Running whale-watching tours comes with its own set of challenges — seasonal demand, shifting departure times, and last-minute weather cancellations. This isn’t standard booking software territory. You need a system that doesn’t just take bookings, but actually handles the operational complexity of getting guests on the water.
The best whale-watching booking software lets you promote your experiences, sell through multiple channels (your website, OTAs, and local partners), and manage the day-to-day without the headaches. Here’s what to look for:
- Online booking engine (with mobile-friendly booking flows). This lets guests book whale-watching trips directly from your website, at any time of day — no phone calls required. Mobile-friendly flows are essential, as most travellers browse and book on their phones.
- Payment processing. This takes the admin out of collecting money. The best systems let you collect deposits or full payment at checkout, so you don’t have to deal with payments upon arrival.
- Channel management. This lets you sell through OTAs and local resellers without manually updating tour availability everywhere. When a spot sells on Viator, it’s gone on your website too — no double bookings.
- Centralised booking calendar. This gives you one place to see everything — every reservation, every departure, every staff assignment. It beats juggling spreadsheets or paper manifests.
- Real-time availability. This keeps your departure times and seat counts accurate across every sales channel simultaneously, which is critical when you’re dealing with limited boat capacity and high-season demand.
- Product management. Build out your listings, set availability rules, create packages, and offer add-ons — all from one place. A well-built listing goes a long way towards converting browsers into bookers.
- Flexible pricing and rates. These support seasonal pricing, different rates for adults, children, and seniors, group discounts, and promotional offers — so you can charge the right price for every tour, guest type, and time of year.
- Resource management and staff scheduling. This helps you assign the right boats, guides, and crew to the right departures — and flags conflicts before they become problems on the day of.
- CRM with automated communications. This maintains a centralised contact book and automatically handles booking confirmations, mobile tickets, reminders, and follow-up emails — particularly useful for sending weather updates or last-minute departure changes without having to email every guest manually.
- Waiver collection. If guests need to sign forms before boarding, the best systems handle this digitally — guests sign ahead of time, and you’ve got records on file.
- Reporting and analytics. These show you which tours, sales channels, and time periods are driving the most revenue, so you can make smarter decisions about pricing, scheduling, and marketing.
Our post reviews the most popular tour booking software for whale-watching businesses, so you can compare the best options in one place.
Best Whale Watching Booking Software
- Bókun
- Bookeo
- Rezgo
- Roverd
- TicketingHub
- Checkfront
- Rezdy
- FareHarbor
- GoFish.Rocks
- Starboard Suite
- Palisis
- ThunderTix
We kick off with our system, Bókun, and walk through all of its features that support whale-watching operations. To take a deeper dive into our toolkit, start a 14-day free trial (no credit card required).
1. Bókun
All-in-one platform to streamline operations & sell experiences globally
Bókun is a Tripadvisor brand with over a decade of experience working with tour and activity operators worldwide. Our industry history has shaped everything about how we built our system — we know exactly what travel experience providers need, and we’ve designed our platform around it. It handles the complex operational stuff so you can spend less time on admin and more time on the water.
But operations are just half of the system. We’ve also packed Bókun with some of the most powerful growth and distribution tools around: 70+ OTA connections, a built-in marketplace with thousands of travel industry partners, and flexible tools to earn bookings from affiliates.
Plus, as a Tripadvisor brand, we hold partnerships with some of the most popular OTAs and online marketplaces. Our system doesn’t just manage bookings, it opens a ton of avenues to see more of them.
We’re one of the most highly rated systems in the industry, with a glowing 4.7-star rating. Users love us for:
- Our all-in-one feature set. Bókun pulls in everything you need to stay on top of daily operations, plus the most impressive suite of growth drivers in the industry.
- Our ease of use. Our system is super user-friendly, and there’s no training to get started, so you can come on board and get fully set up in a day.
- Our scalability. We work with everyone from one- and two-person teams to multi-location enterprises, and our platform grows with you.
- Our customer support. We’re all hands on deck to help any time you need, and we even provide free strategy calls as you grow into enterprise plans.
- Our value for money. We’re one of the most cost-effective systems available, with subscriptions that are affordable for everybody and industry-low fees (half of what competitors charge).
Here’s a closer look at Bókun’s toolkit. (Or you can skip right to your free trial.)
Bókun’s tools to manage your daily operations
Central calendar
Bókun’s central calendar gives you a real-time view of everything happening across your operation in one place — every booking, departure, and staff assignment. It automatically pulls in reservations from all your sales channels, so whether a booking comes in through your website, an OTA, or a reseller, it shows up here instantly.
