this option out of their budget, as users have reported expensive set-up costs and high booking fees.

Features

Online booking widgets
Customisable booking calendar
Product management
Connections with OTAs & channel management
Peek reseller network
Availability & staff management
Inventory management with real-time availability
Digital waivers
Mobile tickets & ticket scanning
Options to sell memberships, add-ons, bundles, gift cards & vouchers
Marketing tools, including customer retargeting
Dynamic pricing
Customer portals
Peek Capital (to apply for loans)
Native POS
Integrations with online payment processors — and options to collect security deposits or put holds on cards to prevent equipment damage or theft.
Reporting
Mobile apps

Pricing

Peek Pro doesn’t publicly share pricing, but reviews suggest it’s more expensive. Users note they charge variable booking fees (up to 6%).

Read more: Best Peek Pro alternatives: 2024 comparison guide

3. TripWorks

TripWorks is another online booking system that may appeal to larger, multi-loc, or international teams. This solution offers 30+ advanced tools to manage online sales, back-office operations, and customer experiences. The platform supports 135+ currencies for tour operators who do business in dozens of countries. It also offers custom enterprise plans to support specialised requirements.

TripWorks is popular for bike tour operators interested in digital marketing strategies to fuel growth. The platform lets you connect with social media sites, create and manage online advertising campaigns, and integrate with outside marketing tools.

However, this tool may be less popular with bike rental providers as it lacks features to manage inventory like bikes and helmets.

TripWorks is recommended for larger teams due to its pricing structure — it doesn’t charge subscription fees, but you must process at least $5K in credit card transactions every month (or $30K over six months), or you will be charged a $49 “inactivity fee” for not meeting the minimum.

Features

Online booking widgets
Reservation management
Connections with OTAs & channel management
Reseller network
Product management
Availability management
Marketing tools & integrations with marketing software
Dynamic pricing
Native POS
Integrations with Apple Pay & Google Pay
Options to sell gift cards & vouchers
Digital waivers
Reporting

Pricing

You can get started on the TripWorks platform for free: embed their booking engine on your site, build products, and connect with OTAs. You begin paying for the platform once you start accepting bookings and connect your payment information.

TripWorks offers a standard plan with access to all of its core features. Alternatively, you can request a custom enterprise package. TripWorks doesn’t share pricing for either plan on its site. However, its site states that all online bookings are subject to a 2.9% + 30¢ transaction fee.

4. Rezgo

Rezgo’s booking software is an advanced option for tour guides and rental providers of all sizes. The platform provides a robust feature set and is highly scalable, and the Rezgo team offers guided onboarding to support adoption. (Rezgo’s even received positive reviews from bike tour businesses.)

Negative reviews of the software mention limitations with OTA options, payment partners, customer portals, and mobile apps, but reviewers also note Rezgo’s team often implements feedback and can provide custom solutions for specialised needs. (That said, scalability may be limited here, or it may take time to see the features you’re looking for.)

That aside, a larger point to note about Rezgo is its high booking fees: they charge a 4.9% fee for all online bookings — which can quickly add up.

Features

Website builder
Online booking widgets (for WordPress sites)
Open API to develop custom online booking solutions
Customisable booking calendar
Connections with OTAs & channel management
Reseller network
Concierge services (to support concierge relationships)
Live & dynamic availability
Resource management to monitor equipment availability
Flexible pricing tools & multi currency features
Options to sell gift cards & merchandise
Integrations with popular payment gateways (e.g., Stripe & PayPal)
Native POS
Invoice management
Guest waivers
Fast check-in tools, like mobile tickets
Reporting

Pricing

Rezgo does not charge subscription fees but charges some of the highest booking fees:

4.9% for all online bookings
0.9% for POS bookings

They also offer custom plans for enterprises or teams managing a high volume of bookings.

5. Beyonk & BookingHound

We pair Beyonk and BookingHound here because they’re partner solutions sold by Beyonk. Beyonk is a UK-based brand that is most popular among tour operators and rental providers in Europe.

Beyonk is their “free” or “starter” software (you still pay booking fees), while BookingHound is the upgraded, paid option. BookingHound appeals more to those managing high-volume ticket sales or who want options to sell memberships.

Most bike tour operators find Beyonk to be better suited to their requirements.

Beyonk appeals to both tour operators and rental providers with tools to design tour listings and inventory management to keep track of equipment. It also has a variety of other advanced tools (a more comprehensive toolset) to manage all other areas of operations. You can sell online and access marketing tools to grow your online reach, manage walk-up reservations, and offer free events to grow your customer base.

However, Beyonk and BookingHound both charge high(er) booking fees — 4% for every online reservation. So, you may want to avoid these options if you offer multi-day or expensive experiences, as higher fees can impact pricing and booking conversions.

