With so many companies out now selling online booking systems, we thought it would be useful to review how Adventure Engine (AE) Summit tour software is designed different.
For a bit of history, in 2004 AE was one of a very few businesses that pioneered the online booking revolution for small tour operators and by 2011 had built accounts worldwide with a large variety of tour operators and other tour providers. Here is a brief synopsis of highlights.
2004 – early pioneers of online cloud based booking management systems for activity, accommodation and multi-day tours filling niche that hotel software couldn’t with easy to book online shopping carts
2005 – advanced inventory(resource) management. Manage real time availability not only of ‘seats on tour’ but of limited resources such as kayaks, cabins, guides across unlimited tours, courses, rentals and activities and unlimited online sites and carts
2006 – add agent interface – assign agent to a booking, agent login access, track-able agent portals for online bookings
2008 – system access for customers to manage registration info, medical forms, passport info etc directly to system database and make balance payments on their own
2009 – custom documents – vouchers, rental agreements, waivers, reminders, feedback etc
2010 – advanced vendor and cost management tour operator system launch
2011 – mobi friendly!
2014 – 3rd party system integrations
2015 –version release 1.4.1 (email the group, tax in pricing and other additions), version 1.4.2 new colour coded availability calendars and new cutoff date options, version release 1.4.3 (shopping cart consolidation and abandonment tracking)
2016 – multi currency and multiple languages translation
We built a core database that could be adapted to individual users, since we found that almost all our users had different requirements. We further advanced with optional add-ons for specific needs like shareable inventory items, multi currency, and custom language shopping carts.
The result is that Summit tour software can provide booking and client payment services for small businesses but has a deeper set of core functions for more complex businesses. Knowing still that every business is a little different we left ability to customize the system code to accommodate this. Summit is the best marriage between a privately developed, custom built system and something “off the shelf”. It’s flexible and scalable and can manage all the complexities of your day to day operation.
The cost of flexibility, complexity and scalability is that Summit requires training to use. Since more upfront data is required to be entered in a correct sequence in order to build “the base” it can seem complicated. The plus side is the value of being able to manage a lot more products and generate more marketing and sales data in reports. Once learned, it opens up a lot of doors to add on new services to your product line and services to your customers.