Real-time availability that never oversells

The problem: one seat, several ways to sell it

Most operators sell the same seats through more than one door: the website, the phone, email and walk-ins. When availability lives in a spreadsheet, two people can sell the last seat within minutes of each other, and someone has to make an awkward call.

Tourtify keeps one seat count per departure. Online checkouts, manual bookings added by your team and seats held during payment all draw from it, and the count is checked inside the database at the moment of booking. Two travellers cannot both take the last seat, however close together they press the button.

Worked example: planning a winter season

You run a day hike every Saturday from November to March, starting at 07:00, with one guide who can take 12 people. On the tour's Departures tab you set From 1 November, To 31 March, Weekdays Sat, Time 07:00 and Seats 12. The Add departures button tells you how many dates it will create before you confirm, so you can spot a wrong date range early.

Your office closes over Christmas, so under Blocked dates you block 24 to 26 December with the reason Office closed. The reason is only for you. Any Saturday in that range shows Closed and stops selling; bookings already made on it are not touched.

In February you hire a second guide for half-term. You open the two half-term departures and change their seats to 20. Every other departure keeps 12, because each departure has its own capacity.

Blocked dates, stop sales or a cut-off: which to use

Use blocked dates when the business or a resource is unavailable for a stretch of days: a holiday, a festival closure, a guide on leave. They work on a date range for that tour.

Use Stop sales on Operations › Departures when one departure should take no more bookings, for example because the bus is full even though seats remain, or because the weather forecast is poor. Reopen sales undoes it.

Use the booking cut-off on the Policies tab when you always need preparation time. Options run from until departure, through 1, 3 or 12 hours and 1 or 2 days, to 1 or 2 weeks before. A 2-day cut-off on a trek that needs permits stops online bookings that would arrive too late to arrange them, while your team can still add a late booking by hand.

How seat holds look from the traveller's side

Picture a departure with 12 seats and 10 already booked. Two travellers each want 2 seats. The first to choose Continue to checkout gets a 30-minute hold on the last 2 seats, and the checkout tells them their seats are held. The second traveller sees the departure as full and can send a sold-out date request, or join a waitlist if you use the Waitlist plugin.

If the first traveller pays within 30 minutes, the hold becomes a booking. If they close the tab, the hold expires and the 2 seats go back on sale automatically. Nobody on your team has to release them.

Reading the departures overview

Operations › Departures shows every departure across tours as a list or a monthly calendar. Next 7 days gives the travellers booked and the average load, and Full or nearly full lists upcoming departures that are 80% or more booked. Those are the dates to consider adding capacity or a second departure for.

Common mistakes: setting seats higher than your guides or vehicles can carry, on the basis that you can always cancel; cancelling bookings to close a date instead of stopping sales; and forgetting that the start time is in the tour's time zone, which matters if your team works from another country.