This calendar also powers real-time availability updates. When a new booking comes in, Bókun reviews the details and sends updated availability and inventory back across every channel — keeping your schedule current and preventing overbookings.
We also have handy tools on the calendar to update bookings, availability, or staff assignments on the fly. You can reschedule bookings if the weather throws your schedule off course, reassign guides if someone calls out, and close out days or time slots as needed.
Experiences: product & resource management
Bókun gives you everything you need to build out your whale-watching products and keep your resources in check. And our product builder walks you through every step, so it’s super easy. You can even create templates from your product line to build out new offerings with just a few clicks.
The product builder shows you exactly how to create detailed, attention-grabbing listings for each of your tours — adding descriptions, itineraries, durations, photos, videos, meeting point information, and everything guests need to know before they board.
You can also build out add-ons directly within your listings, whether that’s a post-tour photo package, an on-board refreshment upgrade, or merchandise like windbreakers or bucket hats.
After building your listing, you’ll set availability, pricing, and required resources.
Availability rules are fully flexible. You can choose which days and times tours are available, set recurring schedules, adjust capacities, and add booking cutoffs. Those availability rules populate your calendar automatically, so your schedule is immediately open for bookings the moment you push your listing live.
Pricing is just as customisable. You can require full upfront payment, set a minimum deposit, or allow customers to pay on arrival. From there, you can set rates for adults, children, and groups, include pricing for private tours, offer bulk discounts, and layer in seasonal pricing for peak and off-peak periods.
Bókun also supports dynamic pricing. You can set rules to automatically adjust rates based on conditions you define. You can increase or decrease rates across different sales channels, drop prices as a booking cutoff approaches while seats are still available, or push rates up as a popular departure fills. Optimising your pricing like this lets you fill your booking calendar and maximise revenue from each reservation.
Resource management is where things become particularly useful for whale-watching operators. Every departure depends on having the right equipment available and accounted for — your vessels, life jackets, binoculars, hydrophones, and any other equipment your crew relies on. You can assign resources to specific tours and departure times directly within Bókun, so there’s never any ambiguity about what’s been allocated where.
Bókun tracks resource availability automatically across all your departures. So when a boat is already committed to a morning trip, it won’t show as available for another tour running at the same time — your team always knows exactly what’s allocated where.
Learn more about our resource management module here.
Customer management: CRM & automated communications
Bókun includes an in-built CRM that automatically captures customer information — names, contact details, booking history, and even data from customers who started checkout but didn’t complete it. It stores everything in a neat contact book so you can easily keep a log of your customers and their booking history.
Including a CRM in our toolkit provides a couple of benefits:
- You don’t have to purchase or hassle with a separate CRM. This saves you from extra software costs and the headache of bouncing between systems.
- You can better understand your customers and their preferences. Do you bring in more solo travellers, families, couples, or groups? What types of tours are those customer segments usually booking?
- You can automate all customer communications.
On that note — our system sends out all the routine touchpoints for you: booking confirmations, mobile tickets, pre-tour reminders, and post-tour follow-ups. You can customise these using our templates, and then they’re set to send.
We also provide a variety of email templates — and let you save your own templates — so you can power all email marketing initiatives through our system. Schedule out abandoned cart nudges, review requests, discounts, new tour announcements, newsletters, you name it.
For whale-watching operators, our automated communications tool is particularly useful for sending departure updates or weather-related changes — rather than manually contacting every guest on a manifest, Bókun sends the message to everyone in one go.
In addition to these tools, customers also have access to self-service portals via their confirmation email, where they can view reservations (and any changes) and modify or cancel them on their own. If customers reschedule or cancel tours, those updates sync back to your calendar automatically.
Check-in tools
On the day of departure, guides can manage arrivals quickly and professionally with Bókun’s mobile tickets and ticket scanning — available on both desktop and the Bókun mobile app. Pull up the tour manifest, scan guests in as they arrive at the dock, see who’s checked in, and track no-shows.
Multiple guides can run check-ins simultaneously across different boarding points, so even large groups or back-to-back departures stay organised and on schedule. Everyone’s on the water on time.
Reporting dashboards
Bókun’s reporting dashboards give you a clear picture of where you’re winning bookings and how your business is performing. We provide reports to measure bookings and revenue by sales channel, product, and time period — so you can see which OTAs and partners are sending you the most business, which tours are getting the most bookings, and how your revenue trends across the year.
