A vast majority of travellers consider their own personal interests before booking tours or activity packages. To make sure they get what they seek, your online booking solution must be ready in every way.In this guide, you will come across eight factors that could heavily influence your customer buying decision. We will explore WooCommerce Bookings and Appointmentsto see which of the special features could be useful for booking tours.
What is an Online Tour Booking?
As one would guess following the name, an online tour booking is an online travel portal that offers holiday packages. These packages usually are the combination and inclusion of transport, accommodation, recreational activities, food, visa, etc., Travellers use such websites/travel portals to book tour packages to visit and explore new places/destinations.
If you want to set up a similar online business using WooCommerce then you’re in luck. TheWooCommerce Bookings and Appointments plugin offer commendable features and assorted facilities that could be useful for you to set up. We will see more on that later in this guide.
Factors customers look at before booking tours
Now let us go through the factors that can affect your customer buying decision as they explore the tours on your website. We will see how the WooCommerce Bookings and Appointments plugin can help you in some cases.
Tour information
Your online tour booking portal is undoubtedly your greatest business asset. It’s important to use all resource available to promote your tour packages. You should research deeply and provide every necessary information available alongside your tour booking calendar.Travelers are definitely going to look at your images, content and the features you offer them. This way they get to learn more about possible experiences they’re about to have and thus, make a decision about their upcoming trip.
You can mention all those information under the description provided by WooCommerce. You can prepare and upload high-quality pictures to entice travelers and fall in love with the tour.
Next thing for you to do is to set the booking prices right. As a business owner, you understand why the cost of certain tours increases during busy seasons. ‘Supply and demand’ could be a really fruitful concept for your business as more potential customers tend to look out for their needs in the market. WooCommerce Bookings plugin gives you the privilege to change the booking prices based on days, hours, and months. You can decide when the tour booking prices should increase and when it should be reasonably low. For that, the plugin offers a dedicated section where you can define multiple pricing rules at one place.
Availability of your tours
Business owners like you know the importance of breaks, especially, when there’s no business, which is usually during the off-season. You may even use this break to replenish your tour resources and improve the existing tours. So you must let your potential travelers know about such breaks.
The Booking Availability section of WooCommerce Bookings and Appointments plugin is the feature designed for you, the admin. This feature lets you set multiple availability rules, and with the right combinations, you can let your customers know what days and months are not bookable and what are. This way travelers can select the available slots and pay the necessary booking amount right then and there.Learn more about Booking Availabilities.
Quicker confirmations
There are times when you forget or don’t get time to check your WooCommerce for new bookings, as a result, you may end up accepting late. Any delay in the booking fulfilment process can be really bad for your business. Not only that, your travellers may even leave negative feedback.
To solve the issue and help you attend your bookings on time, the WooCommerce Bookings plugin offers the Google Calendar Sync. This life-saving option lets you sync your Bookings with your personal Google Calendar. With this, you’ll always be in the loop and stay updated at all times. And to top that, the Google Calendar app installed on your smartphone will also provide you the notification on the new booking.Learn more about Google Calendar Sync.
Intuitive booking calendar
Travellers nowadays, are a tech-savvy and they expect your website to look modern as well. They expect the overall booking process to be seamless, starting from selecting the booking dates and ending by paying the booking price. You can use the modern and intuitive booking calendar provided by the WooCommerce Bookings and Appointments plugin. It provides various design options for the calendar and the booking prices are calculated dynamically right there.
The calendar displays the final cost and booking details as well. This is very much essential for the people visiting your website. You can refer to the image above.
Value-added services/products
Travelers often look for additional services which they can enjoy while on the tour. For instance, tourists who prefer staying at a nice hotel would love to enjoy their premium services. They can choose to have the morning breakfast in their hotel room and spend the rest of the day exploring the city their private cab. If you do offer such services, you can easily give them as an option along with the bookings to provide customers a better traveling experience.
The WooCommerce Bookings and Appointments plugin also allow you to up-sell other items along with a booking. It has a section that is dedicated to Bookings Resources.
Basically, this feature allows you to add additional services that can be purchased along with the bookings. So you have the option to either add extra items to the booking automatically or let your customers choose them. And of course, you can set the prices for these services as well.
Tour reviews
Online reviews can be both good and bad for your business. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, people who choose to use your product for the first time may either love it or dislike it entirely. Tours are no different.
Almost all new travelers trust the reviews they find online. This feedback heavily influences their final decision and thus, affects your business directly. So you must solicit good and honest feedback from your past travelers. You may even use photographs, tour descriptions, reviews, and video testimonials.By gathering reviews from your customers can be difficult if you follow the manual process. You could very well make use of a customer review plugin for that. This will make it easy for both you and your travelers to leave reviews. On a side tip, you should develop a presence on TripAdvisor and other social platforms to generate and display reviews.
Social media recommendations
Social media is a powerful force that can drive potential travelers to your website. Platforms like Facebook and Instagram can be a wonderful way to connect with travelers at every point in their online booking journey. You can post attractive images and make people know about your booking tours website.When you develop a presence on prominent social media platforms, including international platforms and local networks, you can engage your audience and motivate them to book with you. There are many plugins available that provide features to integrate your website with your social media handles.
Value for money
Tourists likely will compare your company with any other tour operator that provides a similar experience. It’s important that you know what makes you different from the competition, and that you actively promote your unique offerings or amenities. All-in-all, it depends on how you market your website and promote your tours.
Final thoughts
Understanding the travelers who are most motivated to book with you will help you create an exceptional online tour booking experience. It’s important that you also have a booking system in place that makes it easy to finalize a booking. WooCommerce Bookings and Appointments is a great plugin which powerful enough to set up an amazing tour booking portal. Go ahead explore and try the WooCommerce Bookings and Appointments plugin. If you need any help then feel free to Contact PluginHive Customer Support. Our support team should be able to help you set Bookings on your WooCommerce website.
Good Luck!
