Walking tour guides have a few key considerations when evaluating booking management software. They need a system that provides:
- Simple booking methods for customers — guests should be able to book directly from your website (on desktop or mobile) and choose a convenient online payment method.
- Options to sell tours across multiple channels — not just your website, but also online travel agencies, partners, and affiliates. This helps customers discover your tours wherever they already plan their trips and lets you reach a wider audience.
- A centralised booking calendar that aggregates reservations from every channel, supports last-minute or in-person bookings, and shows real-time availability to keep everything up to date.
- Upselling tools to create combo packages, add-ons, and dynamic pricing that increases revenue per booking.
- Convenient check-in tools to scan tickets, manage manifests, handle departures, and keep tours running on schedule.
- User-friendly back-office tools for assigning staff, managing schedules, and automating communications like booking confirmations, mobile tickets, review requests, and marketing emails.
Beyond features, walking tour guides should consider ease of use and the cost. Ease of use is pretty self-explanatory, but cost is trickier.
Pricing models vary widely, with different combinations of subscription fees, booking fees, and transaction fees — so reading the fine print matters.
That’s exactly why we created this guide: to simplify your search for the best booking software for walking tour operators. We break down each system’s key features, pricing, and standout details so you can find the best fit for your needs.
Best Booking Software for Walking Tours
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1. Bókun
All-in-one tour operator software for small & scaling walking tour guides
We designed Bókun with every tool tour guides need to manage operations and drive sustainable growth. Our all-in-one tour operator software checks all of the boxes above with:
- Online booking widgets and website builders to create a bookable site
- Channel management and integrations with 50+ global OTAs
- The industry’s largest in-built partner marketplace — over 27k travel industry businesses — to expand your distribution network
- Referral tracking to earn bookings from affiliates
- A centralised booking calendar with real-time availability
- Robust product and resource management tools to build professional listings, create tour packages, and offer add-ons with experiences
- A native CRM to organise contacts, automate emails, and power retargeting campaigns
- Self-service customer portals for easy booking management
- Mobile tickets and ticket-scanning tools via Bókun’s mobile apps
- Back-office tools to manage staff schedules, keep teams aligned, and report on performance
Our system is part of the Tripadvisor and Viator software family — all three platforms work together to help you get discovered by global audiences, strengthen your online presence, and drive new bookings. We also offer exclusive partnerships and integrations with GetYourGuide, Google Things to do, and Airbnb, giving our customers valuable perks when selling walking tours on these channels.
Bókun is one of the most highly-rated solutions on review sites like G2 and Capterra — with an exceptional 4.7-star rating — for our comprehensive toolkit, ease of use and setup, helpful customer service, and value for money.
While users love our feature set, they stay because of our pricing philosophy: powerful tools shouldn’t require premium budgets. We built Bókun to be accessible for all tour operators, especially smaller teams that need to accelerate growth without high fees eating into every booking.
That’s why we pack all of our core features into our START plan for only $49/month, and we offer the industry’s lowest booking fees at 1.5%. Anyone can get started, grow at their own pace, and scale without penalty. Bókun evolves with you.
In the following sections, we’ll review our core features so you can get a sneak peek at what Bókun offers. We also provide a 14-day risk-free trial so you can test the platform before committing.
Bókun’s tools to create a booking website
Bókun provides flexible tools to enable direct online bookings — from an existing site or a brand new one.
Our online booking engine widgets work with almost any website builder, and we offer multiple styles — Book Now buttons, calendar views, product lists, and product overviews — so you can embed them across your site and give customers a variety of ways to start the booking process.
For teams who still need a website or want to design a new one, Bókun includes a native website builder. You can choose from several templates, and our user-friendly drag-and-drop editing tools let you design a professional website in just a few hours.
Our sites are desktop- and mobile-friendly by default, and they already include booking widgets throughout (though you can customise these and add more).
Read more: How to create a booking website
We also provide a variety of advanced website tools so you can truly make the site your own. You can add custom CSS, create new pages, publish blog posts, and build out deeper optimisation strategies. (For more best-practice tips, check out our post on tour operator SEO.)