These insights take the guesswork out of running your business. You can put more weight behind the sales channels and tour products that are actually generating revenue, rework or retire the ones that aren’t pulling their weight, and make sure you’re properly staffed and resourced heading into peak season.
Because Bókun’s CRM is capturing customer data behind the scenes with every booking, your reports go beyond just numbers. You can see exactly who’s booking with you and use that to brainstorm ways to retarget customers and fine-tune your marketing strategies.
Bókun App Store
On top of everything Bókun includes out of the box, the App Store gives you access to a range of add-ons to round out your setup — digital waivers, SMS messaging, tip management for your crew, advanced reporting, PaxFlow departure management, and more. Browse what’s available and plug in whatever fits.
Bókun’s tools to sell your whale-watching tours online & increase bookings
Power direct website bookings
Bókun includes everything you need to turn your website into a direct booking engine — whether you’re building one from scratch or already have one up and running.
Teams without a website can use our one-click website builder to get one live fast. Pick from a gallery of templates, fill in your tour details and branding, add images and videos, and publish. Our sites come optimised for desktop and mobile with booking engine widgets pre-installed, so you’re ready to take bookings as soon as you go live.
Teams with an existing site can make it bookable by embedding our booking engine widgets. We offer a variety of widget styles (“Book Now” buttons, calendar views, product overviews, and product lists), so you can place them throughout your site and give visitors plenty of ways to start a booking with you.
Our widgets are compatible with virtually any website builder: WordPress, Squarespace, Wix, Weebly, Joomla, and more.
Bókun supports the full booking process and checkout flow by integrating with a wide range of payment processors — Stripe, PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Klarna, Worldpay, Braintree, Rapyd, and more — so guests have a variety of secure payment options. They can pay however they prefer, wherever they’re booking from.
Read more:
- 8 ways to increase direct tour bookings from your website
- How Sailing Windermere achieved business growth by accepting online bookings 24/7
- How REDRIB Experiences grew from a startup to a 5-star company with 89% direct online bookings
Connections with OTAs & online marketplaces
While having a bookable website is an absolute must and beneficial in its own right, it doesn’t necessarily let you promote your experiences to new customers. That’s where OTAs and channel management come into play.
Bókun was built with distribution at its core, adding more and more OTA integrations every year. At the time of writing, our system connects with 70+ OTAs. Global names like Viator, GetYourGuide, Expedia, Airbnb, Civitatis, Tiqets, Musement, TourRadar, Trip.com, Hotelbeds, Headout, the list goes on.
We also offer connections with more niche sites, so you can target travellers looking specifically for whale watching or things to do in your area. And we’re the #1 restech partner across major OTAs.
We have partnerships with many of those global platforms, giving you additional benefits when exploring online sales channels.
- We’re a Viator Preferred Partner and offer 0% Bókun booking fees on all Viator reservations and free yearly subscription checks (12, 24, or 48, depending on your plan).
- We’re a GetYourGuide Premium Connectivity Partner to guarantee best-in-class API performance, better visibility for your experiences, and access to all GetYourGuide’s latest tools.
- We’re a Google Things to do partner, so you can join Google’s programme directly through Bókun and promote your whale-watching experiences to Google’s massive user base.
These are the platforms travellers are already using to research and plan trips, and it’s exactly where you need to be to get your name out there, grow your customer base, and drive bookings.
You manage all of your OTA connections from one place, with no caps on the number of channels you connect and no per-channel fees.
We also have a ton of guides that explain how to get started on OTAs and make the most of each platform. Check them out below:
- The tour operator’s guide to OTA bookings
- How to add your business to Tripadvisor
- How to sell tours on Viator
- How to become a GetYourGuide supplier
- How to become a Civitatis supplier
- How to host experiences on Airbnb
- How to become a TourRadar supplier
- How to sell tours on Expedia
Bókun Marketplace
When you join Bókun, you’re automatically part of the Bókun Marketplace — the industry’s largest in-built partner network, featuring thousands of travel industry businesses: travel agencies, DMCs, accommodation providers like hotels and resorts, transportation services, rental companies, and other tour operators from around the world.
The Marketplace opens up three ways to grow your business:
- Connect with resellers and get your whale-watching tours promoted to their audiences, earning bookings from travellers you’d never reach through your own channels alone.
- Resell other operators’ experiences and services to earn commission — a useful revenue stream during slower seasons.
- Build collaborative packages with complementary businesses, pairing your tours with accommodation, transport, or other local experiences to offer travellers a more comprehensive experience.
