There are dozens of options to create custom websites — general website builders like Wix and Squarespace are popular because they’re user-friendly and offer website add-ons that cater to different user groups. (For example, Wix has an appointment scheduling widget for hair salons, fitness studios, and other in-person businesses.) 

However, these general website builders are not the most recommended solutions for tour operators interested in growing online bookings because: 

• They don’t connect with online travel agencies (OTAs) like Viator or GetYourGuide, so you can’t sell your products on those channels or get found as often. Customers have to know about your website to book with you there. 
  
  
• They don’t have features to drive new revenue and growth, like dynamic pricing to increase booking conversions, upselling tools, or networks to partner with other tour operators and travel businesses. 
  
  
• The availability management features are somewhat surface-level, so you don’t have as many options to manage how customers book with you. For example, you might have a harder time customising your booking options during seasonal tours, setting tour capacities, and setting booking cutoff dates. 
  
  
• They don’t provide mobile apps for tour guides to see who’s booked for experiences and check customers in. Tour operators have to find another solution to support field staff. 

Instead, tour operator software like Bókun lets you create a custom website (or add booking widgets to your existing site) and enable 24/7 online bookings — plus, these platforms have the tools to manage back-office operations and drive new bookings. 

In addition, our solution lets you connect with OTAs and partner with other travel businesses so customers can book your tours from dozens of sites. We offer the lowest booking fees (1.5%) across competitors, one flat subscription rate for customers, and have a Viator partnership to help grow your business. 

We also offer a free trial of Bókun (no credit card required) so you can begin building your site and adding products. 

Bókun Website Builder: Create a Custom, Bookable Website in an Afternoon

Bókun is a booking management solution for tour and activity-based businesses (this is also called “Tour operator software”). We work with tour operators just establishing their business online and growing teams interested in strategies to increase bookings and scale business. 

Our solution includes a one-click website builder so tour operators can design a branded website, create listings to promote their tours and activities, and receive direct online bookings. 

We provide a library of website design templates to help you hit the ground running; the builder is easy to use and doesn’t require any CSS or coding knowledge. Our website builder tool: 

• Allows for complete customisation of your site so you can add logos, colours, fonts, images, videos, and more, to best represent your brand. We also provide a library of images you can use on your site for free. 
  
  
• Automatically displays your products, pricing, and availability on your site so tours are easily bookable. 
  
  
• Offers multilingual capabilities for global teams. 
  
  
• Supports mobile-friendly viewing so website visitors can book your tours and activities from their cell phones. 
  
  
• Provides detailed website analytics so you can see what visitors do (which pages they visit, tours they view, if they book or where they drop off, etc.). 

We’ll also manage domain charges if you don’t already have one — choose your preferred website name, and we’ll take care of the rest. 

Let’s walk through how this works so you can start building your site today.

1. Select a template from the library

Start by exploring our template library and choosing the design you like best. 

Once you click the “Select Template” button, the website builder opens so you can begin designing your own website. 

All templates include our online booking system so you can see a preview of the widget and booking process for customers. 

2. Plug your design in the template fields

Our “plug and play” templates simplify the customisation process — you can clearly see each field that requires editing, then you can fill them in and make changes as you go. Add custom images, text, branding elements, colours, and more. 

You can customise the site’s menu and navigation, along with adding extra website elements (like countdown calendars for events). 

You can watch a full walkthrough of our website builder here.

If you’d like to further modify the design or functionality of your site, you can add custom CSS and embed other widgets. 

After you’re done designing, you can save your changes and choose your website name. You can update your site design at any time in the website builder tool.

3. Choose your website name

If you already have a domain, you can connect it to your Bókun website and push your new site live. 

If you don’t have a domain name, you can type in your ideal site name and we’ll show you all of the available options (we use GoDaddy to search and purchase domain names). After you select your preferred domain, we’ll cover the set-up and renewal costs. 

Now that you’ve designed your site, the steps to promote your tours and receive bookings include: 

• Adding products
• Managing your availability 
• Setting pricing 
• Integrating your preferred payment provider to process online payments

4. Create listings for your tours & activities

You can design product listings from the “Experiences” tab in Bókun. From there, our product management tool automatically lists your tours and activities, with your availability, on your booking site. 

The product builder walks you through the steps to create listings, but we also provide templates that give extra inspiration and guidance.

You can personalise product listings with as much detail as you see fit: add attention-grabbing names, itineraries, pictures and videos, testimonials from past customers, and more.