To offer even more savings, we also cover the cost of securing your website domain and publishing your site online.
You can read more about driving direct bookings in our guides below:
- 8 ways to increase direct website bookings
- How to add a booking system to your website
- Best tour booking plugins for WordPress
Bókun’s tools to simplify online payments
Bókun lets you serve customers worldwide by integrating with dozens of online payment processing tools, so everyone can find an option available in their region and complete checkout with ease.
Our site connects with:
- Apple Pay
- Google Pay
- PayPal
- Stripe
- Worldpay
- Braintree
- Rapyd
- Klarna
- And more
You can pick and choose the providers you wish to connect with and offer multiple checkout options so customers can pick what works best for them.
Bókun’s growth drivers: OTA connections, Marketplace & Referral Tracking
To help you reach audiences worldwide, Bókun offers a wide range of growth drivers designed to expand your customer base and increase tour bookings.
For starters, Bókun provides extensive OTA integrations, letting you sell walking tours on the platforms travellers already use to research holiday destinations: Viator, GetYourGuide, Google Things to do, Airbnb, Expedia, Headout, Hotelbeds, TourRadar, Trip.com, Klook, Civitatis, Tiqets, and many more.
We also integrate with niche and region-specific OTAs, so you can list your tours on sites tailored to your location or activity type. This helps you reach more targeted audiences — people already interested in your services or planning travel to your area.
We don’t limit the number of OTAs you can integrate; you can add or remove sales channels anytime through the Sales Tools tab.
Next, our Marketplace lets you form partnerships with other businesses in the travel and tourism industry. You can find partners to resell your walking tours or resell others’ experiences for a commission. Our platform even includes tools to create packages with partners.
The Marketplace includes such a wide variety of businesses that every tour operator can find partners that complement their offerings. You’ll find travel agents, destination management companies, transportation services, accommodation providers (hotels, resorts, B&Bs), attractions, educational institutions, and other tour and activity providers like yourself. You’re automatically added to the network when you join Bókun.
We’ve also built Bókun with partner and contract management tools to facilitate these connections. You can manage outreach and contract negotiations within our system.
Bókun centralises all communications and contracts in one hub so you can keep an eye on your active partnerships. Our system even sends renewal notifications so you can renew, renegotiate, or end contracts and continually refine your distribution network.
Lastly, Bókun’s Referral Tracking lets you form partnerships outside of the Bókun Marketplace and work with affiliates who can earn tour bookings on your behalf. You can partner with virtually any business or professional — travel bloggers, social media influencers, tourism boards, DMCs, travel agencies, nearby businesses, and more. We provide all the tools to add affiliates to your network, set commission rates, and track performance.
Learn how Bókun customers use these growth drivers to level up in our case studies below:
- How Venice Tours achieved a 400% revenue increase through the Bókun Marketplace
- How Tour Marbella pulls 54% of their bookings via Bókun Marketplace connections
- How Mega Zipline Iceland adds sales channels and revenue streams with 100+ Marketplace contracts
Bókun’s booking calendar & real-time availability management
The Bókun booking calendar lets you manage all walking tour reservations in one place and get a bird’s-eye view of your schedule. It pulls in bookings from your website, OTAs, partners, and affiliates and automatically updates availability across all connected channels as you earn new bookings.
The booking calendar is super intuitive and easy to use. You can:
- See all bookings in a unified view
- Modify bookings
- Update availability on the fly
- Close out specific dates or tour times
- Assign guides to tours
This calendar serves as the source of truth, so any changes made here are automatically reflected across all connected calendars and sites.
Bókun’s Experience module: product, resource & pricing management
The Experiences module houses all the tools you need to manage your walking tours and design stunning listings. Best of all, the product builder walks you through the process step-by-step, so it’s easy.
In the screenshot above, you can see all the fields you’ll complete when creating a walking tour listing. You’ll set the duration, add pick-up or drop-off locations, build a detailed itinerary and description, upload images and videos from past tours, add “what to bring” details for day-of experiences, and more.