Bókun Referral Tracking
Referral Tracking lets you build your own affiliate network with anyone you choose — local hotels, harbour-side businesses, travel bloggers, tourism boards, influencers, whoever makes sense for your audience. You decide who’s in the network and negotiate commission rates directly with each partner, with all the details saved in Bókun.
From there, each affiliate gets a trackable booking link or a dedicated booking hub to promote your tours to their audiences. Every booking that comes through is tracked in Bókun, so you can see exactly which partners are driving results — and use those insights to keep growing your network with the right people.
See how some of our customers have leveraged Bókun’s growth drivers to fill their calendars and scale operations in the case studies below:
- Simba Sea Trips sees consistent 20% year-on-year revenue growth after joining Bókun
- Venice Tours achieved a 400% revenue increase through the Bókun Marketplace
- How REDRIB Experiences grew from a startup to a five-star company with 89% direct online bookings
Bókun packages & how to get started
We offer all customers a 14-day free trialto explore Bókun and see if it’s the right solution for their operations.
After the trial, you can upgrade to the START plan. This includes all our core features (discussed above) and full access to all growth drivers, for only $49/month, with 1.5% online booking fees. We waive Bókun booking fees on Viator reservations, and offline bookings are always free to add to our system.
We also offer two enterprise plans — PLUS and PREMIUM — to support teams as they grow and have more specialised requirements. These plans come with more advanced features (agent portals, subvendor management, resource allocations, and Zapier), dedicated onboarding, priority support, and a yearly strategy call with our team.
Get started with Bókun today to see how it can handle the heavy lifting and get your whale-watching experiences in front of more customers!
2. Bookeo
Bookeo is a straightforward scheduling and booking platform that serves a wide range of businesses — tour operators, escape rooms, yoga studios, salons, and more. That breadth is both its appeal and its limitation.
For whale-watching operators, the Tours & Activities module covers the day-to-day basics well enough. You get an online booking widget to embed on your site, a central calendar with real-time availability, staff management, automated communications for confirmations and reminders, waitlisting, upselling tools, and a POS for walk-up bookings at the dock.
The pricing model is also appealing — Bookeo charges a flat monthly fee with no booking fees or commissions on top, which is pretty rare in this space and makes costs easy to predict heading into a busy season.
Where Bookeo runs into trouble for whale-watching operators is on the distribution side. OTA connections are very limited — Expedia is the main integration, and that’s about it. There’s no reseller marketplace or affiliate tools. So you can only grow so much here.
The booking caps are worth mentioning as well. Each plan limits the number of bookings you can take per month: 1k on the Standard plan, 2k on the Large plan, and 3k on the X-Large plan. For a busy whale-watching operation running multiple departures a day through peak season, those ceilings can become a real problem fast.
Find more Bookeo reviews here.
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:
- Standard ($39.95/month): This supports 20 products, 20 staff logins, and 1,000 bookings per month.
- Large ($79.95/month): This supports 40 products, 40 staff logins, and 2,000 bookings per month.
- X-large ($119.95/month): This supports 60 products, 60 staff logins, and 3,000 bookings per month.
Read more: Best Bookeo alternatives for activity & experience providers
3. Rezgo
Rezgo is an independent booking platform that’s been around for over a decade and has built a strong reputation for customer support and reliability. It’s a particularly good fit for whale-watching operators who run WordPress sites. Rezgo has a dedicated WordPress plugin that makes integrating the booking engine seamless, and reviewers consistently praise how well it works in that setup.
Feature-wise, it covers all the bases: a customisable booking calendar, OTA integrations, a reseller network, resource management for tracking vessels and equipment, digital waivers, dynamic availability, flexible pricing, and fast mobile check-in. The platform also offers an open API, so if you have a developer and want to build a custom booking flow, that option is there.
One thing Rezgo does differently is customer support — reviewers frequently highlight it as a strength. You get a dedicated account manager who actually gets to know your business, not a rotating support bot. For a whale-watching operator navigating seasonal demand and last-minute weather changes, having a support team that understands your setup matters.
The main thing to factor in here is pricing. While Rezgo doesn’t charge a monthly fee, they charge a 4.9% booking fee on online reservations and 0.9% on POS bookings. That model works well during quieter seasons when you’re not paying for software you’re barely using, but at peak season, when bookings are flying in, those fees add up fast compared to platforms with lower rates.
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
4. Roverd
Roverd is a newer platform that’s been building a name for itself, specifically with boat and water-based tour operators — and whale-watching businesses sit squarely in its wheelhouse.
The platform is designed with departure-based operations in mind: live availability that updates across all sales channels, vessel-level capacity management, digital waivers, QR code check-ins at the dock, and an automatically generated daily manifest that guides can pull up on any mobile device.
