If you’re charging the same rate for your peak Saturday morning departure as your half-empty Tuesday afternoon one, you’re leaving money behind \u2014 on both ends.<\/p>\n
Dynamic pricing fixes that. Rather than setting a flat rate at the start of the season and leaving it alone, dynamic pricing adjusts what you charge based on conditional signals: the time of year, the day of the week, how far out a guest is booking, which channel they’re coming through, and how many seats are left on a given departure.<\/p>\n
Airlines and hotels have operated this way for decades \u2014 and travellers already expect prices to shift based on timing and demand.<\/p>\n
What’s changed is that pricing rules are now built into tour operator booking software, which means a two-person team can capture the same revenue lift without hiring a revenue manager or managing a spreadsheet.<\/p>\n
This guide covers the pricing levers tour operators can pull and how to use each one, playbooks by business type, a step-by-step process for building your first rules, and how to set it all up in B\u00f3kun \u2014 plus a list of other platforms that include dynamic pricing.<\/p>\n
You can adjust rates in a variety of ways with dynamic pricing. Here are the five most common ones for tour operators, along with what each one suits and where to be careful.<\/p>\n
The simplest place to start. Charge more during peak season, holiday weekends, and around local events \u2014 and drop rates in shoulder months to fill seats when demand isn\u2019t as high.<\/p>\n
This pricing trend is already really common among flights, hotels, and rental cars, which makes this the lever with the lowest risk of backlash.<\/p>\n
The thing to watch is making big jumps overnight when seasons shift. A bridge rate in the week or two before peak kicks in lets guests see pricing has moved gradually \u2014 it\u2019s not some sudden spike.<\/p>\n
Saturdays support a higher rate than Sundays. Midweek departures often need a lower one. Most operators price all days identically \u2014 undercharging on their busiest days and overcharging on their slowest ones.<\/p>\n
This lever works best when you have at least a full season of booking data, showing demand by day, so you can adjust rates strategically instead of relying on assumptions.<\/p>\n
These are two related levers that work in opposite directions:<\/p>\n
Before you set up this last-minute rule, check what your booking data actually shows. If most reservations usually come in a few days before departure, that’s just when your customers happen to book \u2014 and raising prices in that window doesn’t attract a new type of buyer; it just charges your regular customers more at the time they’d book anyway.<\/p>\n
This lever only makes sense<\/em> when late bookings are an actual second wave on top of a tour that’s already well-sold \u2014 that’s when there’s real urgency to price into.<\/p>\n Also be aware: large last-minute jumps tend to show up in reviews. A $65 to $73 move is defensible. A $65 to $95 overnight jump is the kind of thing that gets screenshotted for a (bad) review.<\/p>\n Most booking systems let you stack multiple notice ranges within one rule \u2014 60+ days: -15%, 30 to 59 days: -10%, <7 days: +10% \u2014 so you don’t need separate rules for each window.<\/p>\n This lets you charge different rates for your website, OTAs, and contracted resellers \u2014 and you can set this up so you make roughly the same amount per booking, regardless of where it came from.<\/p>\n Here, we suggest:<\/p>\n One thing to check before you do this: some OTAs require your rate on their platform to match your rate everywhere else. If that applies to the OTAs you’re on, channel-specific pricing isn’t an option there \u2014 you’d only be able to use this lever for your website vs. contracted resellers.<\/p>\n Rates step up automatically as a departure fills \u2014 say, +10% at 50% booked and another +10% at 75%.<\/p>\n This has the largest potential upside on peak dates \u2014 and the highest likelihood of guest backlash if you don’t set limits.<\/p>\n Without a ceiling price, an automated rule can keep pushing pricing into ridiculous levels. And a guest who sees a rate that feels outrageous isn’t just unlikely to book; they’re likely to call you out on it. Set a hard ceiling before you turn this one on, and keep the steps small enough that no single jump looks like a surprise.<\/p>\n The lever also requires real-time inventory updates across every connected channel. If your booking system doesn’t send updated, accurate capacity across all your sales channels, you can trigger a price rise on a departure that isn’t actually filling \u2014 or miss the trigger on one that is.<\/p>\n The dynamic pricing strategies you should use depend on your business type. Here are some starting points for each one.<\/p>\n Start with three rules: a high-season and low-season rate, a 60-day early-bird discount, and a lower rate for your quietest time slot. Set them once, revisit each season.<\/p>\n Skip capacity triggers entirely until you have enough volume to see reliable patterns.<\/p>\n Once you have a season of data, add day-of-week rules per product. And time-of-day rules if you’re running multiple departures each day and they’re filling at different rates.<\/p>\n When your most popular departures are selling ahead of schedule, that’s a signal to manually nudge the rate up \u2014 a tour that’s already 70% booked two weeks out has room to earn more from the seats still left.<\/p>\n You can also offer combo experiences and add-ons to raise average booking values.<\/p>\n Keep the base rate steady and cap any peak adjustments tightly \u2014 a $5 to $10 ceiling above your standard rate keeps things defensible.