An increasing number of tourists are purchasing various tour products and services online. And it’s not just airline tickets or ‘standard’ mass tours. The e-travel market is growing by about a third each year. This trend applies to tours, online sales of excursions, sales of water tours, and seats on buses.
For tour operators, travel agencies, organizers of excursion tours, and water route providers, having their own online sales channel is a matter of development and business sustainability. To expand their target audience, companies selling tours and excursions need to create their own online sales channel, which, under certain conditions, can result in high traffic conversion into actual sales.
WHAT IS NEEDED FOR SUCCESSFUL ONLINE SALES OF EXCURSIONS, WATER TOURS, AND OTHER TOURISTIC PROGRAMS?
The list is well-known and quite straightforward. A tourism company will need:
– Packaging of the tour product (description, visual representation).
– Platform: a website with new functionality, a section on the site, a landing page, or a social media page.
– Software: development or acquisition and proper implementation of ready-made software for sales from the website.
– Implementing a step-by-step plan for transitioning to the new sales model.
WHY 80% ASPIRED YET HAVEN’T TRANSITIONED TO ONLINE TOUR SALES BEFORE
Everything you’ve read above was easier to write than to implement in reality. That’s why over 80% of tourism companies would like to sell online but haven’t done so.
But here’s the good news: today, all of this can be done very quickly, literally within 1 working day.
IS DOING IT YOURSELF ALWAYS COSTLY?
Choosing between creating your own solution or using a ready-made cloud service available on the market is solely the decision of the business owner or manager. The ultimate goal of turning your resource into an online store for tour products can be achieved by both options. The difference lies in time, cost, effort, and expected profit.
Of course, theoretically, you can do it yourself: invest resources and time in developing new functionality and marketing promotion. Hire a team of programmers. However, experts emphasize that such a self-directed path is almost always more costly. Moreover, hiring and managing programmers requires a deep understanding of what they will be doing. In the case of transitioning to online sales, this path is expensive and complex.
Experts provide concrete examples. To launch online sales, a tour company usually starts by revamping its website, turning to web studios in 90% of cases. This is fundamentally wrong: web studios, not being specialists in the tourism business, in online platform construction, or in online sales, almost always offer the tour firm either an unjustifiably complex functionality that requires significant financial and time investments, or they attempt to quickly fulfill the order and apply only the functionality that they can create themselves without considering the client’s real scalable tasks, who usually wants to have many necessary functions.
Read about creating online platforms later
READY-MADE SOLUTIONS FOR ONLINE SALES: EXPENSIVE OR NOT?
To transition to an ‘explosive’ sales strategy, IT experts recommend using ready-made cloud solutions that can be integrated into existing businesses relatively easily and quickly. We’re talking about a ready-made tool that will reduce the time spent working with tourists and lower additional development costs, making such services much cheaper than creating original custom software ‘in-house’.
The value of such cloud services is that they help quickly set up the company’s online operations with minimal effort from busy employees. Moreover, the service interface has been refined across a multitude of clients, making online work accessible to every company manager.
SOLVING TOUR COMPANIES’ CHALLENGES WITH CLOUD SERVICES
There are various online software solutions available, each with its own set of pros and cons. Some require purchasing and integration, which, based on feedback, demands not just significant financial investments but also at least a month for integration.
Then there’s cloud-based software that you can simply plug into and utilize.
Familiar with our product and seeing how our clients benefit from it, we’d like to delve into the specifics of our ticketing platform, ArenaSoldOut.com.
You don’t need to purchase or prepay for our solution; you only pay based on the tickets sold. The sales modules seamlessly integrate into websites, sparing employees the need to delve into programming skills — the platform is designed for organizers and their staff.
Modern sales management software for tours and excursions empowers tourists to navigate the entire purchasing process independently. They can choose from your offerings, place orders, pay online, and receive e-tickets via email.
Overall, ArenaSoldOut.com enables tourism companies to:
– Showcase products on websites
– Accept online payments
– Partner with other sellers
– Enhance operations based on statistics
– Initiate online sales across various user platforms simultaneously
– Quickly set up recurring events with time/date modifications
– Display transport schematics and seat availability
– Customize ticket designs for various events, including multilingual options
– Verify tickets without requiring additional expensive equipment; a smartphone or Android tablet suffices
Moreover, our Reporter app not only provides real-time sales insights but also identifies top-performing sales channels, allowing you to strengthen partnerships with high-yield partners.
Additional income opportunities. Clients utilizing ArenaSoldOut.com can strategize and organize supplementary income avenues. Alongside ticket sales, they can market and sell various goods and services, enhancing revenue streams and diversifying their business offerings.
Read more about additional income for organizers of excursions and water tours
With our service fee feature, you can either sell without service charges or set service fees for sales through your channels and partners, all in line with your agreements.
Partner integration ensures transparent relationships and prevents double bookings, as all connected partners can view seat availability in real time.
Our system is protected against mass bot attacks, ensuring that only purchasers who confirm their email addresses can reserve and subsequently pay for seats, receiving their tickets via confirmed email.
Data Protection Levels: To safeguard your data, ArenaSoldOut.com allows you to assign different access levels to your employees. This ensures that sensitive information remains secure and only accessible to authorized personnel.
Speedy Sales Launch: With ArenaSoldOut.com, launching your tour and excursion sales platform is remarkably swift. Simply register on the platform, create your desired events, and seamlessly integrate them into your website for sales. Many organizers accomplish this task within just a few hours, enabling rapid entry into the market and maximizing sales potential.
Transitioning to online sales with ArenaSoldOut.com ticketing platform streamlines order processing and customer interaction, saving time for managers, employees, and partners. It simplifies business oversight, making the entire operation transparent.
Essentially, ArenaSoldOut.com is the automation tool your business needs to break free from daily routines and focus on growth.
Tourism and excursion companies that embrace the e-travel market trend, adapting their websites and social media to cater to self-reliant buyers, will capture the attention of a new generation of customers who prefer online purchases. Those who procrastinate may find themselves swept away by this wave.
Wishing you smooth sailing ahead!
With love and respect,
ArenaSoldOut.com Ticketing Team
We recommend reading article on creating platforms for ticket sales:
“Custom ticketing platform: how to build your own”
For more insights into how ticketing websites are structured, read the articles:
“Ticket platforms. Five generations.”
“Mastering ticket sales: a Guide to building your ticketing website”
“The Essential Functionality of a Ticket System’”
“I want my own website for selling tickets.”
“Selling Tour Tickets: Methods, Tools, Step-by-Step Instructions”