On the distribution side, Roverd includes OTA connections and a reseller portal. And users praise Roverd’s reseller portal for its convenience. Partners like hotels, DMCs, and travel agents can log in, view your current availability, and book directly on behalf of their clients. Commissions are tracked automatically, which eliminates much of the back-and-forth that usually comes with manually managing reseller relationships.
However, there are downsides here.
- Roverd is still building its track record. Third-party reviews are limited compared to the more established platforms on this list, so there’s less community feedback to draw on when evaluating how it performs over time.
- Steep booking fees. Sure Roverd doesn’t charge subscription fees, but you pay 5% per booking. While 5% isn’t as bad as what some competitors charge (up to 8%), it’s definitely on the higher end.
Find more Roverd reviews here.
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
- Reservation management (with options for customers to reserve spots before confirming and paying)
- Digital waivers
- Integrations with major payment processors (e.g., Stripe & PayPal)
- Cancellation & refund management
- CRM & automated customer communications
- Reporting
Pricing
Roverd offers two plans:
- The Standard plan (5% online booking fees) includes all Roverd features, tailored system setup, one-on-one training, and basic support. This plan is recommended for small to medium businesses.
- The Custom Enterprise plans (with discounted booking fees based on volume) include everything in the Standard plan, plus a dedicated account manager and phone support.
5. TicketingHub
TicketingHub is a cloud-based ticketing and booking platform that earns some of the highest user ratings in this space — sitting at 4.9 stars on Capterra — and is particularly well-regarded for its user-friendliness, robust toolkit, and responsive customer support. It originally made its name in high-volume ticketing (think large attractions and city tours), but it also works well for whale-watching operators.
Getting set up on TicketingHub is pretty quick and easy. The booking widget takes just one line of code to install and is fully mobile-optimised, so you can be live on your website and start taking bookings in minutes. From there, TicketingHub connects with Viator, GetYourGuide, and Expedia, with real-time inventory sync across all channels.
TicketingHub also has a couple of distinctive features worth flagging: Magic Link lets you send a one-click payment link to customers via WhatsApp, email, or SMS to convert enquiries into bookings instantly — handy when you’re getting a last-minute message asking if there are spots on today’s departure. And an email validator catches invalid addresses at checkout, which reduces failed confirmation emails and wasted abandoned-cart follow-ups.
The one thing that gives us pause here is TicketingHub’s pricing model. They list 3% online booking fees on the pricing page. This doesn’t seem so bad at first glance, but they charge these fees on every booking — both online and offline (like in-person walk-ups or phone bookings) — while most competitors only charge online booking fees. In addition, they charge extra integration fees (2%) for bookings from OTAs, so OTA bookings are hit with a 5% fee overall. And, as we mentioned above with Roverd, 5% of every booking is pretty steep.
Find more TicketingHub reviews here.
Features
- Online ticketing engine widget
- Availability management
- Waitlists
- Channel management
- Reseller network
- Team management
- CRM & automated communications
- Customer portals
- Multi-currency support
- POS integrations
- Reporting dashboard
Pricing
TicketingHub charges a 3% booking fee on all reservations (online or offline). They charge higher booking fees for OTA integrations (3% standard fee + 2% integration fee = 5% OTA booking fees).
Read more: Best TicketingHub alternatives
6. Checkfront
Checkfront is a well-established booking platform with 100+ features that cover the full scope of what a whale-watching operation needs day-to-day — a central calendar, real-time availability, resource management, OTA connections, digital waivers, partner accounts, upselling tools, and mobile check-in. It’s been trusted by tour operators for over a decade, and the depth of its feature set is pretty impressive.
While Checkfront has always been one of our top recommendations, recent changes to the platform have made us more hesitant. Some background: Checkfront merged with Rezdy (below) and Regiondo (not listed because it’s way too expensive) a couple of years ago. The platform still operates independently and the merger didn’t really impact things for a while. But now we have seen users saying Checkfront’s growth drivers are no longer super competitive, and pricing is more expensive.
On the growth driver side, they offer limited OTA connections, but they haven’t added many new ones. Checkfront doesn’t offer notable OTA partnerships that would give it an edge.
Then there is Checkfront’s recent pricing change. They used to charge only a 3% online booking fee, but they’ve updated their pricing to better align with Rezdy. Now, Checkfront charges a $99 monthly subscription fee AND 3% online booking fees. So they don’t pack as much of a punch in the value for money category — in fact, this makes them one of the more expensive options in the industry. There are other providers, like us, that offer the same (and more) features at a lower price.
