The gluten-free dinner that did not happen on night four
A passenger with coeliac disease books a ten-day tour. She says so on the booking form, and your office notes it. The first hotel gets the rooming list with the note. The second hotel gets it. On night four the group eats at a restaurant booked as an included dinner, and nobody told the restaurant. The tour leader sorts it out on the night, but the passenger spends the evening anxious, and she mentions it in her feedback.
Another passenger mentioned when booking that he cannot manage steep stairs. The note is on his booking, but the hotel on the old town hill gave him a third floor room with no lift.
A note on the booking is not a message to a supplier
Requirements are captured, but capture is only the start. A tour touches many suppliers, and each one needs the right subset of information at the right time.
- Requirements are free-text notes, so they are easy to miss when copying.
- Restaurants and activity suppliers are contacted separately from hotels.
- Requirements given later (by phone or email) are added to the booking but not passed on.
- Suppliers do not always confirm they have received and understood the note.
- The tour leader may not see the full picture until the group meets.
What you can promise a passenger about their requirements, and how you word it, is a matter for your own policies. We are dealing with making sure the information moves.
When information gets lost, the passenger notices
For dietary needs such as allergies, a missed message can be a serious matter for the passenger and a stressful one for your tour leader. For mobility, it can mean a passenger unable to join part of the tour. Either way, it is the kind of lapse passengers remember and mention in reviews, even when everything else went well.
It also creates late-night work for tour leaders, who phone ahead to every restaurant because they do not trust that the office has already done so.
One requirements record that reaches every supplier
We build a requirements layer that treats each passenger's needs as structured information and routes it to the suppliers that need it.
- Requirements are captured on the booking form and in the office as categories (dietary, mobility, room, medical information the passenger chooses to share) with a free-text detail, rather than as a single note.
- Each supplier on the itinerary is tagged with what it needs to know: hotels get room and dietary needs, restaurants get dietary needs, coach operators get mobility and seating needs, activity suppliers get what applies to that activity.
- When a departure's supplier notices are due, the system produces a requirements summary for each supplier with only the relevant passengers and details.
- Suppliers acknowledge by reply or a link, and unacknowledged notices are listed for the office to chase.
- Requirements added or changed after notices went out trigger an update to the affected suppliers only.
- The tour leader receives a single requirements sheet for the whole departure, on their phone and printable.
| Supplier | Receives |
|---|---|
| Hotels | Room location and dietary needs for their nights |
| Restaurants on included meals | Dietary needs for that meal |
| Coach operator | Mobility and seating needs |
| Activity supplier | Needs relevant to that activity |
| Tour leader | Everything, for the whole departure |
A departure where everyone already knows
Three weeks before departure, supplier notices go out with the rooming lists and restaurant confirmations. The screen shows eight suppliers, six acknowledged, two to chase. When a passenger rings to add a new dietary requirement a week before, the two restaurants and one hotel concerned get an update, and the tour leader's sheet changes.
On the tour, the leader checks the sheet each morning rather than phoning ahead from memory. After the tour, feedback about requirements can be traced to the supplier and whether they acknowledged, which helps choose next year's restaurants.
Is this a risk in your operation?
- Passenger requirements are stored as free-text notes.
- Restaurants and activity suppliers are told separately, by hand.
- Requirements added after booking do not always reach suppliers.
- You do not know which suppliers have acknowledged the information.
- Tour leaders phone ahead because they do not trust the paperwork.