Overview
This page provides a general overview of the Group Tours capabilities supported within TripBuilder. While this page doesn't detail each feature, it provides a clear organisation for the topic onboarding and acts as an “index” for additional support articles.
The document is structured in three main areas:
- A general introduction to this page and Group Tours functionality at a high level and focused on business value.
- How Group Tours are materialised in TripBuilder from the user’s perspective while conducting a booking flow, introducing the main application areas and terminology. A step-by-step booking flow example (from search to book) is presented for a better understanding of concepts.
- “How to…” guides where business and operational actions (supply handling, creation of a Group Tour, pricing definition, markups and kickbacks, and Group Tour management) are described at a high level, referencing then the support articles that provide the required detail.
Group Tours supported by TripBuilder
Nezasa’s core solution - TripBuilder - supports Group Tours handling. This functionality is available for all clients under the Monetise or Maximise pricing plans.
TripBuilder offers a solution for group tour operators looking to increase efficiency and revenue and deliver their customers unique travel experiences. Tour operators can use pricing management functionalities, group tour fulfilment capabilities, fixed group tour modules, and flexible pre and post-programs.
These features, combined with real-time data and inventory management, API support, and integration with other systems, give tour operators the tools they need to manage their business and potentiate growth.
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Why should I use Nezasa’s Group Tours solution? Simplify group tour creation with our innovative solution. Reduce manual processes and enjoy significant time savings. Experience the ease of creating group tours in TripBuilder with the same efficiency our platform always provided for FIT tours. |
On this page, you can find detailed information about the various dimensions included in the Group Tours solution and instructions on how to achieve them.
- Automation & Flexibility: the ability to create and manage tours without time-consuming tasks.
- Inventory Management: respond quickly to changes and gives you real-time data on availability.
- Profit & Costs control: easy to control the revenue management around group tours.
- Scalability: the opportunity to expand offers and grow businesses.
- Integrations: easily integrated with other systems like your CRM.
- Security: sensitive customers’ online data is safely stored.
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Solution components
The Group Tours solution is supported by TripBuilder’s already existing components/product areas:
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The Booking Process consists of three steps:
- Discovery: selection of a curated trip based on a pre-defined itinerary and services or creating a trip from scratch.
- Planner: personalise the trip with live availability from an external supply or inventory-based products in an iterative process with the traveller.
- Checkout: traveller and payment data collection.
- Customer care: booking manager with an overview of all itineraries and services, pricing, booking status, documentation and ability to perform booking changes.
- Inventory: system area to manage itinerary templates, create own contracted supply (inventory products) and handle Non-Bookable Content such as descriptions and images.
- Settings: control the solution in different aspects, such as markup settings, user management or cancellation and processing fees.
For a more detailed explanation of each Tripbuilder component, please take a look at What is TripBuilder?
Basics for a Group Tour
TripBuilder offers various possibilities to build and display Modules and Templates on its front end (booking process Discovery → Planner → Checkout). These items can be reused when defining different trips or creating different itineraries for the same trip.
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A basic Trip setup:
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Modules can act as exchangeable tour components and are displayed as exchangeable options in the front end. The Module type needs to be set in the Cockpit Inventory depending on the content. Also, different Module Types may result in the tour display in the Front end differently.
As represented in the above diagram, modules can be Flexible or Fixed depending if the user, when defining a specific trip/tour, you can remove them (or not) from the template structure without impacting the trip organisation/logic defined by the Tour Operator.
A Multi-day Tour (MDT), defined by a Template, comprises predefined locations and days to visit for a group or individual, which include products that could be replaced (or not) depending on its fixed / flexible configuration.
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Please note: A Group Tour is a Multi-day Tour with additional logic related to group handling, where travellers will all be part of a joint group for a specific departure date. |
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Know more: The different types of templates and modules supported by TripBuilder in Itinerary Templates - Overview and Modules. |
Example of booking a Group Tour
Due to the extreme feature flexibility provided by TripBuilder (natively and also for Group Tours), it's challenging to present an example covering all supported feature combinations. Instead, for reference, we present an example of a booking flow for the Group Tour Highlights of Namibia followed by dedicated sections where additional/variant features are shown.