With all that, Checkfront is worth a look, but you should definitely keep those things in mind before committing.
Find more Checkfront reviews here.
Features
- 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
7. Rezdy
Rezdy has been around since 2011 and is one of the best-known names in the tours and activities space, with over 130 countries and thousands of operators on the platform. The toolkit here is pretty standard, with a lot of features for managing operations and increasing bookings — a booking engine, central calendar with real-time availability updates, resource management, OTA connections, a reseller marketplace, automated communications, mobile check-in, and reporting.
Where Rezdy gets more mixed feedback is on value and product development. Long-term users have noted that the platform hasn’t really evolved much over the years, that the interface feels dated in places, and that feature requests are promised but rarely delivered. One Capterra reviewer noted that Rezdy once felt cutting-edge but no longer does.
For a newer operator, it’s a solid enough platform. For one that’s been in the industry a while and has specific operational needs, it can start to show its limits.
As far as pricing goes, it’s on the expensive side, like Checkfront. Rezdy charges 3% online booking fees across all three plans ($49/month at Foundation, $99/month at Accelerate, and $249/month at Expansion).
And most of the tools whale-watching operators will actually need — channel management, automated communications, resource management — are locked in the Accelerate plan at $99/month. So again, not the best value for money here.
Features
- One-click website builder
- Online booking engine
- Reservation management
- Central calendar with real-time 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, three paid plans, and custom enterprise packages:
- Foundation ($49/month and 3% online booking fees): This basic package only includes online booking widgets, guest manifests, centralised resource management, and mobile apps. You can get by here, but it’s not totally recommended.
- Accelerate ($99/month and 3% online booking fees): This is Rezdy’s recommended plan because it provides access to all of Rezdy’s essential tools for operations management and distribution.
- Expansion ($249/month and 3% online booking fees): This is Rezdy’s enterprise package, with advanced reporting, bulk session management, and API and webhooks for deeper platform customisation.
Read more: Best Rezdy alternatives comparison guide
8. FareHarbor
FareHarbor is another highly recognisable name in the tour operator software space — primarily because it’s a Booking.com brand that has been around long enough to build a massive user base. For a long time, it was the go-to solution for operators of all sizes because it was advertised as free, and the feature set is comprehensive: a central calendar, OTA connections, a reseller network, resource management, automated communications, digital waivers, customer portals, and check-in tools.
But lately, many operators are jumping ship here, and it’s not hard to see why.
While FareHarbor markets itself as free software, that’s only true in the narrowest sense — there’s no monthly subscription fee. What they don’t lead with is that booking fees run as high as 6% and 8%, which are among the steepest in the industry. That’s before you factor in the extras they charge for features that most platforms include as standard.
FareHarbor offers a website-building service for $5k — not a website builder. The real kicker is that their team is building this site from a standard builder you’d typically find for free in other tour operator software. You’re paying an exorbitant amount for a site you could whip up yourself in a few hours. Even more, they don’t transfer ownership to you, so if you ever leave the platform, you lose the site and that investment.
They also complement the website-building service with SEO services — charging $2.2k or $5k, depending on the package. But FareHarbor doesn’t publish much detail about what these packages actually include, so it’s hard to evaluate whether they’re worth the investment.
Lastly, FareHarbor takes a 20% commission on every booking that comes through its reseller network (FHDN) — something no other platform on this list does; most reseller networks are commission-free on the platform side.
Add it all up, and this is one of the most expensive systems on this list. Far from free!
Features
- Website-building services — FareHarbor charges an extra fee for this service
- Online booking engine
- Customisable dashboard to manage all bookings (offline & online) in one place
- Channel management & connections with OTAs like Expedia
- Distribution network (FHDN)
- Product (Inventory) management to list activities & monitor business resources
- Availability management
- Staff management
- Features to improve the customer experience: portals to modify bookings, automated communications, online waiver solutions, fast check-in tools, and memberships
- Reporting
- Native POS (with transaction fees to use) and integrations with Stripe
- Mobile apps
Pricing
FareHarbor charges variable booking fees of up to 6% and 8%. They also charge for website-building and SEO services and take a commission on every booking you earn through the reseller network (FHDN).
Read more:
- Best FareHarbor alternatives comparison guide
- Bókun vs. FareHarbor vs. Peek Pro
- Bókun vs. FareHarbor vs. Rezdy
9. GoFish.Rocks
GoFish.Rocks was built specifically for water-based operators — boat tours, fishing charters, and whale-watching businesses — by a software team that came up through the charter industry itself. It handles multi-departure scheduling, vessel capacity management, group bookings, automated communications, digital waivers, and QR code check-ins at the dock — all the day-to-day stuff a whale-watching operator needs.
