There are three common ways to add a tour booking system to your website:

1. Install a booking engine plugin or app from your website builder.

While this might seem like the simplest solution, booking plugins are pretty limited. They enable customers to make reservations on your website but lack back-end management tools, typically providing only a basic calendar to view bookings. They make booking easier for customers but do nothing to help you manage bookings or run your business efficiently.

2. Embed a dedicated booking software widget or use an API to connect your booking platform to your site.

This is the most popular and recommended choice because true booking software, like Bókun, supports both customer bookings and business operations. Many of these platforms also offer advanced features to explore online distribution channels, including OTA integrations and partner networks, which help win new bookings, grow your customer base, and add new revenue streams.

3. Code a custom solution.

This requires an experienced developer fluent in HTML, but it provides complete control over the functionality, design, and user experience. It’s the most challenging route, but could be the best option if you have very specific requirements.

Note: This option lacks booking management tools unless you create a complementary system.

This guide explores #2 in more detail, as dedicated tour booking software delivers immediate benefits and long-term success. It’s more than just a way to enable website bookings — it’s complete operations management for your tour company, turning website visitors into customers while streamlining back-office processes.

Our guide covers:

Bókun is a leading tour operator software solution with modules to manage your entire operations — from bookings and availability to staff, resources, and customer experiences.

Users love Bókun — rating us 4.7 stars on review sites like Capterra — because we offer:

  • User-friendly online booking engine widgets compatible with all major website builders (WordPress, Squarespace, Wix).
  • Premium integrations & partnerships — we’re a Tripadvisor brand, Viator Preferred Partner, and offer exclusive perks when selling on GetYourGuide, Google Things to do, and Airbnb.
  • The industry’s largest in-built distribution network — The Bókun Marketplace — with 27k+ travel industry partners.
  • Referral Tracking to expand partnerships outside of the Bókun network and earn bookings through affiliates.

Try our all-in-one solution by starting your 14-day free trial.

3 steps to add an online booking engine widget to your website

Adding a booking widget to your site only takes a few minutes with these simple steps.

In Bókun, you’ll start by navigating to the “Sales Tools” tab.

These steps should be pretty consistent across tour operator software platforms, but you may encounter some slight variance.

1. Choose your preferred widget style

You can select from several widget styles:

  • A simple Book Now button
  • A calendar view for travellers to browse products and availability
  • A product list to showcase multiple offerings
  • Dedicated product pages for detailed individual experiences
Note: Bókun also lets you create gift card widgets and sell digital gift cards customers can redeem for your experiences.

2. Generate your embeddable code

There are two parts to this embeddable code:

  • A JavaScript loader script (that powers the widget functionality)
  • The actual widget container (that displays the booking interface on your page)

Both parts work together to create the complete booking experience.

3. Copy + paste the embeddable on your website

  • Add the JavaScript to the head section of your website.

Paste the JavaScript loader script between the <head></head> tags of your website. This ensures the widget functions properly across all pages and maintains shopping cart visibility as customers navigate your site.

The key benefit of this setup is that you only need to add the script to your head section once, and it will support multiple booking widgets throughout your entire website.

  • Place the widget container where you want the booking engine to appear.

Insert the widget container code (the <div> element) at the exact location on your webpage where you want the booking interface to display. This could be on your homepage, product pages, or dedicated booking pages.

And voilà! You’re up and running with a professional booking site ✔️

You can read more about the steps here, or watch our quick tutorial below:

The best tour operator software with simple online booking engine widgets

Tour operator software (like Bókun) acts as your central command centre, connecting every aspect of your business and providing complete visibility into day-to-day operations.

Centralising key functionalities like booking, customer, and resource management helps tour operators:

  • Save time on manual admin tasks — freeing up hours that can be better spent creating experiences, connecting with partners, or expanding offerings.
  • Prevent errors like double bookings by automatically syncing all connected calendars and sales channels.
  • Keep team members aligned, whether they’re in the office or leading tours, with a central system that everyone can access.
  • Deliver a seamless booking experience to customers by providing accurate availability, instant confirmations, and timely updates.
  • Reduce software costs by consolidating multiple tools into a single platform that handles everything.
  • Make more strategic business decisions with all your booking, customer, and operational data in one place.
  • Unlock growth opportunities with built-in tools for partnering with resellers, exploring new sales channels, and optimising offerings.