<\/p>\n Reward repeat customers with early booking access or a standing discount you offer directly \u2014 the kind of thing you communicate to regulars personally rather than posting publicly.<\/p>\n And avoid predictable discount patterns; occasional, irregular offers are harder for guests to game than a weekly Tuesday special they can plan around.<\/p>\n This is where dynamic pricing has the most room to work. One-time visitors comparison-shop across listings and aren\u2019t familiar with everybody\u2019s prices \u2014 they’re just looking at what the experience costs today vs. what else is available.<\/p>\n Good levers here: early bird discounts to lock in bookings from travellers who plan ahead and demand-based pricing around seasons, days of the week, or time of day \u2014 if you can see clear patterns in your booking data. Last-minute increases can work too, but keep the steps small \u2014 a $10 to $15 move is reasonable.<\/p>\n Of course, the main thing here is to compare your rates with competitor pricing to make sure you\u2019re still within a reasonable range.<\/p>\n The main risk at this scale is inconsistency \u2014 different locations running the same tour at different prices, or one site quietly undercutting another because rules weren’t standardised from the start. Set the same floors and ceilings across every location before you build any rules, so that no matter how automated pricing moves, it stays in a range that makes sense across your whole operation.<\/p>\n From there, let each location’s booking data drive its own rules. A city centre location and a rural one might have completely different peak days and shoulder periods \u2014 don’t assume the same rules work everywhere just because it’s the same tour. Run the reports by location before you build, and update them separately at each season change.<\/p>\n Now, with everything we\u2019ve covered above, here’s the build sequence.<\/p>\n B\u00f3kun offers dynamic and variable pricing to leverage all the strategies above. Here\u2019s how to set everything up.<\/p>\n Before you build a single rule, pull these four reports in B\u00f3kun. They tell you where your pricing rules will actually do something.<\/p>\n When you create your B\u00f3kun account, you start with one default price catalogue. That’s the rate your direct booking site uses. If you want to offer different rates across channels \u2014 higher rates on OTAs to absorb their commission, separate rates for contracted resellers \u2014 you create additional catalogues.<\/p>\n Go to Experiences > Price catalogues <\/strong>and click Actions > Add catalogue<\/strong>. Give it a descriptive title \u2014 “Viator,” “Agents,” “Resellers,” whatever makes sense \u2014 and save.<\/p>\n Then go into each product you want to apply it to: Experiences overview > click the product > Advanced > Advanced pricing in the product editor<\/strong>. Add the new catalogue there and click Save & Continue<\/strong>, then set the actual prices for that catalogue under Pricing<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Each catalogue can have its own prices and its own price schedules, so your OTA rates can run seasonal pricing independently of your direct rates. When you update a price in a catalogue, it automatically pushes to every channel connected to that catalogue.<\/p>\n Price schedules let you set different base rates for different time periods \u2014 summer vs. winter, weekdays vs. weekends, or any combination.<\/p>\n To create one, go to Experiences > Price schedules<\/strong> in the left-hand navigation and click Add<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Give the schedule a title, a start date, and an end date. Then use the month and weekday toggles to narrow it down further \u2014 you can select specific months and specific days of the week within the same schedule, so “Saturdays and Sundays in July” is one rule, not two. The preview panel on the right shows you every date that falls within the rule over the next two years, so you can verify it before saving.<\/p>\n If you’re running multiple schedules \u2014 say a winter rate and a Christmas rate that overlaps with it \u2014 the schedule at the top of your list takes priority. Put Christmas above Winter, and the right rate applies automatically from December 20 through December 26 without any manual override.<\/p>\n Once you’ve created your schedules, you apply them to individual products.<\/p>\n Go to Experiences > Experiences overview<\/strong>, click the product you want to update, and navigate to Pricing in the product editor.<\/strong><\/p>\n From there, choose the price catalogue and price schedule from the dropdown, enter the prices for that combination, and click Save prices<\/strong>. Once saved, the updated rates push automatically to your booking engine widgets and your Marketplace partner contracts.<\/p>\n This is how you set rates that change based on how far out a guest is booking.<\/p>\n Go to Settings > Product Extensions > Price Modulators<\/strong> and click Add<\/strong>. Select Booking notice price modulator<\/strong> from the list. Then, you\u2019ll set:<\/p>\n Then select which price catalogue and which experiences the modulator applies to. Once set up, go to Pricing > Price catalogue<\/strong> in the left-hand navigation and re-publish your catalogue for the changes to go live.<\/p>\n Rather than working off when someone books, these modulators adjust rates based on the actual departure date \u2014 useful for holiday surcharges or low-season discounts.<\/p>\n Same starting point here as above: Settings > Product Extensions > Price Modulators > Add<\/strong>. This time, select the Discount or price increase<\/strong> option. Then set:<\/p>\n Select the price catalogue and experiences, save, then re-publish your price catalogue.