- In Discovery, you can see the Group Tours available for selection or conduct a textual search. Each available Group Tour is presented with a slideshow of images, the country name where the tour will take place, the tour title, a short description, the travel duration and a reference price.
- After selecting a Group Tour, it's possible to see its details, with additional tour attributes and the day-to-day plan for the itinerary. At the top of the screen (right side), you can select the tour start date (from a calendar or list of dates - depending on the number of available departure dates), the number and age of PAX and reference to hotel preferences. At the end of the screen, a textual area enables further information on terms and conditions specific to the tour.
- After selecting a tour start date and number/age of PAX, the details for the main trip are presented, where for this specific use case, you need to select the number and room topology for the PAX indicated in the previous step.
- Besides the main trip, additional services can also be available, as is in the case, for some specific activities.
- For the select tour, you also need to search and select a flight under the Transports section.
- Finally, the checkout process starts by collecting the traveller's details, availability reconfirmation of all services present in the tour, payment details and the actual booking of services.
Possible variations
- Alternative layout: depending on how the Group Tour is defined, a different layout could be used for presenting the day-to-day plan.
- This different layout is also applicable to the Planner component where instead of having a fixed Main Program, a Stop by Stop structure is presented focusing on the tour locations where the user can have even some flexibility in selecting additional products (for example, the activities in the example screenshots).
- Pre and Extension programs: additional programs, optional and usually smaller compared with the main program, could be made available in the form of a pre-program (before the main program) or as an extension (after the main program).
- Guaranteed Departure: departure dates can be configured with the indication of a Guaranteed Departure, which highlights the information G.D. in different locations of the booking flow.
- Service Level Categories: instead of having a hotel selection based on the number of stars, Service Levels can be defined instead (open for any terminology the Tour Operator would like to use), which are then associated with different products (for example, specific hotels in the case of accommodations).
- Overnight Flights: for the Group Tours containing flights, we also display the details of the flight in Discovery and have a clear distinction when there's an overnight flight.
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Please note: The actual departure date of the tour considers the flight departure date, also when there are overnight flights. |
How to manage supply?
Considering the specific nature of Group Tours, which strongly rely on inventory products, this potentiates the Inventory capabilities already present in TripBuilder. By inventory, we mean products not sourced via a live API, so-called offline products, that can be added and managed via TripBuilder’s Inventory component.
Inventory products can be used in the same way as live supply products. If inventory products are included in an itinerary, and a booking takes place, please ensure the product is booked with your supplier. TripBuilder’s inventory supports eight types of Option Products:
- Accommodation
- Transfer
- Transport
- Transit Activities
- Stop Activities
- Base Service
- Rental Cars
- Upsell Products
Article Inventory Products provides a detailed explanation of each type of Inventory Product and references additional support articles with examples on how to create each one.
The Inventory includes a supplier information feature that lets you track suppliers and link them to specific products in your Inventory. The booking management process must be handled manually when using external suppliers to fulfil inventory needs (without API integration). However, by associating suppliers with inventory products, some automation can be achieved, such as automatically sending emails to the supplier in case of a booking or cancellation.
Please have a look at the article Inventory Supplier Management for more information.
Rate Types
For inventory products, it's possible to define different rate types for each service or room category. Three rate types are available:
- General Rate: a rate that can be used in any template.
- Group Rate: a rate that can only be used for Group Tour templates.
- Flexible Individual Rate: a rate that can be used for FIT templates.
Having rate types for inventory products defines the rules of each product service category that can be selected:
- Group Tour Templates: allow the selection of product categories with General and Group rates.
- Individual Tour Templates: allow the selection of product categories with General and FIT rates
- From-scratch Itineraries: allow the selection of product categories with General
Inventory supply intended for Group Tour templates must be properly set up on Rate Type, otherwise, they won't be considered. Article Inventory Product with Rates types provides further explanation on this topic.
Managing allotments
Allotments are available for accommodations, activities, multi-day tours, and transfers.
For accommodations, an allotment needs to be defined for every single night. All other product types behave differently because the product defines a duration/length. Therefore, the allotment is defined as the starting date only.
Allotment creation and management is an important supply aspect for Group Tours, considering they could be used both on modules or in the scope of multi-day activities (tour module).
