Unfortunately, if you aren’t careful, opening many different distribution channels can lead to overbooking situations where you have too many people signed up for your tours. Contrary to what one would think, this isn’t a nice problem to have. In similar cases, you have to either reschedule or cancel bookings; there’s no other way around it. Both these choices can significantly impact the overall guest experience and can lead to negative reviews and refunds. Between managing so many sales channels and dealing with the challenges of running a tourism company on a daily basis, I know how easy it is to get into a situation where you have sold more tickets than available. To make things a little less complicated, I have created a guide that will teach you how to avoid overbooking.

Why do overbookings occur?

Overbookings can occur for plenty of reasons. Sometimes it is due to human error, and other times, it is due to systemic issues. It is essential to understand which of these two types of problems is the leading cause of your overbookings. While training can help your staff avoid mistakes that they usually make when managing reservations, systemic issues can be trickier.

Systemic overbooking issues happen when you accept bookings from multiple channels (such as OTAs, direct, walk-in, etc.) and receive two reservations for the same spot on your tour. If you’re lucky, you can just hire an additional tour guide and split the participants into two or more groups. Keep in mind that this is the best-case scenario. In reality, we all know how difficult it is to hire a guide with short notice. Reducing overbookings can be challenging, but with my tips, you’ll be able to improve the situation in no time.

Four ways to reduce overbookings

If you’re asking yourself how to avoid overbooking, you can try the following strategies.

Increase staff training

If you’re receiving a lot of overbookings due to your staff making mistakes when using your reservation system (it doesn’t matter if it’s an old-fashioned notebook, an Excel spreadsheet, or a dedicated software), I’ve got an easy fix. In these cases, it is always good to organize a training refresher for existing employees and ensure that new hires fully know the importance of entering reservations correctly and thoroughly.

If you work with OTAs, you may also want to teach them how to open and close inventory on their admin portals. While some owners and managers prefer to keep these channels off limits to staff, the last thing you want is overbookings coming in during a high-demand period and your team has no way to close them.

Offer incentives to the guides for last-minute tours

Another option to limit overbookings is by offering extra benefits for freelance guides who take on last-minute tours. It goes without saying that the most effective incentive is a higher pay rate. Based on the size and value of the overbooking, this may or may not be worth it. While this strategy doesn’t help reduce the number of overbookings you receive, it eases the impact they can have on guests.

Reduce your distribution channels

Suppose you are experiencing overbooking because you have too many channels to manage and not enough hours in the day. In that case, you can think about cutting the number of distribution channels you work with. They could be some underperforming OTAs, wholesalers, local resellers, etc. When considering this option, focus on the ones that create more work than value.

Sadly, this choice could be detrimental to your bottom line because it limits the reach of your business. This is particularly true for OTAs, which often have an international audience, and you know how difficult it is for SMEs to reach overseas customers through typical marketing strategies. Luckily, there are a few other options that you can try first before limiting your distribution channels.

Use a booking system.

A booking system is one of the best ways to reduce overbookings. A complete booking solution empowers you to sell tickets online, receive reservations, and manage your distribution channels, which may include online travel agencies like Viator, GetYourGuide, and Expedia, as well as local resellers and your own website. These booking solutions allow your clients to book directly through your website and, at the same time, they show your actual capacity on every channel in real time. They can generally integrate with both your website and OTAs to provide a seamless management system where you can open or close your availability as needed. Similarly, the inventory is automatically adjusted when bookings are made or canceled.

A booking system can also help you stay organized by creating guest lists for your tours or activities, sending out automatic confirmation and reminder emails to your guests, and generating sales reports. They can even send out emails reminding your customers to leave you an online review so potential guests can see how amazing your services are! Thanks to these features, you can save a significant amount of time which you can use to focus on growing your company and keeping your guests happy.

Regiondo, the all-in-one solution for the leisure industry

With more than 4,000 customers around Europe, Regiondo is the leading booking system for tours, activities, and destinations. Regiondo allows you to sell tickets online, manage bookings, and connect with the leading OTAs. It gives you all the tools you need to grow your business faster. With our software, you can create your offers once and push them through 230+ sales channels without managing each listing individually. The integrated channel manager will show the correct availability on every platform in real time, helping you avoid double-bookings.

Schedule a demo today to learn more about how Regiondo can help you streamline your business, reduce overbookings, and sell more online.

The post How to avoid overbooking as a tour & activity provider in 2022 appeared first on Regiondo.

Having a solid presence on the leading OTAs can bring valuable benefits, from increasing your online visibility to generating more bookings during the low season. In this article, I will share eight OTA marketing strategies that you can use to boost sales and improve your brand awareness. If you’re willing to put in the effort, you’ll get excellent results in no time.

What do OTAs do?

Even though OTA stands for Online Travel Agency, OTAs are not very similar to their retail counterparts. While traditional travel agencies are focused on organizing tailored trip arrangements for their clients, OTAs are more akin to enormous digital catalogs that aggregate offers from thousands of different suppliers, empowering users to compare many options on the fly. They also let travelers share their experiences by writing reviews: a fantastic tool that helps visitors make more informed decisions. During the last ten years, OTAs have become increasingly popular in industries such as hotel bookings, flights, and more recently, in the “tours & activities” industry.