<\/p>\n This is where you set different rates for different types of guests \u2014 adults, children, seniors, groups, or any custom category you need.<\/p>\n Go to Settings > Product Extensions > Pricing categories<\/strong> \u2014 or just type “Pricing categories” into the search bar. By default, your account comes with Adults, Children, and Teenagers. To add a new one, click the blue Add<\/strong> button and give it a title \u2014 “Group,” “Family of four,” “Private tour,” whatever fits your setup.<\/p>\n Dependency rules are what make this useful beyond basic age tiers. To enforce “one adult per child,” go into the child pricing category, set Max depends on another category field to 1, then enable the dependency. You can also set a Max sum for dependent categories \u2014 for example, a maximum of three children and teenagers combined per adult booking, regardless of how they’re split.<\/p>\n Once you create your categories, add them to each product individually in the product editor under Pricing<\/strong>, and set the price per category per schedule.<\/p>\n Go to Experiences > Promo codes<\/strong> and click Add<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Set a percentage or flat discount, restrict it to a date window if needed, and choose whether it applies to a specific experience or works sitewide.<\/p>\n You can also choose whether the discount extends to extras and transfers attached to the booking.<\/p>\n Promo codes stack with other discounts \u2014 if a guest has a promo code and a price modulator applies, B\u00f3kun applies the higher discount.<\/p>\n B\u00f3kun is an all-in-one tour operator software<\/strong><\/a> \u2014 part of the Tripadvisor and Viator family \u2014 that does far more than manage your pricing.<\/p>\n Our toolkit supports all areas of your operations, from booking, resource, and capacity management to customer communications and day-of check-ins.<\/p>\n And we offer some of the strongest growth drivers to get your experiences in front of global audiences: 70+ OTA connections \u2014 we\u2019re the #1 restech partner across major platforms<\/strong>, and we hold advanced partnerships with many of the biggest names, like Viator<\/strong><\/a>, GetYourGuide<\/strong><\/a>, and Google Things to do<\/strong><\/a>. An in-built reseller network with thousands of travel industry partners. And Referral Tracking for you to build a totally custom affiliate network.<\/p>\n Check out the full toolkit below:<\/p>\n We offer all of this at some of the lowest rates around: $49\/month with 1.5% online booking fees and 0% B\u00f3kun booking fees on Viator reservations. (And we give you the flexibility to absorb or pass booking fees to customers \u2014 many operators absorb fees during shoulder seasons to incentivise travellers to book, then pass them to travellers during busy months when they\u2019re more likely to book anyway.)<\/p>\n Explore all B\u00f3kun\u2019s features and see why we\u2019re one of the highest-rated systems \u2014 4.7 stars<\/strong><\/a> \u2014 by starting a 14-day free trial<\/a> (no credit card required).<\/p>\n Dynamic pricing is becoming a popular feature across tour operator software \u2014 any high-quality system should offer it. Here\u2019s a list of the other top-rated names that have now added it to their toolkit.<\/p>\n Read FareHarbor reviews on Capterra<\/em><\/a>\u00a0or <\/em>learn more in our alternatives guide<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Find Peek Pro reviews on Capterra<\/em><\/a> or <\/em>read our alternatives guide<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Find Xola reviews on Capterra<\/em><\/a>\u00a0or <\/em>read our alternatives guide<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Find TripWorks reviews on Capterra<\/em><\/a> or <\/em>read our alternatives guide<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Read Checkfront reviews on Capterra<\/em><\/a>\u00a0or <\/em>read our alternatives guide<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Read Beyonk reviews<\/em><\/a> and <\/em>BookingHound reviews<\/em><\/a>\u00a0orChannel & reseller pricing<\/h3>\n
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Capacity-triggered pricing<\/h3>\n
Playbooks by business type<\/h2>\n
Solo or two-person tour guide<\/h3>\n
Multi-product growing operator<\/h3>\n
Repeat-customer business (locals, classes, rentals)<\/h3>\n
Destination tour (one-time travellers)<\/h3>\n
Multi-location or enterprise operators<\/h3>\n
The do’s &The do’s & don’ts for all business types<\/h3>\n
Do:<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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Don’t:<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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How to build your pricing rules<\/h2>\n
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How to set up dynamic pricing in B\u00f3kun<\/h2>\n
Reporting dashboards \u2014 check these before writing rules<\/h3>\n
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Price catalogues (to offer different rates across your website, OTAs, & partner sites)<\/h3>\n
Price schedules (seasonal & day-of-week rates)<\/h3>\n
Booking-notice price modulators (early bird & last-minute)<\/h3>\n
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Date-based price modulators (holidays, events, & shoulder seasons)<\/h3>\n
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Pricing categories<\/h3>\n
Promo codes<\/h3>\n
B\u00f3kun overview<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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Other tour operator software with dynamic pricing<\/h2>\n
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\n<\/em>learn more in our alternatives guide<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n