The night-before phone call about the transfer voucher
Final documents are the part of the service clients remember. They want everything in one place: flight e-tickets or booking confirmation, hotel vouchers, transfer details with the pickup point and emergency number, car hire voucher, excursion tickets, parking confirmation, and your own itinerary summary.
Suppliers release them on their own timetable. The tour operator releases documents in a portal once the balance is paid. The transfer company emails a voucher a few days before. The hotel booked direct sends a confirmation that you forward. You collect them from inboxes and portals and send them to the client in three or four separate emails. The night before departure, the client rings: they cannot find the transfer voucher.
Why document packs fall apart
| Document | Released by | Typical timing |
|---|---|---|
| Package documents | Tour operator portal | After full payment, before departure |
| Flight tickets or confirmation | Airline or consolidator | At booking or ticketing |
| Hotel voucher | Bed bank or hotel | Varies |
| Transfer voucher | Transfer company | Often shortly before travel |
| Parking and lounge | Airport or reseller | At booking |
No single place lists what the pack should contain for this trip, so a missing document is only noticed when the client asks for it.
What piecemeal documents cost
Anxious clients ringing in the days before travel. Evenings spent forwarding emails. The occasional missing voucher discovered at a transfer desk abroad, which becomes a problem for the client and a complaint for you. And a finish to the service that feels scrappy rather than professional, just when the client is forming their final impression.
A document tracker and one travel pack
- Each booking lists the documents expected from each component, created from the booking's components.
- Supplier emails with documents are forwarded to a booking inbox, where attachments are read and matched to the booking by reference and passenger name, with anything uncertain queued for you.
- Documents downloaded from supplier portals are uploaded to the booking with one click.
- As departure approaches, bookings with missing documents appear on a list, at intervals you choose, with the supplier to chase.
- When everything is in, a travel pack is assembled: a cover page with the itinerary, times, addresses and contact numbers, followed by every document in order.
- The pack is sent as one PDF and a mobile-friendly web page the client can open abroad, and updated if a document changes.
Your own details, including out-of-hours contact arrangements you offer, appear on the cover page so the client knows who to call.
Clients leaving with everything in one place
You see at a glance which trips departing soon are complete and which are waiting for a document. Chasing happens days before, not the night before. Clients receive one pack, clearly laid out, and the itinerary page on their phone works even when they are in a queue at the airport.
Here is a common case: a couple flying to Italy with a hotel from a bed bank, a private transfer and a car hire for the second week. The tracker lists four documents. The flight confirmation and hotel voucher arrive and match automatically. The car hire voucher is downloaded from the supplier's site. A week before departure, the transfer voucher is still missing, so it appears on your list and you chase the transfer company. When it arrives, the pack is assembled and sent in one email with a summary of pickup times.
Sound like your pre-departure week?
- Clients get their documents in several emails.
- You have had a client ring the night before about a missing voucher.
- You collect documents from inboxes and supplier portals by hand.
- There is no list of which documents each booking needs.
- Your document pack looks different for every trip.