13 years
If you look up "tours affiliate programs" in Google, there are some options, but the commissions aren't going to be as good because there are two middlemen:
Tour provider > Affiliate provider > Hostel > Customer
Hostel tour desks
Tour Desk Operations
This section of the HostelManagement.com forums is about tour desk operations.
Many backpackers want to go on tours. Offering tours or tour ticket sales can bring in additional revenue, as well as help backpacers to have a good time.
There are a couple of ways to offer tours:
- Offer tours directly for a price like at Arnott's Lodge in Hawaii: http://www.arnottslodge.com/activity.htm
- Offer tours for free like at this Maui hostel: http://www.mauihostel.com/tours.html or a combination of free and paid tours like at HI New York: http://www.hinewyork.org/activities.shtml
- Sell tickets for tours at an activities desk by establishing relationships with local tour operators. The hostel's tour desk would probably be able to take a 20% to 30% commission on the tour sale.
One advantage of the last method is that it can be used to offer additional income to the front desk at no cost to a hostel. Employee morale at some hostels is not good partly because of low wages. Offering commissions on tour bookings to front desk staff can be a way to help that situation.
- Comments
13 years
We also started with offering excursions and tour in our hotel we are working together with a local tour agency.
Our customer realy like it.
12 years
We recently started HostelHiker Tours, Trips, & Shuttle Service by partnering with the local hostels. It's great for both businesses. There are two challenges that I see:
1. It's hard to keep the cost to the guest low enough to still be able to afford the tour. It can be done by setting minimums, e.g., require at least 5 people signed up to go. I hate to have to cancel a tour because there is not enough people to warrant the cost.
2. There are a lot of permits, fees, and insurance that most don't know about. Some cities require a tour guide certification if one directly or indirectly collects money for the tour. Vehicle operations are also very restrictive, e.g., carrying more than 8 passengers requires motor carrier authorization and millions in liability insurance coverage even if indirectly collecting any amount of money.
By partnering a tour company and hostel, it helps split up the risk and costs.
12 years
Does anybody know aboutgood apps or ideas to sell tours online, I´m currently trying to use it with my wordpress account. I have a hostel in Costa Rica and we sell a lot of shuttles, zip-lines, hikes and rafting tours. Any good ideas?
I use Eventbrite to sell tickets online, which can be easily posted inside Wordpress and Facebook. However, I did just some across Rezgo as a tour option, which has that integration capability built in. I will be testing it out this month.
HostelWorld and HostelsClub both have pretty good tour booking portals. You can just link to them.
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