The pricing model here is unique (and pretty affordable). Rather than charging a percentage of every booking, GoFish.Rocks charges a flat $1.50 per passenger. Whether a spot on your tour costs $50 or $500, the fee never changes. For operators running premium whale-watching experiences at higher price points, this can add up to real savings compared to platforms charging 3% to 6% per booking. There are no monthly fees either — if you have no bookings in a given month, you pay nothing.
The main limitation to flag is distribution. GoFish.Rocks is built for operations management and direct bookings — it doesn’t offer growth drivers such as OTA connections or partner networks that other platforms on this list do. If you’re just looking for a tool to manage operations, GoFish.Rocks works great. But if you’re looking for something also to bring in more business, this platform doesn’t cover that side of things.
GoFish.Rocks has not received any verified third-party reviews.
Features
- Online booking widgets
- Booking management calendar
- Availability management with real-time capacity tracking
- Multi-vessel & multi-departure scheduling
- Group booking tools with custom pricing & deposit structures
- Automated communications — SMS and email confirmations, trip updates, & weather alerts
- Digital waivers
- QR code check-in & manifest management
- Review collection tools
- Integrations with Stripe & Square for payment processing
- Reporting
Pricing
GoFish.Rocks charges $1.50 per booking through the platform.
10. Starboard Suite
Starboard Suite is another reservation system built specifically for passenger vessels and watersports operators, with whale- and dolphin-watching businesses among its most common use cases. Reviewers from those operations consistently show up in their testimonials — one manager from a dolphin-watching business, one from a shipwreck tour company.
The platform handles the specific demands of departure-based water tours: multi-phase boarding and check-in, passenger manifests, vessel capacity management, weather cancellation emails, and an integrated gratuity system for crew tips.
And the overall feature set is comprehensive — online booking pages, real-time availability, automated communications, digital waivers, gift certificates, retail add-ons, employee scheduling, and detailed financial reporting. Customer support is a consistent standout in reviews, with users describing a team that goes out of their way to customise the platform to specific operational needs.
But the pricing model here is worth understanding. Starboard Suite charges based on your annual revenue rather than a flat monthly fee or per-booking percentage. Operators bringing in less than $200k pay $500/month. Those making $200k to $1M pay 3% of booking revenue processed through the platform. For higher-revenue operators, rates are discounted but require a direct conversation with their team.
The site also mentions that you can charge customers a ticketing fee at any rate you choose to offset the costs of using Starboard Suite — so if you go this route, you could potentially use the platform for free. The risk is scaring folks away with extra ticket fees at checkout.
Find more Starboard Suite reviews here.
Features
- Online booking pages with SEO optimisation tools
- Real-time availability management
- Centralised booking calendar
- Capacity & vessel management
- Employee scheduling
- Automated communications — confirmations, reminders, weather updates, & post-tour review requests
- Digital waivers
- Multi-phase check-in with QR code scanning & passenger manifests
- Integrated gratuity management
- Gift certificates, vouchers, & promo codes
- Retail add-on sales
- Integrations with Stripe, Mailchimp, Constant Contact, TripAdvisor, & Google Analytics
- Reporting
Pricing
Starboard Suite charges a service fee based on your annual revenue.
- Operators bringing in less than $200k per year pay $500/month.
- Operators making $200K to $1M per year pay 3% of their booking revenue processed through the platform.
- Starboard Suite charges a discounted fee for operators who process more than $1M in annual revenue, but this fee varies based on exactly how much you’re bringing in, so you’ll need to contact their team for exact rates.
Starboard Suite also allows you to charge your customers a ticketing fee (at any rate you choose). This helps offset service fees or overall business costs.
11. Palisis
Palisis is a Switzerland-based ticketing and reservations platform that’s been operating for over a decade, originally built for large-scale attractions and hop-on-hop-off bus tours — operations that process thousands of tickets a day across multiple locations and sales channels simultaneously.
This is the kind of operational complexity that most platforms on this list weren’t designed for. It’s an enterprise-grade system through and through, and a few things set it apart at that level:
- Integrations. Palisis connects with 200+ outside systems to unify your entire tech stack, from payment processors to third-party tools and beyond.
- Advanced analytics. Reporting here goes well beyond the standard, providing larger teams with the granular business intelligence needed to make decisions across complex operations.
