Run your tours, capacity and guides from one system

Capacity is the most fragile part of selling tours: if the same morning departure sells through your website, WhatsApp and a booking platform at the same time, you end up dealing with a guest who has no seat at the 5am transfer point. Keeping capacity in a single source of truth matters more in this business than any interface does.

How many separate apps does this need?

  • 01

    Guest mobile app (iOS + Android)

    Tour search, dates and live availability, pricing by party size, deposit or full payment, digital voucher, meeting-point map and direct contact with the guide.

  • 02

    Guide and transfer app

    The day's pax list, hotel-by-hotel pickup order, individual guest check-in, no-show marking, offline operation and end-of-tour expense reporting.

  • 03

    Operator admin panel (web)

    Capacity pool by tour and date, guide-vehicle-driver assignment, booking changes, cancellation policy setup, payment tracking and supplier payouts.

  • 04

    Reseller and partner agency panel (web)

    Partner agencies and hotel concierges enter bookings at their own commission rate, see live capacity, print vouchers and track their running account statement.

What the app includes

  • Departure-time sessions with per-slot block closing
  • Adult, child, infant and student price tiers
  • Seat picking on the vehicle or boat seating plan
  • Included/excluded items plus paid add-ons such as lunch or diving
  • QR voucher scanned and closed at boarding
  • Guide, driver and vehicle assigned against seat capacity
  • Pax manifest with passport or ID data for the insurance list
  • Waitlist on sold-out dates with freed-seat notification
  • Weather cancellation with one-click notice to every booked guest
  • Season calendar with high, low and holiday rates
  • Per-pax settlement lists for museum, restaurant and boat suppliers
  • Post-tour guest rating scored per guide

State of the sector

Most tour sales now come through search results and global booking platforms; those platforms tie the guest to themselves rather than to you, and take a commission on every sale. Brochures left with hotel concierges and bookings handled over WhatsApp make it impossible to sell that same guest a second tour, because there is no record of who actually came. An operator with its own app can still reach the guest's phone after the tour ends, makes the second sale commission-free, and can prioritise its capacity for its own channel.

Metrics that matter here

  • Occupancy rate (seats sold / capacity opened) — The app lists last-minute empty seats at a discount and notifies registered guests, pushing occupancy up.
  • Share of direct sales — A booking that comes through your own app is a sale with no platform commission; as that share grows, profit per guest rises.
  • No-show and last-minute cancellation rate — Pickup time notifications, balance reminders and deposit rules reduce no-shows; guide check-in makes it measurable.
  • Repeat guest rate — When the guest record and the notification channel belong to you, the second tour can be sold without depending on an intermediary.

Common mistakes in this sector

  • Keeping capacity in the app and in Excel at the same time If the old spreadsheet stays in use after the app launches, the two numbers drift apart and you oversell. Capacity has to move to a single source that every sales channel reads from.
  • Leaving the guide app until later Building only the guest app leaves bookings digital while operations stay on paper. With no check-in record, real pax counts, payouts and no-shows cannot be measured; the guide module belongs in the first phase.
  • Hard-coding cancellation and refund rules If cancellation windows and deposit rates that change at the start of each season are written into the code, every change needs a new release and app store approval. These rules should be held as definitions editable from the panel.
  • Trying to add languages afterwards In a data model built on a single-language assumption, the tour description is one field; adding a second language breaks the content structure and every tour has to be re-entered. Language separation belongs in the data model from day one.

Regulation and compliance

Travel agency operation in Turkey falls under Law No. 1618 and requires an operating licence from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism as well as TÜRSAB (Turkish travel agencies association) membership; the app only carries sales for a licensed agency, and vouchers and tour information follow that framework. For package tour sales, the pre-contractual information form and the distance sales contract must be presented digitally, approved and archived. Guest names, passport or ID details and contact information fall under KVKK (Turkey's data protection law, aligned with GDPR): a privacy notice, retention periods and the guide's access rights to the pax list must all be defined. The e-Arşiv invoicing obligation on each sale is met through GİB integration.

The real challenges in this sector

  • A single capacity pool with an overselling lock

    The same tour date sells through your website, mobile app, reseller panel and external booking channels. Unless capacity sits in one source and is decremented with a row-level lock at the moment of booking, you oversell. A ten-minute temporary seat hold is placed before payment and released automatically if payment fails; every channel reads the same number, and collisions are resolved by channel priority.

  • Building the hotel pickup order automatically

    On a day tour guests board at different hotels; an order the guide builds by hand is rebuilt every morning and delays compound down the line. Pickup times calculated backwards from the tour arrival time using hotel coordinates are pushed to guests the evening before, and when someone cancels at the last minute the order and times are recalculated and updates go out to the affected guests.

  • Deposits, remaining balance and the cancellation window

    Most tours sell on a deposit, with the balance collected before the tour date and partial refunds applied by cancellation window. The deposit can be held as a pre-authorisation on the virtual POS; balance reminders go out automatically, and a booking not paid by the defined cut-off returns to the capacity pool and the seat goes back on sale.

