How to choose boat tour booking software

When you choose boat tour booking software, check three things first: whose account the guest's money goes into, and when; whether the system can set up your seasonal, child and private-charter prices exactly as they are; and whether guests can book and pay easily on a phone, in their own language. Commission versus a flat fee comes after those.

This is for operators who've decided to take bookings online and want to be clear on what to ask before talking to vendors. At the end there's a list of questions you can put to every vendor word for word. If you're still weighing up why selling from your own site is worth it, start with our post on commission-free bookings on your own site; here we'll assume you've made that call.

Your three options for taking bookings online

Marketplace listings only. Platforms like GetYourGuide, Viator and Airbnb Experiences put you in front of tourists who've never heard of you, and that's genuinely valuable. In return you pay commission on every sale. Marketplace commission depends on your contract; across the industry it's often 20–30%. The payment goes to the platform first and reaches you on its payout schedule.

A booking plugin on a ready-made website. General-purpose booking or appointment plugins added to a website platform like WordPress are cheap and quick to set up. But many are built around a hairdresser's appointment or a hotel room: one time, one price, one person.

The moment you say "in June, adults €40, children €20, infants free; €450 for the whole boat", a plugin like that often falls short. Updates, security and the connection to your bank also tend to stay with you, or with whoever built the site.

Booking software built for tours. These systems are designed around departures, capacity, seasons and age groups. They cost more than a plugin, but you spend far less effort bending your price list to fit the software.

For most operators, the right answer isn't to pick one and drop the others. Marketplaces can stay for finding new guests. Your own system serves the guests who already found you, through Instagram, a recommendation or by searching your name on Google, without commission.

Whose account does the money go to, and when?

This is the first question to ask in a sales call, and it's often the last one asked. You'll come across two models.

In the first, guests pay through a virtual POS or merchant account you get from your own bank, and the money goes straight into your business account. Your bank charges its own card fee, and the day the money lands depends on your agreement with the bank; ask about that too. In the second, the platform or a payment provider collects the money in its own account, takes its share and pays you the rest at set intervals.

Some providers pay out within days; if yours pays weekly or monthly, your cash flow in season changes, because fuel, crew and mooring are paid every week.

Refunds are a separate question. When wind cancels the afternoon trip, who refunds, and how quickly? If the money is with you, you start the refund; if it's with the platform, you wait for its process. We built Lostromo on the first model: you use your own bank's virtual POS, and the money goes straight into your account. We connect your bank's system; ask any vendor, us included, whether your bank is already supported.

You have to apply to your bank, and approval times vary, so don't leave it until the start of the season. If a large share of your guests come from one country, also ask your bank whether cards issued there go through without problems.

Work out the difference between commission and a flat fee with your own numbers. This example is entirely hypothetical:

Example: €40 per person day tour, sales through a marketplace
Marketplace guests over the season: 600
Revenue: 600 × €40 = €24,000
Paid to the marketplace at 25% commission: €6,000
If 200 of them had booked direct instead: 200 × €40 × 25% = €2,000 not paid in commission
Set that against a flat-fee system: setup in year one + the yearly fee + your bank's card fees

Be conservative here. Not all 600 of those guests will come to your own site, because many found you on the platform in the first place. The real gain from your own system is the guest you lose today because you answered WhatsApp or the phone too late. For an example of what a flat-fee system costs, see our pricing page.

Can it handle your boat's price list?

This is where general-purpose tools trip up most. In the boat business, a price is never a single line:

• A different per-person price in May, June and August, sometimes with a different departure time
• Different prices for adults, children and infants
• Alongside per-person group tours, a flat or per-head price for chartering the whole boat
• The option to take only a deposit, with the rest paid on board on the day
• Extras like lunch, snorkelling gear or transfers
• Boat capacity: a 12-seat boat must not sell a 13th ticket
• Sales that close automatically before departure, so nobody books the 10:00 trip at 9:55

Don't settle for watching a ready-made demo; ask the vendor to enter your own price list. Send them a real list like this one, then try booking as a guest:

Day trip, 10:00 departure, 12 seats
1 May – 15 June: adults €35, children (4–11) €18, ages 0–3 free
16 June – 15 September: adults €45, children €22
Private trip (whole boat): €450, up to 12 people
Deposit: 30%, the rest on board
Extra: lunch €10 per person

If the vendor can't set this up while you watch, or says "we'll work around that", you'll be the one working around it in mid-season. In Lostromo, seasonal prices, age groups, private charters, deposits and extras are all set from the panel; you can see how on the features page.