You can also link Tripadvisor to automatically feed your reviews onto your website.
Our system lets you offer add-ons for each experience: merchandise, food and beverages, souvenir photo packages, whatever you like!
You can even create combo packages to offer customers more comprehensive experiences. Just select the products you want to bundle, then choose “Create combo package.”
Then, our system walks you through managing the fine details of experiences, you’ll:
- Create availability rules — select the days and times tours are available, add booking cutoffs, and specify minimum and maximum capacities.
- Add pricing — create pricing categories, add rates for private tours, or enable bulk discounts.
- Set dynamic pricing rules — let Bókun optimise tour rates by increasing or decreasing pricing based on predefined conditions. For example, you can tell Bókun to offer discounts during slow seasons or for those who book early, or increase pricing as you’re nearing tour capacities or when tours are booking out quickly.
- Add required resources per experience — specify any vehicles, equipment, or staff you need to run your tours. This works in tandem with our availability management to ensure you have all of the stops in place to run your walking tours.
- Specify resource allocation rules — optimise resource utilisation by determining how resources are allocated. Our system supports a variety of rules — not used, manual, shared (round robin), shared (orderly), sticky, and private — and lets you combine rules.
Bókun’s CRM & customer management tools
Bókun’s CRM comes in handy to manage customer communications and ensure you never miss an email.
It works by collecting all customer information (such as names, email addresses, and phone numbers) when they contact you or begin the booking process. It automatically saves all customers in an organised contact book for you. It even keeps a log of their booking history, so you can see which walking tours they have reserved.
When customers book, the system dispatches booking confirmations, mobile tickets, reminders before tours, and follow-ups to all attendees. This ensures that bookings are confirmed and everyone has what they need for day-of experiences, without you having to send a dozen and one emails manually.
We take things a step further with email templates that support all of your email marketing campaigns. You can customise and schedule abandoned cart recoveries, review requests, discounts, product announcements, and more. You can also save additional templates in our system to power all email campaigns.
Read more: What’s the best CRM for tour operators?
Bókun also offers several tools to improve the customer experience, including:
- Self-service portals where travellers can view, modify, or cancel bookings with ease. If anything changes, Bókun automatically updates your calendar and sends a new confirmation email.
- Mobile apps for guides to manage departures. They can access manifests, see who’s scheduled to arrive, check customers in, and monitor no-shows.
- Ticket scanning to streamline check-in. Guides can set up multiple check-in points and quickly scan tickets to confirm arrivals.
Bókun’s back-office tools to automate admin work
Now, we’ve already covered staff scheduling, the CRM, and email automation, but Bókun also gives you another powerful operational tool: business intelligence reporting.
Our reporting suite lets you analyse performance across any timeframe — weeks, months, quarters, or years — and break down bookings by sales channel, partner, affiliate, or product.
Want to know which OTAs drive the most revenue? Which tours sell out fastest? When to staff up for peak season? The answers are all right there.
You can also dig into customer demographics to understand who’s booking with you — families, solo travellers, couples, or groups — so you can tailor your offerings and marketing accordingly.
All of this data helps guide your growth strategies and identify areas for improvement.
You can see which OTAs or tours bring in the most bookings and focus your energy there — add more time slots, promote those experiences more heavily, whatever makes sense. Notice you’re getting mostly groups rather than solo travellers? Offer group discounts or adjust your marketing to lean into it.
And when something isn’t performing, the data helps you figure out why. Maybe certain OTAs just don’t reach your target customers. Maybe reviews are highlighting issues you can fix. Either way, you’re making decisions based on real information instead of guesswork.
Bókun packages & pricing
All of the features discussed above are included in our START plan for $49/month with 1.5% booking fees. We waive Bókun booking fees on Viator reservations, and we never charge for adding offline bookings to the system.
We also offer solutions to support you as you scale:
- The Bókun App Store, where you can access additional modules and integrations to extend your core toolkit.
- The PLUS plan, which includes everything in START plus agent portals.
- The PREMIUM plan, which unlocks subvendor management.