You can also: 

• Specify the duration of each experience.
• Include the tour location. 
• Include “day of” details — like what to bring or pick-up/drop-off spots.
• Prep visitors on what to know before booking — this is a good place to share no-show or late-arrival policies.

The primary goal when creating these listings is to provide engaging details that convince customers to book. 

Our product builder also provides options to: 

• Offer “extras” (upsells) with experiences 
• Bundle products into combo experiences
• Sell gift cards and vouchers   

In addition, we let you personalise booking forms so you can gather any required information from customers during checkout. For example, if you offer a food tour, you could create a field to ask about allergies. 

Note: We also have a partnership with Viator where Viator users can auto-import listings into the Bókun platform, so they automatically display on your site. In addition, we offer Viator users four free product checks each month so they can save money when adding new experiences. 

5. Manage your availability & operating hours

You can customise how visitors book each product, manage availability, and set operating hours (this is also done in the "Experiences" tab). 

First, choose how visitors can book products (whether they select a departure date and time, just a date with no time slot, or purchase a pass to visit during operating hours). 

Then, you can specify start and close out dates, open days, and departure times for each experience. You can also create recurring availability rules for each experience so you don’t have to adjust your calendar week by week.

You can set minimum and maximum capacities for each tour, and we also have an on-request booking feature where you can manually review all new bookings and approve or deny them.

In addition, if you need to restrict last-minute bookings, you can set booking cutoffs. 

Going back to our food tour example above: let’s say you run a food tour in Krakow, showcasing different types of dim sum made by local restaurants. You need to know exactly how many people are taking your tour at least 24 hours in advance, so you can notify the restaurant(s) of how much food to prepare. You can do this by setting booking cutoff dates.

Your availability calendar provides a consolidated view of your products and availability rules, then you can adjust availability on the fly by closing out days or departure times. 

Once you set your availability in Bókun, the updates reflect on your website and all connected sales channels. Then, as customers find your experiences and start reserving spots, these platforms will update in real-time to show the most current availability — customers can only book available products at approved times, helping you to avoid incorrect or double bookings.

You can read more about this setup here.

6. Set product pricing & use dynamic pricing to manage rates automatically

Next, add pricing for each experience — you can choose one standard rate or create pricing categories (to offer rates by age group or special pricing for pensioners, for example).

In addition, we offer: 

• Tiered pricing to offer discounts for customers who book in bulk. 
• Dynamic pricing to automatically adjust your rates and offer discounts. 

For example, you could plan seasonal discounts during slow periods to drive new business. Or, you could encourage last-minute bookings by lowering prices as you get closer to departure times. Conversely, you could set rules to increase rates for popular products as they near capacity. 

As mentioned with product availability, prices adjust on your website and all connected sales channels, so there’s no further intervention required on your side. 

Lastly, connect Bókun with the payment provider of your choice to receive online payments through your website. We partner with PayPal, Stripe, Worldpay, Google Pay, Apple Pay, and more. We also partner with Klarna to offer financing options for customers. 

Connecting Bókun to your preferred payment processors is easy: you choose a partner from our list and log in to your account. You can add multiple payment options for customers by following this same step.

Payments are not processed through our platform but instead through the provider you connect to. Therefore, we do not charge transaction fees for online bookings — fees are dependent on the payment processor. 

Website bookings are subject to our 1.5% booking fee; you can choose to cover that on your end or include it in the customer’s total cost. 

By the end of this step, you should have a branded, bookable website with all of your experiences (along with availability and pricing) displayed for instant booking. Customers can find your site, view available products, book, and make payments with you directly.

Bonus: Increase bookings via OTAs & Bókun Marketplace

As we mentioned earlier, a significant downfall of general website builders is that they don’t have features to drive new bookings or promote real business growth. 

Tour operator software like Bókun has features to supplement your site and help you get found online. 

To start, our booking platform integrates with dozens of OTAs (like GetYourGuide, Expedia, Klook, Google Things to do, and more), and we have a preferred partnership with Viator so you can connect Bókun to those sites and receive online bookings from outside sales channels.

Note: We don’t charge fees on bookings coming from Viator — saving you 1.5% if customers find and book with you through this site. 

Connecting your site with OTAs is extremely beneficial for tour operators just establishing their online presence because these sites see millions of travellers each month; they can get you in front of more potential customers than other marketing tactics like paid ads or social media campaigns. 