Why should you partner with OTAs?

The answer is pretty straightforward: OTAs will give you access to more potential customers. Have you tried searching on Google for tours and activities in a certain destination? Rest assured that the first results will be pages from the biggest OTAs.

Online travel agencies are marketing powerhouses that attract millions of tourists each month. There are no better allies if you’re looking for ways to grow your presence on the internet, and we all know how hard this can be. With OTAs, you’ll get more bookings and, at the same time, you’ll be able to save on your advertising budget. Sounds too good to be true, right?

What you need to keep in mind

Unfortunately, the gift of visibility comes with strings attached. Using OTAs isn’t free; quite the contrary! You’ll usually have to pay commissions that range between 20% and 30% of the price of your tickets. The exact amount depends on multiple factors, such as the policies adopted by each platform, your sales volume, and the kind of experiences you offer. These fees can quickly erode your profit margins if you’re not careful. For this reason, you should focus on getting most of your bookings through direct channels (e.g., your official website, via email, on-premise, etc.).

Online travel agencies can come in handy to score some last-minute reservations and for filling up capacity that otherwise would be wasted. Similarly, they can lend you a hand if you have trouble gaining momentum during the low season, but depending too much on them could be a fatal business decision. However, thanks to my OTA marketing strategies, you’ll learn how to increase your visibility on these platforms and take advantage of them to get more direct bookings. The first step is relatively painless: you simply need to understand who your customers are.

How to increase your visibility & sell more with OTAs

Understand your audience to choose the right OTA(s)

When it comes to planning a marketing strategy, you need to have a deep understanding of your target audience. Knowing who your customers are, their needs, and where they come from is paramount for choosing the right OTA(s). Each online travel agency boasts unique characteristics and attracts different kinds of travelers. For example, Civitatis is extremely popular in Spanish-speaking countries, while people in the United States prefer Viator.

When you have found an OTA that can be a good fit for your activity, it’s time to dig up the dirt. Ask your colleagues if they had any bad experiences with that particular agency, double-check its policies, and verify if it offers some proper customer support. Before choosing a particular agency as your partner, you must be 100% sure it’s the right one.

Find the perfect OTA mix

As we have seen, different OTAs attract different kinds of people. Therefore, collaborating with multiple travel agencies is a wise idea if you want to broaden the horizons of your business. It’s a win-win situation: you’ll amplify your visibility on search engines and reach more demographics at the same time. In general, it’s a good practice to diversify your distribution strategy. Relying too much on one channel can harm your growth and hamper the company’s future development. If you want to gain exposure, never put all your eggs in one basket.

Choose OTAs that support your booking system

While choosing your distribution partners, you must check if they support your booking system. Trust me on this: manually updating your availabilities, especially if you decide to collaborate with multiple OTAs, is a recipe for disaster. You’ll have to waste plenty of time on such a menial task, and even if you’re laser-focused on it, mistakes can be made.

If you’re looking for a booking system that can be integrated with all the major OTAs and resellers, check out Regiondo. We’ve established solid partnerships with Viator, GetYourGuide, Klook, and other online travel agencies to help you get all the visibility you want and need. For more information, book a free demo with one of our consultants.

Work on your photos and descriptions

OTAs can provide you with a lot of visibility, but remember that they do the same for your competitors as well. You’re jostling with hundreds of other providers to reach the same customers, and standing out is not easy. The harsh truth is that in such a crowded environment, the first impression is the last impression.

That’s why you need to take care of our listings with meticulous attention to detail. For this purpose, eye-catching photography is an absolute must: after all, a picture is worth a thousand words. I suggest posting tons of photos of people enjoying your tours and activities so the readers can easily see themselves in their shoes.

Similarly, the description plays a crucial role in intriguing a potential customer. As marketers know, data don’t resonate with human beings because our decisions are mainly driven by emotions. Instead of focusing too much on the characteristics of the experience you’re offering, describe the incredible memories your visitors will be able to share after participating.

Build brand awareness the right way

Even if you’re getting more visibility, catching the full attention of the visitors is one hell of a problem. The sad truth is that people look at tours and activities on OTAs like they’re groceries in a supermarket. In other words, they don’t care who the provider is; they’re just interested in finding something fun to do while on vacation. If tourists perceive your experiences as a commodity, they’ll base their decisions solely on the cost. Competing on price is a slippery slope, and engaging in a race to the bottom with your competitors could be catastrophic. Increasing brand awareness should be your top priority if you want to keep the prices steady without losing sales. A smart way to do it is to print your logo on some shirts and give them to your staff. This way, your logo will be clearly visible in all the photos taken by your customers.

Take care of your online reputation

OTAs rank their experiences using complex algorithms that take into account a multitude of different factors. One key element is your online reputation, which means that the more positive reviews you have, the more visibility you’ll get in return. Ideally, you should encourage your guests to leave reviews and take the time to answer their feedback. The reality is that reaching out to them one by one would be a humongous time sink. Luckily, with Regiondo you can enable automatic feedback requests after each booking. In addition, you can direct customers to your TripAdvisor listing using our connection with TripAdvisor Review Express.

