Built for trekking and expedition companies

Why a trek is not a long day tour

A trekking company sells small groups on long, high-value trips into places with little or no signal. Each trekker may need different permits at different fees depending on their nationality. Passports, photos and rescue insurance have to be checked before anyone flies. The crew needs valid licences, insurance and fair loads, and once the group leaves the trailhead the office still needs to know that everyone is safe.

General booking software handles the seat and the payment, and leaves the rest to email and spreadsheets. Tourtify's Trekking & expeditions plugin (Growth) sits on top of your bookings and covers permits, documents, crew, lodges, altitude and safety. It needs Traveller details, which collects the documents, and it works for treks in Nepal and in any other country you set.

A day in the life of a departure

An enquiry for a private trek arrives in your inbox and becomes a proposal with Quotes & proposals, or a trekker books a fixed group departure online and pays a deposit. From that moment the booking has a permit checklist: one row per trekker per permit, with the fee worked out from their nationality and a status that moves from pending to applied to issued, with the permit number and scan recorded.

In the weeks before departure, trekkers upload their passport, photo, insurance and visa details on their booking page. Each document shows as fine, missing or expiring, and passports are checked against a validity period after the trek, six months by default. When you are ready to apply, the agency submission sheet for each permit downloads as CSV or PDF.

On the trail, the crew opens a check-in link on any phone, with no login, and reports location, altitude and how the group is. If no check-in arrives within 26 hours, your team is emailed. Incidents are logged with severity and the action taken, and an evacuation is recorded with the provider, route, insurer case reference and cost.

Worked example: permits, crew and pay

Permit fee rules are your own data. A rule can be a flat fee per person, per day in the area, per started week, or a block. Take a block rule of USD 500 for the first ten days and USD 50 per extra day: a trekker spending 12 days in the area pays USD 600. Nationals of the country, other SAARC citizens and foreigners can each have their own rule, and a SAARC trekker pays the foreign fee when no SAARC fee is set. Fees the trekker pays are added to the booking as a “Trekking permits” line; fees you pay yourself go into Costs & profit.

Now the crew. With the default rules of seven trekkers per licensed guide and two trekkers per porter, a group of eight needs two licensed guides and four porters, and Tourtify flags the departure if it has fewer. Porter loads are checked against a maximum, 25 kg by default, and licences and insurance must be valid through the trek. Crew pay is days × (daily wage + allowance) plus agreed extras. A porter on NPR 2,000 a day with a NPR 500 allowance over 12 days earns NPR 30,000 for the trek.

Altitude, lodges and the emergency plan

The itinerary is built in the trip builder, with places that carry coordinates and altitude. The altitude profile is drawn automatically, and the builder warns when sleeping altitude rises by more than 500 m in a night above 3,000 m. The trekking plan adds acclimatisation days, the highest point of each day and the default lodge, dated for each departure.

Lodge and teahouse nights are booked per departure. Each tour also has an emergency plan with helipads, medical posts, contacts and instructions. Guides carry the day plan, lodges, manifest, emergency contacts and plan in the field app, which keeps working without a connection and syncs when it reconnects.

Getting paid for high-value trips

Treks are often booked months ahead by trekkers from several countries. Deposits & instalments takes a deposit at booking and collects the balance before departure, with automatic card charges where Stripe is connected and personal pay links everywhere else. The Currency switcher (Growth) lets you set real prices per currency on each tour, so a trekker from Germany can pay a euro price you chose rather than a converted one.

Regional gateways sit beside your card provider. Khalti, eSewa and Fonepay take Nepali rupees for domestic trekkers, and each gateway only appears for the currencies it supports. Because crew pay, lodge nights and permit fees you pay all feed Costs & profit, you can see the real margin of each departure, not just its sales.

Moving your treks across

Most trekking companies already have detailed itineraries on a website. Paste a trek's page link to create a draft tour, or upload a WordPress export to bring WP Travel Engine trips across with their itinerary, inclusions and FAQs, and redirects for the old addresses. Then attach permits, entry days and who pays to each trek.

If you trek in Nepal, add the starter set of 14 common permits in one click and check each fee, since fees change and each permit shows when it was last checked. Existing customers and bookings can be imported from a CSV, with a dry run first and no emails sent to trekkers.

Getting started

1. 1Turn on the trekking plugins. Switch on Traveller details, then Trekking & expeditions, both on the Growth plan.
2. 2Set your country and permits. Enter the country your treks run in, your permit catalogue and exchange rates for permit fees.
3. 3Prepare each trek. Attach permits, add acclimatisation days, lodges and the emergency plan.
4. 4Add your crew. Enter guides, porters and cooks with licences, insurance and wages, and check the ratio and load rules.
5. 5Test a departure. Make a test booking, upload documents and walk through the permit checklist and crew check-in link.