Any high-quality tour operator software offers online booking engine widgets as a standard feature. Instead of going into details on all the top-rated brands here, we’ve created separate guides for you to compare.

These guides provide an overview of the background, features, and pricing of each brand, enabling you to easily narrow down the options that best suit your business. Continue reading below:

Speaking of comparing options, here’s what makes Bókun different…

Bókun’s tour operator software toolkit

We’ve built Bókun to handle every aspect of running a successful tour business. Our all-in-one platform gives you user-friendly tools to:

  • Sell tours online — on your website, OTAs, partner sites, and affiliates — and expand your reach.
  • Automate booking management tasks.
  • Manage your travel experiences and fine-tune your offerings.
  • Coordinate staff, resources, and operations.
  • Offer five-star customer experiences from the very first touchpoint.
  • Track daily operations and measure business performance with built-in analytics.

Our current toolkit includes:

  • Features to sell tours directly from your website — including online booking engine widgets and integrations with dozens of online payment gateways (Stripe, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, etc.) to offer customers secure checkout options. Bókun even includes a one-click website builder for teams who still need to create their own website or want to start from scratch. Your Bókun subscription includes all website costs (such as domain name registration), advanced customisation options, and SEO tools.
  • Advanced booking management — featuring a central booking calendar and automated availability updates to aggregate bookings from all connected sales channels and maintain accurate, real-time availability across calendars.

Booking Calendar GIF

  • Channel management — this includes out-of-the-box connections with countless global OTAs like Viator, GetYourGuide, Headout, Trip.com, Civitatis, Hotelbeds, BeMyGuest, Tiqets, TourRadar, Expedia, and more. Add or remove sales channels at any time with just a few clicks.
  • Referral Tracking — with flexible options to extend partnerships and work with any business or professional you connect with, from local partners in your area to social media travel influencers. The opportunities are endless.

Online Travel Agencies GIF

  • Product management — with a guided product builder to create stunning, professional tour listings. Our product builder shows you the details to include and walks you through the steps to create availability rules, set pricing, and assign resources.
  • Resource management — with user-friendly tools to specify resource requirements per product and allocation rules. Bókun even lets you combine allocation rules — shared (round robin), shared (orderly), sticky, and private — to optimise resource utilisation.

Give your experience a short but descriptive name

  • Comprehensive customer management, supporting both business owners and customers:
    • On the business owner side, Bókun includes a complete CRM to capture customer details, automated communications to dispatch booking confirmations and customer emails, and templates to power retargeting initiatives.
    • For customers, Bókun provides convenient self-service portals where they can view, reschedule, or cancel bookings instantly — without phone calls or emails to your team. Bókun sends notifications to both business owners and travellers to confirm modifications or cancellations.
  • Check-in tools: Includes tour manifests, mobile tickets, and ticket scanning, so guides can quickly check guests in upon arrival, avoid delays or long lines, and track no-shows.
  • Business intelligence reporting:Includes reports to track bookings, revenue, sales performance, product popularity, and more.

Bókun Reports: Experience Sales

  • Mobile apps (for iOS and Android) to access Bókun on the go, from any device.

You can also purchase supplemental modules — like tip management, SMS messaging, or more advanced analytics tools — in the Bókun App Store.

Below is a brief introduction to Bókun:

See how other Bókun users leverage our platform in the case studies below:

Getting started with Bókun’s online booking solutions

Now, we understand you started this research only looking for a simple solution to enable tour bookings from your website. However, dedicated tour operator software like Bókun checks that box with simple website integrations AND offers powerful operational tools to actually grow your tour business.

Our online booking system provides industry-leading features at the industry’s lowest pricing, and we work with businesses of all sizes, from small, family-run operations to international brands with teams worldwide.

Our START plan (including all of the features and perks you read about above) is just $49/month. And we deliver more cost savings than our competitors, with:

As you read this guide, Bókun users are booking tours automatically, expanding into new sales channels, and growing their businesses — all through one integrated platform. See how Bókun can transform your operations by redeeming your 14-day free trial.

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