If you’re ready to invest more heavily in your software needs, you’re certainly not alone. In fact, the global tour operator software market is set to more than double in value between 2020 and 2026.
This push to digitise isn’t altogether surprising. 80% of travellers now want the option to book their trips entirely online, yet most tour operators in the UK have fewer than five employees. Clearly, tour operators need to be able to do more with less.
The next step is figuring out how. Do you build tour booking software in-house, or buy it from a vendor? We compare the pros and cons of both options here, with a potential happy medium.
When you build your own tour booking system, you can:
Take control of how it works. Although most reservation systems operate in much the same way (they process bookings and take payments), you may have specific features or integrations in mind. If this is the case, then building your own platform could be a good route forward.
Extend the platform with more flexibility. If you want to add a new feature, you’ll be able to build it directly into your system. You won’t need to pull products from multiple different vendors, leaving you with a ‘Frankenstein’ platform.
To build your own tour booking software, you’ll need to:
Invest time and money. From hiring developers, to procuring hardware, operating systems, and server infrastructure, building a platform is neither quick nor inexpensive. In fact, it could take up to six months to create even a very simple app.
Hire developers who can understand your requirements and translate them into a booking platform. You’ll need a team of at least 2-3 to take care of this, as even a very experienced full-stack developer is unlikely to cover everything from hosting to user interface.
What’s more, if you rely on just one person to build your software, you could be left stuck with a half-finished project that no one else knows how to update if they decide to move on.
Buying tour booking software from a vendor means that you can:
Go to market quickly. Implementing tour booking software could take significantly less time than building it from the ground up, especially if you have a plug-and-play system. You can also leave the vendor to set up the platform for you, freeing up time for your team.
Scale up more easily. When you build your booking platform in-house, your developers will need to extend it manually as your business grows. With modern, software-as-a-service (SaaS), however, you can scale your booking processes quickly and easily.
Stay compliant. With a third-party vendor, you’ll have extra support when it comes to protecting your customers’ personal and financial data. A trusted company will update the system in line with new security threats and requirements as they evolve.
Although it has its perks, buying booking software can be:
Inflexible! Vendors are unlikely to create bespoke add-ons unless they increase their bottom line, so you won’t necessarily have the freedom to customise your platform with specific features or integrations.
Expensive. Some vendors will require you to pay for an entire booking platform, even if you only need a handful of features. This means you could end up with a large, bulky system that you’re not making the most of.
Maybe you want the time and cost savings of buying booking software, without losing the flexibility to add new features or scale up easily. If this sounds familiar, then implementing an extensible core booking system, such as RezKit, could be a happy medium.
RezKit allows you to start with the most basic functions of a booking platform and add features as your needs change. You can also manage add-ons from third parties, such as payment gateways, to connect your customers to the brands they already know and trust.
An ever-growing library of integrations also makes it easy to increase functionality, without needing to build new features. For example, by connecting to hundreds of third-party apps through Zapier, RezKit allows you to manage everything from marketing emails to invoicing.
If you’d like to learn more about RezKit and how it enhances the booking process for both travellers and tour operators, check out our case study with Mountain Tracks here.
