A customer tries to book a date that sold out last month
Your website lists each tour with its departure dates and a status: available, limited, guaranteed, full. Someone updates it when they remember, usually after a quiet afternoon. On Saturday a customer sees the June departure of your Norwegian fjords tour marked available and fills in the booking form. It was full three weeks ago.
The reverse happens too. A date that picked up four cancellations still says full on the site. A departure that has reached minimum numbers and is now guaranteed to run still shows as available, which is less persuasive to a customer who is weighing up whether to book.
The website is a copy, and copies drift
The booking system knows how many places are left on each date. The website does not, because it was built as a set of pages that the office edits. Every booking, cancellation and new date is a change someone has to make twice.
- Departure dates are entered into the website by hand each season.
- Status labels are updated from memory, not from bookings.
- Prices and supplements on the site may not match the booking system.
- New or merged departures appear in one place but not the other.
- Online booking forms accept requests for dates that cannot take them.
Wrong availability costs sales and credibility
A customer who asks for a full date gets a disappointing reply, and some will not take an alternative. A date shown as full when it has space loses bookings you never hear about. Guaranteed departures are one of the strongest reasons to book with a small operator, and if the website does not show them, that reason is wasted.
Staff also spend time answering availability questions by phone and email that the website should have answered.
A website that reads from the bookings
We connect your website's departure listings to the source of truth.
- Departure data (dates, price, supplements, places left, status) is read from your booking system through its API or a feed that updates regularly.
- Status labels follow rules you set: guaranteed when minimum numbers are reached, limited when places fall below a number you choose, full when no places remain, waiting list if you run one.
- Tour pages show dates from this feed, so new departures appear and cancelled ones disappear without editing pages. This works with WordPress, Webflow or a custom site.
- The booking or enquiry form only offers dates that can take the number of passengers requested, and full dates offer the waiting list instead.
- A daily check compares website prices with the booking system and flags any mismatch before a customer finds it.
- The office can still override a date, for example to hide one being held for a private group, from a simple admin screen.
| Departure state | What the website shows |
|---|---|
| Plenty of space | Available, with price |
| Minimum reached | Guaranteed to run |
| Few places left | Limited, with places if you want to show them |
| No places | Full, with waiting list option |
| Held for a group | Hidden or shown as unavailable |
If your booking system offers a website widget that does most of this, we look at using it first, and build only the parts it lacks.
After the connection
The office stops editing dates on the website. When a booking takes a departure to its minimum, the site shows it as guaranteed within the hour. When a cancellation frees space on a full date, the date reopens. Customers enquire about dates that exist, and the enquiry form carries the right tour and date into your booking system.
Loading next season's programme becomes a single task in the booking system rather than a second copy on the website.
Signs your website availability is stale
- Customers ask to book departures that are already full.
- Departure status on the site is changed by hand.
- Guaranteed departures are not shown as guaranteed.
- Prices on the site and in the booking system have differed.
- Loading a new season means editing every tour page.