What to check on the guest's side

Many of your guests will book on their phone, from a hotel room or the beach. Open the vendor's sample site on your own phone, on mobile data, and check:

1. How many screens are there from choosing a tour to paying, and are the buttons easy to tap with a thumb at every step?
2. Are the tour and booking pages in your guests' languages, such as German, Russian or English, or only the menus?
3. Does payment use 3D Secure, where the guest's own bank confirms by text message or banking app?
4. Do the ticket and confirmation email arrive straight after payment, in the guest's language? Does a name written in Cyrillic or another non-Latin script show properly on the ticket?
5. Do guests see your cancellation terms before they pay, and can they cancel from their own screen when they're within the window?

The last point looks small, but it heads off a lot of midnight "can I cancel?" messages.

Test it on a bad day, not a sunny one

In a demo, everything works on a sunny day. The real test is the morning the wind gets up and the boat can't leave harbour. That morning you need to close the day's trip to new sales, reach the passenger list and the guests' contact details, and refund whoever wants it. Ask the vendor to show you this on screen, step by step.

Software only helps that morning if your cancellation terms are clear. Separate weather cancellations from a guest's own cancellation, and state both plainly on the payment page. An example:

If we cancel the trip because of the weather, you choose: a full refund or another date.
If you cancel yourself, you get a full refund up to 48 hours before departure; later cancellations and no-shows are not refunded.

Adapt this to your business, and check it against the rules where you operate with your accountant or a lawyer.

The second test is the bookings that keep coming by WhatsApp and phone. Going online doesn't end them, and face-to-face sales on the quay carry on too. If you can't add a manual booking to the same calendar, a 12-seat boat ends up with 14 people booked from two places. Check that manual bookings count against capacity, and that you can send the guest a payment link.

The third test is support: if the payment page won't load on a Sunday morning in August, who answers, how fast, and on which channel?

Questions to ask a vendor before you sign

Save this list on your phone and ask every vendor the same questions in the same order. Get the answers in writing. "That should be fine" is not an answer; "here, I'll show you" is.

1. Which account does the guest's money go into, and how many days does it take?
2. Do you take a percentage of each sale, or a flat fee? Is there a separate charge for setup, the bank connection or extra languages?
3. Can you connect my own bank's virtual POS or merchant account? Which banks do you work with?
4. Can you set up seasonal prices, child prices, private charters and deposits from my price list, now?
5. Which currency are prices shown in, and which currency is the guest charged in?
6. How long before departure do sales close?
7. When I cancel a trip for weather, how do I reach the guests, and where do I issue refunds?
8. Can I add bookings I take on WhatsApp to the same calendar?
9. In which languages can guests book and get their tickets?
10. If something goes wrong in mid-season, who do I contact, and how?
11. Do card details ever pass through your servers, or do they go straight to the bank?
12. What's the minimum term and notice period, and can the price rise each year?
13. If I leave, do I keep my domain, and can I export my customer list and booking history as a file?

Also settle who does the setup: will you enter your tours, photos and prices, or will the vendor? That's usually the job that takes longest before the season.

You can read how one business in Kaş, Turkey, made the switch in Captain Ergun's story; it went from zero to 124 confirmed online bookings in the first month.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need technical skills to run online booking software?

Not for day-to-day use. Adding a tour, changing a price, closing a day to sales and seeing incoming bookings should all be possible without technical knowledge. Try these yourself in the demo. Also ask who handles the technical side, such as the bank connection; if it stays with you, you need to know that from the start.

Is commission-based or monthly-fee software better value?

If you expect only a few online sales a year, commission-based software can genuinely work out cheaper, because no sales means no bill. As sales grow, that flips: commission grows with every ticket, while a flat fee stays the same. Put the two figures side by side using your own expected guest numbers.

Can I keep taking bookings on WhatsApp?

Yes, and you almost certainly will. What changes is that instead of typing out prices to every guest who asks, you send them your booking link. Guests who'd rather book by talking to you, you enter into the system yourself, so every booking ends up in one calendar.

How long does it take to set up before the season?

It mostly depends on two things: how long your bank takes to approve your virtual POS or merchant account, and how ready your tours, prices and photos are. Ask each vendor for a written timeline, and have your content ready before you start; starting in winter is the safest way to be selling when the season opens.