Article How to manage Allotments? provides an example of how to add allotments (in this case, in the scope of a Transit Activity).
The article also references how different types of Product Allotments can be searched in Inventory and check the details of each individually.
It's common to use TripBuilder’s reporting capabilities for an aggregate view of all the allotments. The Allotments Sell & Report report can be requested in Cockpit Settings > Reports. The report will be generated in the background, and once ready, an email with the report in CSV format will be sent.
Article How to manage Allotments? explains the key features for allotment management, attributes, searching capabilities, notifications for release dates and report generation.
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How to create a Group Tour?
Group tours are fixed multi-day tours. There are two ways to create them in TripBuilder, based on tour and stop by stop modules. The different module structures allow tour operators to build tours on a more granular approach via multiple products or based on a single product:
- Stop by stop module: allows multiple products such as accommodations, activities, and transfers.
- Tour module: one single inventory product (Transit Activity) that encapsulates the full duration of the tour.
These modules, when fixed, set strict rules for the group tour main program, that is, have a fixed duration and locations. When creating a module in the Inventory, under Module Structure, the user can select Tour and Stop by Stop options.
In the section "Example of Booking a Group Tour", the Group Tour Highlights of Namibia template has been created, resourcing to a tour type module, while the “alternative layout” refers to a stop by stop type module.
Associated with fixed multi-day tours, it's quite frequent to have different service levels that represent different accommodation levels in the tours. TripBuilder allows up to 5 service levels that are managed in Settings.
The article Fixed Multi-Day Tours provides a good overview of how to set up a fixed stop by stop Multi-Day Tour / Group Tour. Besides presenting how to create Managed Service Levels, the article explains how to create a fixed multi-day tour by defining modules, applying the created Service Levels to the Group Tour and adding products such as accommodations, activities and transfers.
The article How to create a Transit Activity for Multi-Day Tours? explains how to create a Transit Activity that can be used in a fixed tour Multi-Day Tour / Group Tour.
The Group Tour template that will be taken as the “blueprint” for the Group Tour must be explicitly set this way upon its creation under the Tour Type field.
A Group Tour template is considered fixed when it contains one or more fixed modules.
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Content Management
The content management for group tours can be managed at different levels.
Tour overall attributes
In the Inventory, it's possible to set Tour attributes for
- Templates
- Modules
- Stop activities and Transit activities
Namely:
- Minimum Age
- Private / Shared tour
- Guaranteed Departure setup
- Physical Difficulty
- Guide language information
- Categories:
- Trip Type
- Target Group
- Theme
Some of the attributes above are used for filtering purposes in Discovery.
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Info sections
Info sections allow defining which information is, for example, included and excluded on each module and template and can be displayed in Discovery, Planner, and Travel Documentation. Information can be either typified (mapped to a title in the info section) or defined as open text.
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Know more: How to create and populate info sections with trip attributes and have them displayed in Discovery, Planner and Travel Summary in Info Section on Templates, Modules and Inventory Activities. |
Pictures
Pictures are quite a common resource that's managed on a dedicated tab at the template or module level.
Itinerary daily descriptions (module type specific)
While the previous Content Management items are generic and applicable for both stop by stop and tour Group Tours, the content management for the itinerary daily descriptions is specific to each.
- A stop by stop based Group Tour will use a day-by-day itinerary description as presented in the article Fixed Multi-Day Tours: Day-by-Day Itinerary Description.
- A tour based Group Tour will use a Transit Activity as presented in the article How to create a Transit Activity for Multi-Day Tours?
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General aspects
When creating a Group Tour template, there are additional aspects in the template configuration that aren't available for Individual Tour templates, reflected in two tabs in the template definition.
Group Tour Config
In this tab, we define the general aspects of the group: default calculation pax (please check the section "How to create a Group Tour?" in the document), pricing currency, min and max pax numbers for the Group and Room Types.
Departure Dates
In the Departure Dates tab, we display the available departure dates for the group and where each departure date can be customised regarding guaranteed departures, guide language, pax reference number and sales price.
Article Group Tour - Template Pricing describes how tabs Group Tour Config and Departure Dates can be configured.
Article Guaranteed Departures Settings on Templates explains how to enable this feature at the template level, define which departure dates are “guaranteed”, and how this information is presented in Discovery, Planner or Customer Care.
