Sell tours and experiences with dated, capacity-limited departures
A tour is a group booking with a departure time and a headcount. Booking Slot counts seats per departure, ties each one to a guide, and sends a reminder the day before with the meeting point in the message.
The problems this solves
- Overselling a 12-person tour by one
- Guides double booked across two departures
- Customers arriving at the wrong meeting point
- Tour apps priced on booking revenue
How Booking Slot handles it
Capacity per departure
Sell exactly the seats you have. Seats are counted transactionally.
Guide calendars
A guide can only lead one departure at a time. Time off is respected.
Reminder with meeting point
Put the meeting point and what to bring in the reminder template.
Flat monthly price
No percentage of your ticket revenue. Growth is £39.99 for 8 guides.
Choose the tour preset during setup and these defaults are filled in for you.
Why tour platforms cost so much more than they look
Most booking platforms built for tours and experiences take a percentage. Sometimes it is called a booking fee and passed to the customer, sometimes it comes out of your margin, and occasionally both.
Run the number on your own takings. A walking tour selling thirty seats a week at twenty-five pounds is seven hundred and fifty a week, thirty-nine thousand a year. Five percent of that is nearly two thousand pounds, for software that counts seats.
Booking Slot charges a flat monthly fee by number of guides. Thirty-nine ninety-nine a month covers eight guides and unlimited bookings, so the same operator pays under five hundred a year and keeps the rest. A good season does not increase the bill, which is the whole point.
A percentage of ticket revenue means your best month is also your most expensive one.
Departures, seats and the one you oversold
A departure is a start time with a headcount. Twelve places on the eleven o'clock, eight on the two thirty, and a hard stop at the number your guide can actually manage.
Overselling by one is the characteristic failure, and it happens in the gap between an app reading the remaining seat count and writing the booking. Two customers both see one seat left, both book it, and your guide meets thirteen people for a twelve-person tour.
Booking Slot decrements seats inside a database transaction that re-checks capacity at the moment of writing. One booking succeeds, the other is refused immediately and shown the next departure. The count cannot go over, including on the final seat.
Seats are shared only between bookings with exactly the same start time, so an eleven o'clock and an eleven thirty departure are separate tours with separate counts even if they cover the same route.
- Capacity set per departure, counted transactionally
- Several departures a day inside each guide's hours
- Quantity in the cart books that many seats at once
- Adult and child places as Shopify variants, each taking a seat
Guides, and the one who was double booked
Each guide is a resource with their own hours, their own days and their own time off. A guide can lead one departure at a time and nothing will offer them a second one that overlaps.
That sounds obvious and is exactly what goes wrong when departures are managed on a spreadsheet. A two-hour tour at eleven and another at twelve thirty look fine in two separate rows and are impossible in practice.
Freelance guides who work certain days are handled the same way: their hours are their availability, so departures only appear when they are genuinely working. Reassign a departure to another guide from the Calendar if someone is ill, and the customers' bookings are unaffected.
Meeting points, reminders and the customer who went to the wrong bridge
The most common operational problem in this trade is not overselling, it is a customer standing in the wrong place at the right time.
Both the confirmation and the day-before reminder use templates you write, so put the meeting point in both, in plain words, with a landmark rather than only a postcode. Add what to bring, what the weather makes advisable, and how long the walk is if that matters.
The reminder also carries a link to the booking, so a customer whose plans change moves or cancels themselves up to your cutoff. For a capacity-limited departure that is money: a seat released the night before can be resold, a no-show on the morning cannot.
Reminder texts are bundled rather than charged per message. Fifty a month on Starter, two hundred and fifty on Growth, a thousand on Pro, with top-ups at four ninety-nine per hundred.
What it does not do, and what it costs
Be clear on the gaps before installing. Multi-day tours are not supported: a booking is a single interval, so a three-day trip cannot be sold as one booking today. Multi-day is on the roadmap. There are no waitlists, no pickup-point routing, no channel manager and no distribution to OTAs; Booking Slot sells through your own Shopify store and nowhere else.
If you depend on reselling through third-party marketplaces, you need a channel manager and this is not one.
One guide on the Free plan covers twenty bookings a month with every rule on. Two guides is Starter at fourteen ninety-nine. Up to eight guides and group capacity is Growth at thirty-nine ninety-nine, which also brings booking at the counter if you sell from a shop or kiosk. Pro is seventy-nine ninety-nine for unlimited. Annual billing takes twenty percent off, and no tier takes a share of your ticket revenue.
Questions about Shopify tour booking app
Can I sell adult and child tickets at different prices?
Yes, using Shopify variants on the tour product. Adult, child, concession and family can each be a variant with its own price, and every variant line books a seat against the same departure capacity. So a family booking two adults and three children takes five of your twelve places, counted atomically. The seat count does not care which variant was bought, which is usually what you want: twelve people is twelve people regardless of how they are priced.
Can I run several departures a day?
Yes. Departures are start times inside each guide's working hours, so an eleven o'clock, a two thirty and a sunset walk can all run on the same day with their own capacities. Each is a separate session with its own seat count, because seats are shared only between bookings with exactly the same start time. The guide's calendar stops them overlapping: a two-hour tour at eleven means nothing else can be offered to that guide before one, so you cannot accidentally sell a twelve thirty departure nobody can lead.
Can customers move their booking to another day?
Yes, up to whatever cutoff you set, from the link in their confirmation and reminder. They move themselves rather than emailing you, and the seat they vacate goes straight back into availability. For a capacity-limited departure that is real money: a place released the night before can be resold, a no-show on the morning cannot. Set the cutoff to match how late you can still fill a seat, which for most walking tours is twenty-four hours and for something requiring preparation may be longer.
Can I sell multi-day tours?
Not yet. A booking in Booking Slot is a single interval, so a three-day trip cannot be sold as one booking today. Multi-day is on the roadmap. The workaround, booking each day separately, is poor for anything genuinely residential, so if multi-day is your core product this is the wrong app for now. Worth knowing two other gaps while you are deciding: there is no channel manager and no distribution to OTAs, so Booking Slot sells through your own Shopify store and nowhere else.
Try Booking Slot free on your store
Install in a few minutes, link one product and take a test booking. Free for one resource and 20 bookings a month, then flat pricing from £14.99.