It’s no secret. An online booking engine with guest-centric features can get tour and transport operators more direct bookings.
Allowing guests to book directly on your website through a booking platform offers you loads of advantages. The simple, reliable, and hassle-free booking process garners more traffic to your website.
As these visitors get converted to bookers, all of that money from direct bookings goes into your pocket. You can do away with the commission you otherwise pay to Online Travel Agencies (OTAs). Undoubtedly, direct bookings increase your revenue and save you from sharing the earnings with OTAs.
Direct bookings are estimated to grow to a 50% share by 2022, according to Phocuswright’s U.S. Hotel & Lodging 2019 report. So, ensuring your booking platform has all the features to attract more visitors and generate bookings is vital to your business.
4 Essential Features of Our Online Booking Engine
Zaui's refreshed online booking engine is equipped with guest-centric features, helping tour operators to provide their guests with a flawless booking experience. Customer-focused features can truly set your booking platform apart from other operators in the tour, activity and transport industry.
Here are the four essential features of our all-in-one booking platform that you may not know.
1. Multi-Language Bookings
Post-pandemic, travel-hungry tourists globally will be eager to book their outings. You can win over these international travellers by letting them make the bookings in their preferred language.
Zaui’s online booking engine’s multi-language features display your tours and activities in a language familiar to your guests. Our booking platform has fifteen languages, recent additions being Norwegian, Portuguese, Japanese and Russian. Selling your experiences in multiple languages helps you acquire more guests and give you an advantage over competitors.
While English may be the most popular language online, it represents only 25.9 percent of worldwide internet users. Breaking language barriers, multilingual features on your online booking engine can cater to a larger customer base in different countries.
Speaking the language of your guests that were previously out of your reach plays an integral role in your direct booking strategy. That is why Zaui is committed to providing a seamless booking experience for your guests around the world and making updates to the languages offered.
2. Multi-Currency Bookings
Imagine international guests making transactions in a currency unfamiliar to them while booking a tour on your website. The chances for cart abandonment are high, as they’re unfamiliar with the currency exchange or leery with the transaction process.
The multi-currency feature allows your overseas guests to make payments in their local currency effortlessly. Localized payments experience can reduce last-minute cart abandonment and increase conversions and your bottom line.
When you expand your tour business beyond local markets, it’s crucial to have multiple currency payment options on your website. Letting international tourists purchase tours and activities in their local currency will make the pricing system transparent and reinforce your global growth.
3. Self-Edit Bookings
A frictionless user experience is what customers want. Offering flexibility and giving them control over their bookings can make their buying journey easy and comfortable.
Zaui’s Online Booking Engine’s self-edit booking feature enables guests to make edits to their bookings online without having to call your front desk or support staff.
The ‘manage my booking’ feature on the booking platform allows guests to directly retrieve their booking, edit simple booking details, and process additional payments and refunds. Guests can edit their tour time and date, passenger totals and pickup/dropoff location.
Edit bookings online feature is now available for transportation bookings too. With the latest feature addition, guests can amend their trips on the same day to different timing.
Zaui's online booking engine allows more self-service for your customers. They don’t need to contact you to change any of the information. It saves your staff a lot of time and lets you efficiently use your resources to give your customers a memorable experience.
4. Activity Gift Cards
Everyone struggles to find versatile, thoughtful gifts for their loved ones. That's why digital gift cards are quickly becoming popular. Customers prefer gift cards to celebrate their loved ones’ birthdays, anniversaries, promotions or even Mother’s day.
Zaui online booking platform offers the right solution for your guests — Activity Gift Cards. Gift cards allow shoppers to surprise and delight their loved ones with a thoughtful experience on any gifting occasion.
You can spice up your seasonal campaigns by giving your customers an option to buy gift cards for their loved ones and providing an opportunity for supporting local tour and activity operators during these difficult times.
Gift card sales can even increase your revenue during the slow season. They ensure sales for you during the holiday season and beyond.
Zaui users, if you want to make the best use of these features to increase sales, connect with our Customer Success team today.
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Frequently Asked Questions
No. Zaui’s pricing is fully pay-as-you-go. You aren’t locked into any long-term contract. In fact, leading platforms emphasize this flexibility. Similarly, Zaui lets you start and stop anytime. You can change or cancel your plan freely, so you only pay for what you use.
Absolutely not. Zaui’s pricing is 100% transparent. We disclose all fees up front with no surprise add-ons or “sneak-in” charges. In fact, Zaui’s plans include all core features “without additional fees”. Industry experts note that hidden fees undermine trust so we avoid them entirely. All costs are clearly outlined in our pricing, and there are no extra setup charges or undisclosed surcharges at checkout.
Zaui integrates with major payment gateways (e.g. Stripe) so you only pay standard credit-card processing rates (roughly 1.9%+$0.30/transaction) and we don’t mark them up. Only the published platform commission is added on bookings. You also have full control over who pays the commission, we let you decide whether to absorb booking fees or pass them on to customers. In short, you’ll only pay the transparent booking commission and normal gateway fees, nothing extra.
Your onboarding and support are included in the price. We provide white-glove setup help and ongoing 24/7 support at no additional cost. Our dedicated customer-success team will guide you through every step, ensuring a smooth launch. You won’t pay extra for training or service other than the onboarding fee; it's all built into your plan.
You can schedule a free demo with our team. Our Zaui ninjas will walk you through pe how Zaui can work for your business and highlight opportunities to grow with our advanced features all without any upfront payment. This way, you can feel confident it’s the right fit before making a commitment.
Of course. Zaui’s plans are fully flexible. You can upgrade or downgrade at any time to match your needs, without penalties. You can move to a higher tier or back down easily, and your billing adjusts automatically.
No. Zaui does not charge its commission on offline/manual bookings. “No fees on offline bookings” You only pay the commission when a booking is processed online through our system. Manual reservations (or bookings from partner channels we set up for you) incur no extra platform fee. (30% or less)
All of Zaui’s core features are included in your plan at no extra charge. We believe in value and transparency: Zaui provides over 15 advanced features (Google Things to do, reporting tools, marketing tools, reports, etc.) at no additional cost. Many competitors charge extra or require higher plans for the same features, but with Zaui you get the full suite of tools in one package. Any optional add-ons (if any) will always be clearly listed and optional there are no surprise paid upgrades for standard features.
Each Zaui plan is designed for clarity and fairness, following industry best practices. You can trust that our pricing is transparent and flexible, with the support you need built in.
Extra accounts- unlimited agents, resellers, user