- Customisation. The platform adapts to how your business operates, making it a better fit for teams with specific workflows and requirements.
That depth is both the appeal and the caveat. Reviewers consistently flag a steep learning curve, and pricing reflects the enterprise tier — the Basic plan starts at $52/month, with the most popular Hardware and Software plan on custom pricing.
For a smaller whale-watching operation that just needs straightforward booking management, it may be a little more complex than what you need.
Palisis has not received any verified third-party reviews.
Features
- Online booking engine widgets
- Centralised booking calendar with real-time availability
- OTA connections & channel management
- Partner network & reseller portal
- Product management with customisable ticket types & packages
- Dynamic pricing
- CRM & automated communications
- Multi-currency & multi-language support
- POS system
- Digital waivers & voucher redemption
- API connectivity with 200+ integrations
- Reporting
Pricing
Palisis offers two plans:
- The Basic plan ($52/month) includes all of Palisis’s features to support online distribution (online booking engine widgets, OTA connections, and a partner network). It also comes with reporting dashboards and customer success travel experts to offer 24/7 support.
- The Hardware and Software plan (custom pricing) is the most popular plan with all Palisis features.
12. ThunderTix
ThunderTix is last on our list for a reason — it’s primarily a box-office and theatre-ticketing platform. Reserved seating, venue layouts, season passes, donor management, volunteer tracking — that’s its core. But the brand does advertise to whale-watching businesses and has a dedicated page for them (though that’s more about marketing reach than a genuine product fit).
Basic functionality is covered here: general admission ticketing, automated event reminders, post-tour emails and surveys, CRM, gift cards, and merchandise sales. The pricing is accessible, and users consistently praise the value.
The gaps are hard to ignore for a whale-watching operator — there’s no resource management for vessels or equipment, and no growth drivers to promote your experiences to new audiences. It was built for venues managing seats in a theatre, not operators managing boat departures, seasonal demand, and multi-channel distribution.
If you’ve exhausted the other options on this list and are still looking, ThunderTix is worth a glance. But realistically, most whale-watching operators will find a better fit further up the list.
Find more ThunderTix reviews here.
Features
- General admission & reserved seating ticketing
- Online booking widgets
- CRM
- Automated event reminders, post-event emails, & surveys
- Gift cards, vouchers, & merchandise sales
- Membership & season pass management
- Volunteer management
- Upselling tools
- Integrations with Stripe, Square, Authorize.net, Mailchimp, Constant Contact, Google Tag Manager, thermal printers, ThunderTix Developer API, & Zapier
Pricing
ThunderTix offers three plans:
- The General Admission plan ($20/month for the first 20 tickets & $1/ticket after that) includes GA ticketing, multi-venue season passes, unlimited support, and free events. It also supports gift cards, merchandise sales, and memberships (2% fees on every sale).
- The Reserved Seating plan ($25/month for the first 20 tickets & $1.25/ticket after that) includes everything in the GA plan, plus reserved seating.
- The White Glove plan ($175/month for the first 100 tickets & $1.95/ticket after that) includes all features and full setup.
All plans include nightly payouts, automated event reminders, post-event emails & surveys, CRM, volunteer management, and unlimited exchanges and coupons.
ThunderTix also offers integrations with payment processing systems (Stripe, Square, Authorize.net & more), email marketing systems (Mailchimp, Constant Contact), Google Tag Manager, thermal printers, ThunderTix Developer API, and Zapier. Integrations vary by plan.
Find the Best Booking System for Your Whale-Watching Business
After twelve platforms, the choice comes down to what you actually need your booking software to do. If you want a system that handles everything — both the operations and distribution side — all in one place, Bókun was built for exactly that.
- The central calendar keeps all bookings from all sales channels in one place and automatically updates your availability and inventory, so you never double-book.
- Our resource management tools track your vessels, equipment, and crew so nothing gets double-allocated.
- Our dynamic pricing tools help you fill early departures and maximise revenue as popular sailings fill up, without manually adjusting rates every season.
- The CRM and automated communications handle every guest touchpoint — from booking confirmation to day-of departure updates — without you lifting a finger.
- The Bókun App Store lets you add digital waivers, SMS messaging, tip management, and more, so your setup fits exactly how your operation runs.
- The distribution tools — 70+ OTA connections, the Bókun Marketplace, and Referral Tracking — work to put your whale-watching experiences in front of new audiences from every direction.
All of that starts at $49/month with industry-low 1.5% online booking fees.
Start your 14-day free trial (no credit card required!) and see how Bókun works for your whale-watching business.
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