Booking software for activities and adventure

What an activity operator needs

Rafting, kayaking, canyoning, paragliding, diving and climbing share a pattern. Sessions run several times a day with a fixed number of places. Participants have to meet age rules and accept a release of liability. Gear is limited and shared between sessions, and the weather can cancel a whole morning. Paper waivers and a whiteboard of wetsuit sizes work until the busy season.

Booking software for this kind of business has to count places and gear together, collect consent before people arrive, and make a weather change a few clicks rather than an afternoon of phone calls. This guide walks through how Tourtify handles each of those, with the plugins that matter most.

Sessions, ages and group rules

Each session is a departure with its own seats. Repeating schedules create them ahead of time, one schedule per start time, with up to 20 per option. Traveller types set who can book and at what price: adult, child or your own types, each with a minimum and maximum age and a minimum per booking. If you collect a date of birth with Traveller details, the question can also enforce an age limit on the trip date.

Group discounts (part of Discounts on Growth) handle families, schools and companies. You set tiers such as 4+ save 5% and 8+ save 10%, and choose whether the whole group gets the percentage or only travellers from the threshold up. The booking form can nudge with “Add 2 more travellers to save 10%”.

A worked example: a family rafting booking

A family of two adults and two children aged 10 and 14 books a half-day rafting session at $60 per adult and $40 per child: $200. With Add-ons & extras (Growth) they add four wetsuits priced per item at $12, which is $48, and a photo package priced per booking at $25. The total is $273, and each extra is its own line.

The wetsuits come from a daily stock. If you own 20, every booking that day, across every session and tour, counts against the same 20, and the last one can't be sold twice. Add a required question to the wetsuit extra, such as size, and the answer travels with the booking. With Waivers & consent (Growth), both adults sign for themselves and a parent signs for each child, because they are under the age you set, 18 by default.

Waivers you can rely on

Travellers sign online from their booking page before they arrive. Those who don't can sign at the venue: each departure has a kiosk page, shown as a QR code on the manifest, where they find their booking with the reference and surname and sign on a tablet or their own phone. For activities where it matters, you can block check-in until the waiver is signed.

Each signature keeps the exact wording accepted, the time and the IP address, and your team can open it as a PDF evidence record with a tamper-evident seal. A tour can have its own waiver, so canyoning and a gentle float trip can carry different terms. If a card payment is disputed, the booking's signed waivers are added to the dispute evidence.

Weather, boats and kit

When conditions close the river, move every booking on the session to another date of the same option, or cancel it with refunds. Each booking follows the normal change or cancellation, so travellers are told and invoices follow. With Self-service changes (Growth), travellers can also move their own booking within the rules you set.

Resources & operations assigns vehicles, boats, equipment and venues to departures without double-booking them, and checklists per tour create tasks when a departure gets its first booking. If you also rent gear, Rentals, passes & memberships (Growth) prices items by the hour, half day, day or week, allows turnaround time between rentals and records condition notes, photos and damage charges at return. A rentable item can share stock with a resource, so a kayak running a tour can't be rented at the same time.

Selling beyond the session, and moving over

Gift vouchers sell experiences as presents all year, and a voucher is a balance that can be spent over several bookings. Punch cards and unlimited passes suit regulars, such as a climbing wall or a surf school, and memberships renew monthly or yearly where your payment provider supports it. The point-of-sale till (Growth) sells today's sessions, extras and retail items at the desk, and keeps working when the internet drops.

To move across, create your activities and schedules first, then import future bookings from a CSV. Exports from FareHarbor, Rezdy, Bókun, Peek Pro and Checkfront are recognised automatically, and a dry run checks every row before anything changes. Imported bookings don't trigger emails, so travellers who already have a confirmation from your old system won't get a second one.

Getting started

1. 1Create sessions. Add the activity, its traveller types with age rules and a repeating schedule per start time.
2. 2Add gear as extras. Set prices per item or per traveller, a daily stock and any required question such as size.
3. 3Write your waiver. Enter your terms, set the guardian age and decide whether check-in waits for a signature.
4. 4Add boats and vehicles. Turn on Resources & operations and assign them to departures.
5. 5Run a test morning. Book a test session, sign the waiver on the kiosk and check in with a QR scan.