Programme week: the same dates typed three times
Next season's programme is agreed. Forty-odd departures across fourteen tours, each with a start date, price, single supplement, minimum numbers and a set of hotels. The product manager has it all in a planning spreadsheet. Now it has to exist everywhere else.
Someone creates each departure in the booking system, one screen at a time. Someone else updates the website tour pages. The brochure designer receives a Word document of dates and prices for the printed brochure. A fortnight after launch, a customer points out that the brochure says the second Tuscany departure is on the 14th, and the website says the 21st. Both were typed from the same spreadsheet.
One plan, many copies
The programme is designed once but has to be entered in several systems, each with its own screens and formats. Every manual copy is a chance for a typo, and later changes have to be made in every copy.
- Departures are created in the booking system one by one.
- Website dates and prices are edited by hand, page by page.
- Brochure copy is typed from the spreadsheet by a designer.
- Price changes after launch are made in some places and not others.
- Nobody checks all the copies against each other before launch.
Errors at launch are the most visible kind
A new programme is when regular travellers look most closely, and many book in the first weeks. Differences between brochure, website and booking system mean awkward calls, bookings made at the wrong price, and questions about which one is right. Correcting them costs time just when the office is busiest with early bookings.
Loading a season by hand also takes days of skilled staff time every year, and the planning spreadsheet is often full of useful structure that is thrown away once the typing is done.
A single programme source with automatic checks
We build a programme loader that turns your planning into structured data used by every channel.
- The season's programme is held in one place, either a structured spreadsheet template or a simple planning screen: tour, departure date, price, supplements, minimum and maximum, tour leader requirement, and the hotels per night.
- Checks run before anything is published: dates on the right weekday for the tour, hotels with an allocation for those nights, prices within the range you expect, supplements present, no two departures of a tour on overlapping dates unless intended.
- Once approved, departures are created in your booking system through its API or a bulk import, instead of one screen at a time.
- The website's tour pages read their dates and prices from the same data, so they appear at launch without editing pages.
- A brochure export gives the designer dates and prices in a structured file that can be placed into the layout directly, avoiding retyping.
- Later changes are made in the programme source and pushed to every channel, with a change log showing what changed and when.
| Channel | Before | With one source |
|---|---|---|
| Booking system | Departures entered one by one | Bulk created from the source |
| Website | Pages edited by hand | Reads dates and prices from the source |
| Printed brochure | Dates typed by the designer | Structured export placed in the layout |
| Price change after launch | Changed in some places | Changed once, pushed everywhere |
| Checking consistency | Proofreading | Automatic checks before publishing |
Launch day with one source
The product manager finishes the season plan and runs the checks. Three problems are flagged: a hotel with no allocation for two nights, a price without its single supplement, and a Saturday tour starting on a Sunday. Each is fixed in the source. The programme is approved, the booking system gets its departures, the website shows the new season, and the designer gets the brochure file.
When a price changes in March, it changes once. The booking system and website update, and the change log tells the designer which reprint or digital brochure page needs updating.
The allocation tracker, rooming and document tools can also read the new departures from the same source, so the whole season starts consistent.
Does season loading look like this?
- New departures are typed into the booking system one at a time.
- Website dates and prices are edited by hand for each tour.
- Brochure dates are typed by a designer from a spreadsheet.
- Customers have found differences between the brochure and the website.
- Price changes after launch are not made everywhere.