Both PLUS and PREMIUM plans include dedicated onboarding and a yearly strategy call with a Bókun expert to ensure the system is optimised for your current growth goals.
Ready to give Bókun a test run? Start your 14-day free trial.
2. Rezgo
Rezgo is a popular online booking system brand that serves a variety of industries and professionals, including tour and activity operators. Its tour operator software includes the whole gamut of features to manage operations and drive growth, from tools to enable direct website bookings to reseller networks and upselling tools. It also boasts a unique feature that lets you partner with concierge services and earn bookings through those professionals’ clientele.
Rezgo earns a stellar 4.7-star rating, with users consistently calling out its ease of use and helpful customer support team. It is most popular among small and mid-sized businesses that need a simple solution to transition to online booking software. It’s also a go-to for teams that require an in-built digital waiver solution since Rezgo includes this in its core offerings.
While Rezgo packs in a variety of tools to support tour operators, reviews suggest it’s limited in several areas. For example, users note the online booking widget only works with WordPress; if your site is hosted through another platform, you’ll need to switch and design a new site with Rezgo’s website builder. Reviewers also say that they wish Rezgo integrated with more OTAs and online payment processing tools, suggesting limitations in those areas.
Overall, Rezgo is a nice starter solution for walking tour operators, but reviews seem to indicate that growing teams need a more built-out system.
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 charges a 4.9% booking fee for online reservations and a 0.9% fee for POS bookings.
Read more: Best Rezgo alternatives
3. Beyonk
Beyonk is a popular tour booking system for UK-based teams. The platform earns an impressive 4.9-star rating on review sites, and it includes just about everything tour operators need to run a well-oiled operation.
Users appreciate Beyonk’s many growth drivers: OTA connections, an in-built reseller marketplace, affiliate codes, upselling tools, dynamic pricing, and marketing integrations. It also provides tour operators with the option to host free events, which is particularly appealing to smaller teams looking to attract more potential customers.
Reviewers suggest the platform is easy to learn and set up (as Beyonk earns 4.8 stars for ease of use), and it supports teams both big and small. However, some reviews suggest an initial learning curve, saying it can be hard to build products or set up certain integrations. They also note that Beyonk doesn’t sync with Viator, which can be a major drawback for teams looking to sell tours there.
We should also note that Beyonk is the sister brand of BookingHound — an online booking system for larger teams managing high-volume ticket sales. This solution offers a few more advanced tools than Beyonk (capacity management, waitlisting, options to sell memberships and merchandise, and abandoned cart retargeting). You may consider upgrading to BookingHound as you scale.
Read more Beyonk reviews here & BookingHound reviews here.
Features
- Online booking widget
- Custom checkout workflows
- Channel management & OTA connections
- Reseller marketplace
- 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 (CMS)
- Affiliate codes
- Reporting
- Analytics tools from Meta and 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 charges a 4% booking fee for each reservation. Tour operators can cover this or pass it to travellers. There are no subscription fees here.
BookingHound charges $38/month and 4% booking fees.
Read more: Best Beyonk & BookingHound alternatives comparison guide
4. TripWorks
TripWorks is a popular tour booking software for fast-growing and larger teams. It offers numerous tools to organise and streamline operations, and packs in impressive growth drivers to help push continued growth.
TripWorks also earns a glowing 4.9-star rating; users say the platform is packed with helpful features and is user-friendly, with a modern look and feel. They also say customer service responds quickly if you ever have questions or need help with the system.
One notable downside here is that TripWorks only integrates with three online payment processors: Stripe, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. So, tour companies serving global customers may not be able to provide convenient checkout options for all travellers.
The bigger consideration is TripWorks’ fee structure. They charge 6% online booking fees plus a 2.9% + 30¢ transaction fee per booking — that’s nearly 9% off the top of every sale. For operators running higher-priced tours, those fees add up fast and can seriously eat into margins.
Find more TripWorks reviews here.
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
TripWorks charges a 6% online booking fee; tour operators can choose to cover this or pass it on to travellers at checkout. TripWorks also charges a 2.9% + 30¢ transaction fee per booking.
