Is your hotel ready for company tours and travelers on excursions? As a consequence, how many times have you gone to an organization to handle these group tours?
The trip did not go according to plan, the client got the wrong room. Another situation is that the hotel has not told the tour activities that time is changing.
Then, for visitors, it really becomes stressful. As I can admit, it also happened to me when the hotel was new and sending details was not necessary.
To prevent the complications that can arise when a group excursion is schedules and coordinate.
I’m going to list some tips that can assist all tour operators or hotels (who want to boost their business).
The secret to success is a clear description of the services that you are providing.
So, the first thing you should do is create a quality schedule with lots of images, explanations, and consistent content.
From the perspective of the client – this implies a short overview of the prices, the schedule of the trip and the description of daily activities.
It would be an advantage if you had an excursion software that would generate your itineraries automatically.
Once enough passengers have applied for the trip, you should get a list of all the passengers, check their information, and make corrections if needed.
This includes checking whether they have paid, so you can proceed with organizing.
It is important to have this list of passengers centralized in one place e.g. in an excursion system, so later on when you make confirmations with your suppliers.
You will have accurate information, so there won’t be any mistakes.
You can check the availability of all the services offered by your suppliers and get their confirmation after you are finished with your passenger list.
You should not forget to include tourist guides and inform them about the sequence of the scheduled events. When all the services are provided, the excursion can start.
Moreover, my suggestion is for you to prepare a few documents for your personal organization that will be useful during the excursion.
a) Seat and allocation list – You can position them in their seats until your passengers arrive at the accepted departure destination. You don’t want to find yourself in a situation that confuses your passengers.
b) Rooming Record – A rooming list may be the solution in order to avoid a confusion about the rooms. The root of frustration for a common customer is actually correlated with the wrongly allocated rooms.
c) List of more criteria – once you’ve written down the list of all clients and their special requests and needs, you can see all the additional services that should be ensured for them.
It may happen that your customers have some additional requirements such as an extra bed, baby cot or massage.
Every customer is different and has different demands and it is up to you how you handle them.
It is important to provide a tailored approach to everyone so that you can know precisely which customer needs the particular service later on, and can then answer them.
Moreover, make a to-do list and write reminders for the documents you need to manage!
Sometimes passengers forget their documents such as a passport or an insurance policy, or they arrive late at the agreed departure destination.
To prevent this from happening, you may send some sort of a reminder to them. It could be in a form of an itinerary or a simple trip schedule.
You could send it via e-mail, text message, or by post and it should contain information about the departure time and place, trip schedule, a reminder of the documents they should take and maximum luggage allowed.
Sometimes it is hard to follow the plan because something unexpected may happen.
For example, someone from the group is late, or something extraordinary happens to your means of transport. But you should be prepare for situations like those and be able to inform your passengers about them.
The most important thing is that your passengers are familiar with all the changes in the schedule to avoid any misunderstandings.
Your customers’ feedback can be a great source for improvement.
You can ask them directly what they thought about the excursion, but the best way is to give them some sort of a questionnaire where they can write down their suggestions for improvement, pros, and cons of the excursion.
As a conclusion, I will say that it may seem hard to fulfill all the conditions mentioned above because it is hard to manage everything and get the perfect results.
In order to succeed group tours itwould be helpful to have excursion booking software that supports everything mentioned above.
Humans can not manipulate external situations, but attempting to coordinate stuff is what we can do. Thus, risks are minimized to a minimum.
In the final, each tour operator’s main goal is to make customers happy and please them, so that they return to your company.
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