Features

Online booking widgets
Custom checkout workflows
Connections with OTAs & channel management
Reseller network
Inventory management to monitor equipment, facilities & staff
Tools to manage online or in-person payments
Options to cross-sell products & offer add-ons
Options to sell gift cards & issue discount codes
Dynamic pricing
Options to offer free events
Automated customer communications
Content management system
Affiliate codes
Reporting
Analytics from Meta & Google

Also available in Beyonk:

ePOS system
Staff & schedule management
Zapier integrations

Only available in BookingHound:

Online ticketing tools
Capacity management system & waitlisting tools
Options to sell memberships or season tickets
Options to sell merchandise
Customer self-service portals
Questionnaires
Abandoned cart retargeting

Pricing

Beyonk is available at no subscription cost — you’re subject to 4% booking fees in this plan (you can pay these or pass them to the customer).
BookingHound is available at $38/month. You also pay 4% booking fees in this plan, but opting for the subscription unlocks access to digital waivers and other advanced tools (listed above).
Beyonk also offers custom plans for enterprises.

6. Rezdy

Rezdy is a commonly known booking software brand because it works with tour operators around the globe and has merged with Checkfront and Regiondo, other tour operator software.

The brand offers packages and custom solutions to support businesses of all sizes, and its platform rates highly for ease of use, so most can get started without lengthy training or set-up times.

The sticking point with Rezdy is pricing — you pay expensive subscription costs in addition to booking fees. Rezdy’s fees are lower than other options (like Peek Pro, Rezgo, and Beyonk above), but when you combine these with monthly subscription costs, this solution tends to be on the pricier side.

It’s also worth noting that Rezdy might not be as appealing to rental providers because it doesn’t offer inventory management for bikes and other equipment.

Features

One-click website builder
Online booking widgets
Connections with OTAs & channel management
Product management
Availability management
Reseller network
Integrations with payment processors (Stripe, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, etc.)
RezdyPay (Rezdy’s native POS)
CRM
Automated customer communications
Reporting

Pricing

Rezdy offers three packages:

Foundation ($49/month): This is the most basic plan, featuring tools to sell online and create partnerships. You pay a 2% fee on all online bookings and a $1 fee for offline or agent bookings in this plan.
Accelerate ($99/month): This plan includes everything in the Foundation package, plus tools to create tour packages and drive new revenue. You pay a 1.9% fee for online bookings and a $0.85 fee for offline or agent bookings in this plan.
Expansion ($249/month): The most advanced plan grants access to custom integrations and webhooks. You pay a 1.75% fee for all online bookings and a $0.70 fee for offline or agent bookings in this plan.

Rezdy also offers a free 21-day trial to test the platform.

7. Origin

Origin is very basic booking software for small teams that merely want to sell tours from their website and manage reservations. They market their solution to bike tour operators, rental providers, and other adventure or excursion tour businesses.

Their solution lets you manage bookings, staff, and inventory; automate customer communications and provide smooth check-in experiences; and improve booking conversions. However, it lacks OTA connections and a reseller network, so it doesn’t support growth or help you drive new business. They also charge high booking fees (5%).

Features

Online booking widgets
Product management
Availability & staff management
Inventory management
Automated customer communications
Digital waivers
Payment processing via Stripe
Integrations & Zapier API
Mobile apps (for iOS & Android)
Reporting

Origin also offers free onboarding and support services.

Pricing

Origin does not charge subscription fees; instead, it charges a 5% booking fee for all online reservations (you can cover these fees or pass them on to the customer).

It also charges a 2.9% + 30¢ transaction fee for online payments through Stripe.

8. Roverd

The last option on our list, Roverd, is a more simplistic booking management software that might appeal to smaller teams. Roverd offers essential functionality to sell online, connect with OTAs, and grow your distribution network via partnerships. It also has convenient tools like inventory management to monitor available equipment and staff.

The only note with Roverd is that there isn’t much customer feedback about their solution — software review sites don’t list the solution, and Roverd doesn’t share reviews or customer feedback on its site. They also don’t share pricing. However, we include them on our list because they market their solution to bike tour providers, and you may see them during your search.

If you’re considering Roverd, you can request a demo with their team to ask more about their platform and pricing.

Features

Online booking widgets
Product management (with options to sell multi-day experiences & offer group rates)
Connections with OTAs & channel management
Reseller network
Advanced scheduling & availability management
Inventory management (to keep track of available bikes & staff members)
Reservation management (with options for customers to reserve spots before confirming and paying)
Integrations with major payment processors (e.g., Stripe & PayPal)
Cancellation & refund management
CRM & automated customer communications
Reporting

Pricing

Roverd doesn’t share pricing online; you must contact their customer experience team for more information.

To explore Bókun’s booking software, start your free 14-day trial today.

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