Read more: Best alternative to Tripworks comparison guide
5. Peek Pro
Next on our list is Peek Pro — a highly advanced tour operator software with a multitude of tools to support scalability. Peek packs in OTAs, a reseller network, marketing tools, multi-currency support, and options to sell memberships, bundles, and add-ons. It also offers Peek Capital, a network that helps tour operators secure business financing through Peek’s VC partners.
Peek is often featured in tour operator software reviews because it’s a top-rated system (4.7 stars), with users loving its ease of use, intuitive user experience, and robust functionality.
But dig into those reviews and you’ll find they’re all over the map. While some operators have great experiences, others report serious issues: steep learning curves, system glitches that cause website downtime, unresponsive customer support, and — most concerning — complaints about Peek withholding funds with no clear timeline for payout.
On top of the mixed reliability, Peek charges some of the highest booking fees in the industry, ranging from 6% to 8%. Between the risk factors and the premium pricing, it’s worth doing your homework before committing to this booking platform.
Check out more Peek Pro reviews here.
Features
- Online booking widgets
- Customisable booking calendar
- Reservation management
- Integrations with OTAs & channel management tools
- Availability & staff management
- Options to sell memberships, add-ons, bundles, gift cards & vouchers
- Marketing tools (including customer retargeting)
- Dynamic pricing
- Fast check-in features, including digital waivers, Kiosk mode & ticket scanning
- Customer portals
- Peek reseller network
- Peek Capital (to apply for loans)
- Inventory management
- Native POS
- Multi-currency support
- Integrations with online payment processors
- Reporting
- Mobile apps
Pricing
Peek Pro charges variable booking fees of up to 6% and 8%.
Read more: Best Peek Pro alternatives comparison guide
6. FareHarbor
FareHarbor is a well-known, long-standing name in the tour operator software space, as a Booking.com brand with over a decade of experience working with tour businesses of all sizes. We include FareHarbor on our list because you’ll definitely run into it when comparing walking tour booking software — but it’s not one of our top recommendations because it can be pretty expensive to make full use of the platform.
FareHarbor offers all of the features you’d expect from a high-quality tour operator software: tools to enable online bookings, sell tours across platforms, and manage back-office operations. However, not everything under its hood is free to use. For example:
- FareHarbor takes a 20% commission for any booking you earn through its distribution network.
- They charge $5k (or $499/month) for their website-building service, and they never hand over ownership of your site. If you decide to leave FareHarbor, you must forfeit that investment.
- They charge $5k or $2k annually (depending on the package) to use their website SEO services.
In addition, FareHarbor charges high booking fees — variable, up to 6% and 8%. Variable fees are unpredictable and can change from booking to booking without a clear explanation. Reviews consistently mention fees landing on the higher end, regardless of what’s being booked.
All in all, FareHarbor doesn’t offer great value for money. It used to be a beloved system, but now they nickel-and-dime you.
Features
- Website-building services — FareHarbor charges an extra fee for this service
- Online booking widget
- Customisable booking calendar
- Connections with OTAs & channel management
- Distribution network (FHDN)
- Product management
- Availability management
- Staff management
- Native POS
- Integrations with Stripe
- Customer portals
- Fast check-in features & online waiver tools
- Options to sell memberships
- Reporting
- Mobile apps
Pricing
FareHarbor charges travellers a variable booking fee (as high as 8%) at checkout.
Read more:
- Best FareHarbor alternatives comparison guide
- Bókun vs. FareHarbor vs. Peek Pro
- Bókun vs. FareHarbor vs. Rezdy
7. Checkfront
Checkfront is another top-rated tour operator software because it supports all team sizes and offers 100+ features to manage and grow your business. It was one of the first names in the tour operator software industry — founded in 2010 — and provides 15 years of experience helping teams sustainably scale.
Users rate Checkfront a solid 4.5 stars for its ease of use, vast toolkit, and helpful customer support. Reviewers also like Checkfront for its flexibility — it offers 50+ integrations and an API so you can connect with virtually any outside system. So while it doesn’t include an in-built CRM, it easily integrates with popular tools like HubSpot and Zoho.