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Inventory Flights
Flight configurations on fixed group tour templates allow a Tour Operator to predefine flights, which should be offered as a fixed product included in the tour. After instantiating an itinerary, the configured flights will be searched and instantiated at the same time as the whole itinerary.
In the planner, the flight offers could be restricted to changes or removal based on the set restrictions in the template.
Article Flights Configuration on Templates describes how the configuration of a flight component can be added to a template (for which a Group Tour template is a particular case).
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Know more: How to assign and configure a flight component to a Group Tour template in Flights Configuration on Templates |
How to define Group Tour Pricing?
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Important: To explore pricing strategies for fixed Group Tours, it's required that Service Levels have been previously defined as explained in the section "How to create a Group Tour?" (and more specifically in the article Fixed Multi-Day Tours). |
When creating a fixed module to be used in a Group Tour, TripBuilder provides three approaches to pricing:
- No pricing: the total price of a module is the sum of all product component prices added to the module.
- Room Category pricing: offers an extra dimension for the module price definition by room type and, if required, with different pricing seasons.
- Service Category pricing: allows you to define a fixed price for each Service Level available on the module. Similar to Room Category pricing, it is also possible to define different pricing seasons per Service Category.
Article Fixed Multi-Day Tours: Pricing Types & Allotments presents how to configure each pricing type.
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Main takeaway: By definition, a Group Tour is a template with one or more fixed modules. Different modules have different pricing types: No Pricing, Room Category Pricing or Service Category Pricing, combined within the template. The final sales price of the itinerary will result from each module pricing type. Article Fixed Multi-Day Tours: Pricing Types & Allotments (section Sales price for Fixed Group Multi-Day Tours) provides a clear example of how changing the price type on one module impacts the overall itinerary price. |
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Know more: How to define different price strategies for modules in Fixed Multi-Day Tours: Pricing Types & Allotments. |
Allotment Management
Allotments can be defined for a specific fixed module if the Module Pricing Type field has been set to Room Category Pricing or Service Category Pricing. If configured and allotment management is intended, it's possible to add allotments per departure date as needed.
When planning an itinerary, this will take into consideration the allotment availability. If a booking is conducted, these will be consumed as per the number of PAX (and their ages) defined in the Itinerary.
Please revisit the section "Managing allotments" in "How to manage supply?" for further references on how to manage allotments.
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Please note: There is no relationship between module and product allotments. If a booking is conducted in a module containing allotments, the allotments defined at the product level shall remain unused (e.g. for accommodation, transit activity). |
Inventory accommodation pricing
When creating an inventory accommodation, pricing can be defined based on Pax Ranges or Room Types. The selection is crucial for calculating the price and pax allocation.
Pax Ranges / Group Rates
It's possible to set up rates depending on different pax ranges in modules and multi-day activities. Ultimately, depending on the actual group size will influence the final sales price of the group tour.
This can be defined both for modules
and transit activities.
Room Type occupancy
By selecting Room Types occupancy for an inventory accommodation
the user will be able to define pricing seasons for one (or more) of five possible room types:
- Single Room
- Double Room
- Double Room - Single Occupancy
- Triple Room - Fully Booked
- Quadruple Room - Fully Booked
Article Occupancy-Based Accommodation Pricing explains step-by-step how Room Type occupancy can be defined.
Taking as a baseline the Room Type occupancy defined for modules, TripBuilder provides further flexibility by enabling changes to the allowed occupancies per room type and the occupancy distribution between adults and children allowed.
This allows the creation of an over-occupancy scenario, that is when more people are allowed in a room, for example, a double room with 3 pax occupancy allowed.
On the other extreme, it's possible to create an under-occupancy scenario, that is when fewer people are allowed regarding the standard occupancy of a room, for example, in a double room that allows single occupancy, the PAX in the room pays the standard occupancy rate of the room plus an under-occupancy room supplement.
The article Change Room Type Occupancy explains how over, and under-occupancy can be defined by Room Type and the different types of fees possible to apply to each scenario (for example, percentage over default price, the amount over default price or absolute price).