Plus, these sites are well-known and trusted by consumers, so users may feel more comfortable doing business with you if they can verify your services and book with you on a site they already know and use. 

In addition to our connections with online travel sites, we also provide the Bókun Marketplace, a network of over 27,000+ tour operators and travel businesses from around the globe.

Here, you can establish partnerships with hotel chains or resorts, travel agents, and other tour or activity providers to promote each others’ products and earn more bookings. For example, you can: 

• Partner with a nearby resort and ask them to promote your tours to their customers — you win new customers, they earn commission when they book for you. 
  
  
• Sell others’ products for a commission — this is a nice way to earn “passive income” or increasing revenue when you’ve maxed out bookings. 
  
  
• Create bundle deals with other suppliers and sell your products together. 

Tour operators who connect to our Marketplace can drive over $100K yearly revenue from this channel alone. We’ve written an entire guide on how to sell tours online and increase bookings — you can read more about these strategies here. 

Bókun Booking Management Features

Now that we’ve talked about our features to build a bookable website and expand your online reach, let’s talk about some of our features to manage incoming bookings and back-end operations.

Centralised booking calendar to oversee all reservations

First, all new bookings — from your website, OTAs, and partners — populate in the central calendar so you can see all reservations in one dashboard. You can also add and manage offline reservations from this calendar (we don’t charge booking fees for offline reservations). 

This calendar updates in real-time, so you can see new bookings as they’re made and keep up with changes to reservations. 

Note: We provide self-service portals for customers to cancel reservations without contacting your team for help; cancellations update in your calendar and are automatically confirmed with the customer. 

Staff members can view the main calendar to see new bookings, or zoom in on just the tours they’re scheduled to work. Then they can view the details of each experience to see who’s booked, how many attendees are expected, and more.

Time-saving features to make everyone’s life easier

In addition to the self-service portals we mention above, we also provide a number of tools to simplify back-office operations and streamline customer communications. 

For starters, our automated communications feature lets you schedule customer emails to send at set times — you can use these to send:

• Tickets and waivers. Our platform also lets you create scannable tickets and send digital waivers ahead of time to simplify check-in. 
  
  
• Reminder emails a couple of days before the scheduled event.
  
  
• Follow-ups thanking customers for their business. You can add links to review sites and customer discounts to encourage feedback and repeat business.

We provide a library of email templates you can customise with logos, colours, fonts, review links, discount codes, and more.

In addition, our platform has a native CRM to store customer information — this powers the automated communications feature and makes it easy for office staff to look up attendee information. 

Our CRM and automated communications tools are helpful for retargeting and marketing to existing customers.

Mobile apps to keep everyone connected

We also provide mobile apps for iOS and Android so tour guides can stay connected with office staff while out in the field. 

These apps let tour guides view the booking calendar and details of reservations so they know who’s scheduled for each experience. They can see who’s completed waivers and use ticket-scanning features to quickly check customers in. 

Reporting tools to monitor reservations & revenue

Bókun also comes with a reporting dashboard so you can easily track bookings and revenue. Our reports show metrics including:

• Total number of bookings (by week, month, or any date range you set).
   
• Number of bookings by sales channel or partner — to see who earns the most business for you. 
  
  
• Number of bookings per product — to gauge which experiences are most popular.
  
  
• Total revenue and earnings (by any date range you set). 
  
  
• Revenue by sales channel, partner, or product.

Get started in Bókun for free

Bókun goes beyond standard scheduling software with a tailored solution for tour guides to: 

• Create a bookable website showcasing your tours and activities.
  
  
• Manage all reservations in a central dashboard. 
  
  
• Grow online bookings by connecting our platform with OTAs and partnering with other businesses.

Our website builder, OTA connections, partner network, and features to manage bookings are available at one low cost ($49) for Pro subscribers. We charge the lowest booking fees of all competitors in our category (1.5%) and offer free Viator and offline bookings to increase savings as you grow your customer base.   

We work with small businesses, growing teams, and global brands to help them realise their business goals and scale operations.   

You can explore our booking management system for free by starting a 14-day trial (no credit card required).

After the trial ends, you can upgrade to our Pro subscription to keep growing your business with Bókun.  If you have any questions, our customer support team is always happy to help! 

Related reads: 

• Creating a booking system in Excel: How it works + alternatives
• Top-rated activity booking software (Bókun + 4 others)
• Tour & activity booking system: Pricing comparison guide