Addressing Venice Tours Booking Challenges

The team at Venice Tours has historically been very proactive in finding new sales channels. When they contacted us, their goal was to grow their distribution network, seeing significantly more distribution opportunities through Bókun's connectivity partners. 

Venice Tours already had their own booking system acting as their source of truth, so they chose to connect to Bókun through an API (application programming interface), known as Bókun’s Inventory Service feature.

The tour company introduced Datagest to Bókun as their third-party technology partner, which helped connect Venice Tours to Bókun via an existing API. Using a third-party provider like Datagest is a good option for companies that don’t have the resources to build the connection themselves.

Next, Venice Tours worked closely with Datagest and Bókun’s dedicated Account Manager to make connections to 36 OTAs and resellers through the Bókun Marketplace.



As Venice Tours offers a diverse range of products, tours, and services, Datagest created a unique code and connection for each product. The unique codes allowed Venice Tours, a complex business with over 100 experiences, to offer several options for each tour or experience.

Introducing a Seamless Implementation

Through Bókun’s Marketplace, Venice Tours connected with resellers and OTAs, where any bookings made through the Bókun Marketplace get fed back through the API to Venice Tours. 

Although the technical aspects were quite complex, for Venice Tours, working with Bókun simplified their processes as they could see all their bookings in one place on their own system. 

The API connection with Bókun synced Venice Tours’ availability across all connected channels, which updated all experiences simultaneously and prevented double bookings.

Due to the complex nature of Venice Tours’ diverse range of product and technical requirements, Bókun has proven invaluable in facilitating these connections. 

“The development took a couple of months of work, but we saw the benefits from the connection almost right away. I don’t remember any difficulties because we received really good support from Bókun on the technical side. So it was easy, and when it was done, all our products were connected directly to the tour operators through the Bókun platform. Now when we get a new supplier, the first thing we request is that they must connect to Bókun.” - Giuseppe Mattiazzo, Venice Tours

Venice Tours shared that it was really important for them to have a system that can connect everything and every kind of customer.

Results & Benefits

Working with Bókun, Venice Tours was able to effortlessly connect to top travel agents, synchronize bookings, avoid overbookings, and also offer several products and add-ons. 

“We made 36 connections with other tour operators. We connected with Expedia, Hellotickets, Klook, and several others, and they are working well as they are all key connections.” –Giuseppe Mattiazzo, Venice Tours 

If they had to do this alone, without the technical abilities, this would have been a challenge. Thanks to the help and assistance they received from Datagest and Bókun’s dedicated Account Manager, their revenue has increased fivefold and they can now focus on offering top tours and services that their clients love. 

Venice Tours shared that the Account Management team at Bókun knew the business well which was a key point for success. They were working with several different ResTech companies in 2022, but now they just work with Bókun. 

The main reason the tour company chose us as a long-term partner was the better service they received and an all-in-one platform that is more usable and user-friendly than any other solution they’ve tried.

Other Key Operational Improvements: 

• Bókun’s Inventory Service allowed Venice Tours to stay with their current system as one source of truth and add distribution on top
• Synced distribution networks make availability management simpler and prevent overbookings
• Venice Tours can bundle products, and add upsell and cross-sells using unique codes that identify the ticket option

The Bókun Solution and Features in the Spotlight

Although Bókun’s distribution network was a huge draw for Venice Tours, there were several other features they took advantage of, like building an easy and quick website for their tours. 

“We had the possibility to have different websites built in less than one hour using the Bókun web builder.” – Giuseppe Mattiazzo, Venice Tours 

In addition to the website, a widget that translated the website into several languages also helped boost sales. Since Venice Tours wanted to grow the B2C market, offering a website in five languages helped scale their booking capacity as they could cater to several markets.

“Our idea was to have websites in several languages, and for us, the French, German and Spanish markets were very important. We also created the website blog and activated the Buy Now, Pay Later option. Bókun helped us cater to these European markets.” – Giuseppe Mattiazzo, Venice Tours

Venice Tours has taken full advantage of Bókun’s features, such as calendar booking widgets for some products on their website and Google Things To Do. Along with Inventory Service, availability checks, reservations, and bookings, including booking amendments and cancellations, Venice Tours has been able to grow their business.

Venice Tours wanted to use the website that was created with Bókun’s CMS as one of the main platforms, where they sold directly to their clients. Their goal was to use Bókun to increase the share of their B2C sales.

Website Building

Venice Tours used Bókun’s free domain and bookable website builder to get online direct bookings and integrate with Bókun.

Inventory Service 

Venice Tours connected their existing system to Bókun via Datagest’s API, allowing them to find more reselling opportunities and OTA connections. 

Calendar Booking Widgets 

With calendar booking widgets on their website, Venice Tours’ clients can now book tours more easily. 

Multilingual Widgets 

Clients from other markets can access the website and book tours in their language, opening up opportunities for Venice Tours to make more bookings across several markets. 

Client Lessons Learned

Venice Tours learned about the impact of connecting with several suppliers while consolidating everything into one system. 

The Marketplace provided a huge opportunity and so Venice Tours needed to better understand how they could leverage this opportunity. The tour company learned new ways to reach thousands of potential customers to sell their products to, for which the partnership with Bókun played a key role.

Conclusion

Venice Tours overcame the challenge of increasing the company’s sales, linking services to 36 OTAs and resellers. By taking advantage of Bókun’s Inventory Service, where they could set up an API with technical support from Datagest, Venice Tours could achieve a 98% YoY growth, increase their revenue by 400%, and prevent overbookings. 

Start your free 14-day trial today 

Bókun's mission is to help your tour and activity business generate more bookings with less work. Start your free 14-day trial today to explore our software can help you save time and grow your business.