Inventory accommodations are controlled by the inventory users when building the multi-day tour. The configuration of room types at the module level has no direct dependency on accommodation inventory products referenced in the module. But it should be ultimately backed by its respective overnight hotel references.
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Template Pricing override
In the Departure dates section of a template, it's possible to adjust the sales prices for the different service levels and room types within the fixed multi-day tour. These changes will override the price calculated from the produced and/or modules used in the template.
This approach can be used to conduct pricing adjustments, for example, to make rates more competitive on a certain date or for any other commercial reason, without adjusting every single product.
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Know more: How to override Group Tour pricing at template level in Group Tour - Template Pricing. |
Group Tours Cost Simulation
For fixed multi-day tours (Group Tours included), TripBuilder provides a cost simulation tool that enables a cost preview based on the associated products. The tool considers all the complexity of sales prices resulting from different departure dates, service levels and room configurations. This way, a complete overview of the total sales price that will be made visible to the end customer/traveller is provided, which can be taken as the basis for price refinements/adjustments, when required, by the Tour Operator.
The report output is a file in CSV format, generated on request and delivered by email.
The article Pricing Calculator (for fixed Templates) presents the conditions and restrictions/assumptions taken into consideration for the tour calculation, how the report is requested and the CSV format attained as a result.
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Know more: How to simulate the final sales prices (and cost breakdown) for a Group Tour in Pricing Calculator (for fixed Templates) |
How to define markups and Agency kickbacks?
Setting the correct price on a product or service is the key to profitability, as we saw in the "How to define Group Tour Pricing?" section.
Within the Nezasa TripBuilder platform, you're able to set markups on different levels to define the right selling price for your services. There are three levels of Tour Operator Markups, which can be defined:
- Base Markups
- Markups by Channel
- Markups by Agency
The sales price is calculated in tiers from the supplier's net price. On each tier, a particular markup is added to the previous tier, following the order defined above.
The article “Markup Settings” explains in extent how each tier markup is defined for the different product types, markup categories and rules and how in Customer Care, the user can easily understand and trace which markup rules determine the final / aggregated markup value applied to a component.
Also related to the overall pricing definition of a trip and particularly relevant in the scope of Group Tours is the Agency Commission support provided by TripBuilder.
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Agency Commission (as defined in Nezasa’s support Glossary) Compensation to advertising agencies is based on a percentage of gross revenue sold through such agencies. |
This feature defines the commission (kickback) a Travel Agent gets from the Tour Operator for selling a trip. Commissions are calculated with rule sets for categories or specific product types and can be added to products or templates in the Inventory.
The article “Markup Settings” explains in extent how the Agency Commissions can be defined with:
- commission categories,
- commission for product types,
- rules and
- how to add these definitions to itinerary templates or products.
The general feature applies from Fixed Group Tours to Flex Individual Tours.
At any time, the Travel Agent, while using Planner, can check the commission details applicable to the components present in the selected itinerary.
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Please note: The calculated amount of the commission does not affect the components/group tour prices in the application. They determine the commission (kickback) a Travel Agent will get from the pricing rules (for example, defined by tiered markups) applied to the itinerary. |
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How to manage Group Tours?
TripBuilder’s Customer Care has a dedicated section for managing Group Tours. The article “Group Tours in Customer Care” explains in extent the key features of Group Tour management.
In summary, in the first level, a list of tours is presented, providing:
- Visualisation of all Group Tours that have been published with sort and search capabilities (open text, by state and from/to departure date).
- PAX booked and Total bookings for each Group Tour.
- Which Group Tours have an associated Guaranteed Departure.
- The state associated with each Group Tour.
When selecting a specific Group Tour, additional information is made available, with the following highlights:
- Name
- Departure date and tour dates (not including possible pre/post extensions)
- State
- Flight details
- Group Size
- TripBuilder internal references for the modules and templates that support the Group Tour definition
- Pricing Information
Also associated with the Group Tour, you can check the multiple itineraries created for each traveller group that purchased the Tour and a centralised list with the PAX details for all travellers.
Group Tour States
A Group Tour can be classified in one of three states: On sale, Closed, and Cancelled. The article Group Tours Status and Actions in Customer Care explains the extent of each state, the scenarios for the change, and the itinerary behaviour of each Group Tour state during the planning and checkout phases.
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