Improve the booking experience on your website

I’ve already mentioned it multiple times: the point of partnering with OTAs is to get more visibility. When people are interested in your offer, there’s a huge chance they’ll decide to visit your official website to get more information. This is the perfect opportunity to convince them to book some of your tours and activities, possibly by using your direct channels.

First, you must give a clear structure to your website so that visitors can find the necessary information without hassle. That’s easier said than done, but don’t worry: you can find some valuable tips in this guide.

Second, you need to make it easy for users to book your activities online. Undoubtedly, allowing people to book a tour with a few clicks is one of the reasons why OTAs are so successful.

Regiondo’s booking widget can be integrated into every website without any effort on your side; our onboarding team will take care of it in no time. With this amazing feature, you can offer your customers the same smooth booking experience provided by OTAs without paying their commissions!

Use a channel manager

Managing multiple sales channels requires plenty of attention, especially when dealing with big OTAs. Regiondo’s channel manager allows you to push your offers through more than 230 online travel agencies and resellers without needing to manage each listing individually. It’s a convenient tool to show your availability on every platform in real time, helping you avoid double-bookings. Regiondo will also keep track of your bookings through each channel, so you know where your offers perform best.

Getting the most out of OTAs is possible — with the right tools

OTAs are a valuable partner for every provider of tours and activities. They’ll give you access to more potential customers and broaden the reach of your business. Of course, using OTAs isn’t free. You will often pay high fees (up to 30%), significantly reducing your profit margins. I’m confident that my OTA marketing strategies will help you to get better results, but if you want to achieve significant improvements, you need to invest in the right tools.

With Regiondo, you can get up to 35% more bookings, and thanks to our channel manager, you can manage your reservations and distribute your offers on over 230 OTAs with just one click. For more information, book a free demo with one of our consultants.

The post 8 OTA marketing strategies to increase your visibility & sell more appeared first on Regiondo.

You want to promote your business to a wider audience? Make it visible to everyone? Let’s talk about our new partnership with Civitatis and how to improve your visibility.  

What is Civitatis ? 

Civitatis is the leading Online distribution company of Tours and activities in Spanish among the main destinations worldwide with more than 67.000 activities in 3.000 destinations spread over 140 countries.  Since its creation in 2008, more than 10 million customers have filled their trip with Civitatis. If you are looking for a bigger audience, Civitatis is made for you! 

What are the benefits as Regiondo’s user? 

Why should you choose Civitatis as a selling channel for your offers? Let’s go into four mains benefits, for you as an operator:  

• Powerful visibility with less budget: Civitatis is an OTA, with a massive budget and a website highly optimize into SEO search, always apparearing as the first website into actvities and tours on search engines. Use this opportunity as a weapon to save your time and decrease your advertising budget. Let Civitatis’ marketing team do the job for you. 
• Reach a massive audience: Getting listed in Civitatis, is a golden opportunity to reach customer that they are targeting. More than 3 million visitors per month are visiting Civitatis’ website. All very interested to book an activity during their holidays or want to find a new and amazing tours to do with their kids during the weekend. You can take this chance to put your offer in front of the stage.  
• Optimize your offer and play with price strategy: You are the one who’s deciding which offer to promote into Civitatis. Select the tours and activities relevant for Civitatis’ target. You can optimize your result by proposing some packages and use a price strategy to sell more. Test and compare with your actual results, but we can assure you will be fulfilled.  

• A customer journey optimized: Civitatis put a lot of efforts into their website to immersive the user into the best experience.  They push their website into a journey where user wants to walk around, thanks to an ergonomic design, easy to understand and refined. 

Put your company into the next level by selling your offer to a new audience. Save your time and optimize your budget to develop and dedicate more energy on other activities.   

Who will be the best fit for Civitatis?  

Obviously, operators who are selling their tours in Spanish-speaking countries will love this new opportunity, but now they are etablished all over european countries as France, Italy, Spain, Portugal… you can benefit of their 10 years of experience in online selling of tours and activities.  

You can sell more by filling last minute bookings. With our solution you can manage your sells into OTA and other channels in the same place. This booking solution will simplify your booking management, by getting all your booking in real-time.  

And the ice on the cake? Get detailed sales reports, so you know which channel is performing the best, to allocate resources efficiently.   

How can you connect to Civitatis?  

If you don’t have booking system provider: Register to Civitatis requires complex integration process, therefore it is highly recommended to partner with a sponsored booking system provider.  

We’re proud to announce that Regiondo is one of the recommended providers to connect with Civitatis, so we can help you to use this exciting channel in the most efficient way. Talk to one of our experts here. 

By integrating Civitatis in your selling channel, means that you can manage all you offer directly into your backoffice. 

If you are a Regiondo user: Nothing could be easier; all you have to do is activate this little button here  

The post Regiondo signed a strategic partnership with Civitatis   appeared first on Regiondo.