However, as you may expect with a software so comprehensive, there is an initial learning curve, and some users say the feature overload can be distracting, as they’re working around tools they don’t need.
The only note with Checkfront is that it’s a little more expensive than competitors. While booking fees aren’t outrageous (only 3% online booking fees), it charges a $99/month subscription fee. That pricing structure makes it more popular with mid-size and larger teams, while smaller operators often find more affordable options elsewhere.
Features
While we can’t list all of Checkfront’s 100 features, these are the most notable ones:
- Website builder
- Online booking engine widgets
- Centralised booking calendar
- Availability management
- Channel management & OTA connections
- Partner network
- Product management
- Resource management
- Upselling tools, including options to sell add-ons & bundle products
- Custom form builders and waivers to send to customers before their tours
- Mobile tickets & ticket scanning
- Marketing tools, including customer booking map, customer outreach & ROI tracking
- Integrations with a variety of online payment processors (Stripe, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay)
- POS integrations & invoicing tools
- 50+ integrations & Checkfront API to create custom integrations
- Reporting
- Pricing
Checkfront charges a $99/month subscription fee and 3% booking fees. You can either cover the booking fees or pass them along to customers.
Read more: Best Checkfront alternatives comparison guide
8. Rezdy
The last option on our list, Rezdy, is another pricier choice. Checkfront recently acquired the brand, so expect similar pricing to what we mentioned above. We’re including them here because they’re a global name you’ll likely run into while comparison shopping.
Rezdy’s reservation system includes a comprehensive toolkit: website builders for teams who still need to bring business online, growth drivers to expand your reach globally, and customer experience features to help you earn more five-star reviews.
Users give Rezdy a solid 4.5-star rating for its robust functionality and ease of use. However, some users note it takes time to get comfortable with the platform, and customer service response times aren’t always quick.
Our main hesitation with Rezdy is its pricing — it doesn’t offer great value for money. To access all the features you’d actually need to run and grow your business, you’ll need the mid-tier plan at $99/month plus 3% booking fees. You can get more bang for your buck with other solutions on this list (like Bókun!).
Features
- One-click website builder
- Online booking engine
- Reservation management
- Live availability
- Connections with OTAs & channel management
- Reseller network
- Product management
- Upselling tools
- Automated customer communications
- Check-in tools like mobile tickets & ticket scanning
- RezdyPay — Rezdy’s native payment gateway — and integrations with solutions like Stripe, PayPal, Google & Apple Pay
- Integrations & API
- Reporting
- Mobile apps
Pricing
Rezdy offers a 21-day free trial and three paid plans:
- Foundation ($49/month and 3% online booking fees): This starter plan includes basic feature access (online booking widgets, guest manifests, mobile apps).
- Accelerate ($99/month and 3% online booking fees): This is Rezdy’s recommended plan because it unlocks access to more advanced tools and integrations.
- Expansion ($249/month and 3% online booking fees): The enterprise package grants access to Rezdy’s API and webhooks — for teams that need more advanced customisation options.
Rezdy also provides custom enterprise packages for larger organisations with more advanced requirements.
Read more: Best Rezdy alternatives comparison guide
Getting Started with Bókun
Now that you know what’s out there, let’s bring it back to what matters: finding a system that covers all the essentials and makes life easier for both you and your customers — without breaking the bank.
The right booking software should give your customers simple ways to book and pay, let you sell tours across multiple channels, keep everything organised in one calendar, help you upsell and increase revenue, provide smooth check-in tools, and automate your back-office work.
Bókun delivers on all of these.
We’ve built our platform to cover all areas of your operations and give you multiple avenues to accelerate growth. And we strive to make our solution accessible for teams of all sizes with user-friendly features and simple, straightforward pricing — $49/month with 1.5% online booking fees. Whether you’re just starting or scaling up, Bókun grows with you.
See how Bókun can transform your operations today by starting our 14-day free trial.