  • A guide app that works offline

    Tour routes usually run through valleys, mountain roads and rural stops with weak coverage; if the guide cannot check guests in, the pax count does not add up at the end of the day. The day's list is downloaded to the device in the morning, check-ins and no-shows are stored locally, and everything syncs with a transaction ID once coverage returns, so no record is written twice.

  • Multilingual tour content and foreign card payments

    International guests expect the tour description, inclusions and exclusions, cancellation terms and voucher in their own language, and usually pay with a non-Turkish card. Content fields are stored separately per language, prices are shown in the selected currency while settlement closes in Turkish lira, and the 3D Secure flow is tested separately against foreign-card scenarios.

Required integrations

  • 3D Secure payments and partial refunds via iyzico, PayTR or Craftgate (Turkish payment providers)
  • Bank virtual POS for instalments and deposit pre-authorisation
  • e-Arşiv invoicing and GİB (Turkish Revenue Administration) integration, including invoices for international guests
  • WhatsApp Business API for vouchers, pickup times and balance reminders
  • Maps and routing service for hotel pickup ordering and live transfer tracking
  • Capacity sync API for external booking channels and reseller agencies

Who this page is for

  • Local agency selling one standard day-tour type (boat trip, jeep safari, city tour)

    Scope stays narrow: session-based inventory, per-person pricing, deposits, QR voucher and guide check-in are enough. Package tours and a reseller panel are unnecessary; put the budget into the guest app and occupancy notifications.

  • Incoming agency working through a hotel and concierge network

    The real need is the reseller panel: a separate login per hotel with its own allotment, commission rate and running account. The guest app comes second; first let concierges book and print vouchers without paper.

  • New agency building multi-day culture or nature tours

    One-day inventory is not enough here: day-by-day itinerary, accommodation and supplier chain, deposit-plus-balance schedule and multilingual content must enter the data model in phase one. The guide app is planned for multi-day offline use.

A phased plan that splits the budget

  1. 1

    Phase 1 — Selling and vouchering a single day-tour type 5-7 hafta

    Delivers the guest app, the agency panel and one shared inventory pool: opening tours, dates and sessions, availability, per-person pricing, 3D Secure payment, QR voucher and e-Arsiv invoicing (Turkey's electronic invoice system). It sells on its own; operations can still run on paper while money and inventory are digital from day one.

  2. 2

    Phase 2 — Guide app and field operations 4-6 hafta

    Adds the guide and transfer app: daily pax list, hotel pickup order, offline check-in, no-show marking, vehicle and driver assignment, supplier settlement lists. It comes second because pickup logic and settlement rules can only be shaped correctly on top of real booking data collected in phase one.

  3. 3

    Phase 3 — Reseller network, external channels and multilingual content 4-6 hafta

    Brings in the panel for partner agencies and hotel concierges, commission rates, running account statements, inventory sync with external booking channels, extra languages and multi-day package tours. It is left last because opening outside channels before the inventory lock and check-in records are proven only multiplies the oversell risk.

Typical scope and timeline

A typical starting scope: the guest app (tour listings, availability, payment, digital voucher), the guide app (pax list, hotel pickup order, offline check-in) and the operator panel (tour-date-capacity, bookings, guide and vehicle assignment, payment tracking). Payment provider, e-Arşiv (Turkey's mandatory e-invoicing system) and WhatsApp notifications are included; the reseller panel and external channel sync are handled in a second phase.

Estimated timeline: 10-16 weeks

Off-the-shelf or custom build?

Topic Off-the-shelf Custom build
Time to first sale A ready booking platform can be selling within the week, a genuine advantage for a new agency running one standard day-tour. Custom work takes weeks even when phased; the payoff is inventory and cancellation rules shaped around how you actually operate.
Tour-specific workflows Packaged tools handle booking and payment well; hotel pickup ordering, guide settlement and boat seating plans usually fall outside them. Back-calculating pickup times from arrival, per-pax supplier settlement and offline check-in only work when written to your own flow.
Cost structure: commission and subscription A monthly fee plus per-booking commission is cheap at low volume; as sales grow, that commission line repeats every season. Custom development is a one-time build plus maintenance; there is no per-guest commission, but releases, app stores and infrastructure stay your responsibility.
Guest data and portability Some platforms share guest contact details only partly and limit exports, though in return they carry the data-protection and payment compliance load themselves. In your own app the booking, passport and contact records sit in your database; in exchange, privacy notices, retention periods and access rights become your responsibility.

Sector glossary

Pax
The number of people on a tour. Inventory, vehicle capacity, supplier settlement and guide bonus are all discussed in pax, meaning heads rather than bookings.
Allotment
Seats on a given date reserved in advance for one channel or reseller. Give a hotel ten seats of allotment and they stay blocked even unsold, with a separate release date defined.
SIC (seat in coach)
Selling a single seat on a shared vehicle, so separate bookings ride together. The opposite is a private tour, and pricing, pickup order and cancellation rules differ between the two.
Handling/partner agency
A partner agency that sends its own guests and books on your behalf, each with its own commission rate, dedicated inventory and month-end running account; not treated like a direct guest.
Voucher
The document proving a guest's right to join a tour, carrying tour, date, pax, meeting point and inclusions; the guide scans it at boarding to close the booking and confirm head count.

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