Flexible pricing travellers understand

Options or traveller types: deciding which you need

The first pricing decision is structural. An option is a different product: a shared group or a private tour, a 12-day or a 14-day version. Each option has its own traveller types, prices, booking mode and departures. A traveller type is a different person on the same product: an adult, a child, a student.

A quick test: if the two would run on different dates or need different seat counts, they are options. If they travel together on the same departure and simply pay different amounts, they are traveller types. Operators who make a separate tour for children's prices end up with two pages competing for the same search and two seat counts that do not know about each other.

How group prices are worked out

Group prices are chosen by the total number of travellers in the booking, across all traveller types. For each type, Tourtify uses the price with the highest from-number that the group reaches, and that price applies to every traveller of that type in the booking, not only to the extra ones.

Take these prices: Adult 120 from 1, 105 from 4 and 95 from 8; Child 80 from 1 and 4, and 70 from 8. Three adults pay 3 × 120 = 360. Two adults and two children are four travellers, so the from-4 prices apply: 2 × 105 + 2 × 80 = 370. Four adults pay 4 × 105 = 420, only 60 more than three. That is the point of group prices: the fourth traveller is cheap, which encourages people to bring a friend.

Check your steps with a few sums before you publish. If a bigger group ever pays less in total than a smaller one, the steps are too steep.

Worked example: a 14-day trek with two options

You sell a 14-day trek as a shared group on fixed dates and as a private trip. The Shared group option has 12 seats per departure and an Adult price of 1,450, falling to 1,350 from 4 travellers. The Private trip option has its own departures and a Min per booking of 2 adults on the Adult type, so nobody books a private trip for one by mistake.

On the Highlights & FAQs tab, Price shown is per person, so the tour page reads From 1,450 per person. If you add a 13% tax that is not included, the website shows the price with the tax already in it, because advertised prices are always all-in.

Taxes: included or added on top

Taxes are set once for the business. With a 13% tax included, a tour priced at 100 is advertised and charged at 100, and the receipt shows 11.50 of tax inside it. With the same tax not included, the tour is advertised and charged at 113, and the receipt shows 100 plus 13.

Choose included if your published prices, brochures and agent rates already contain the tax. Choose added if you quote net prices to partners and want the website to add the tax. You can combine them, for example an included VAT and a tourism levy added on top, and each is listed separately on receipts. Changes apply to new bookings only.

Common mistakes to avoid

Choosing per group as the price shown while your prices are per traveller. The setting changes the label on your website, not the calculation, so the label should match how you priced the tour.

Forgetting age limits on child and infant types, which lets anyone pick the cheaper type. Setting an infant price of 0 and then running out of seats: free travellers still count towards seats and appear on the manifest. And quoting a pre-tax price in your marketing copy when the website shows the all-in total.