I recently spoke to Vanessa, our Head of Integrations here at TrekkSoft. She oversees our team of Integration Specialists who are responsible for educating and onboarding all new customers who sign up with TrekkSoft. 

Having helped countless tour and activity companies over the years, Vanessa has had an insider's view into how companies of all sizes and business models work. So I asked her this question:

"What do you think is the most important metric for a tour or activity company?"

Assuming she'd reply with some sort of financial metric, I was surprised when she told me that the number of bookings a tour company makes is the most important performance indicator.

Why?

Because it's the best indicator of the demand for your services and it's a good predictor of future growth.

Different companies have different business models - some rely on selling a few small high value tours, while others serve a larger customer base at a lower rate. However, it's safe to assume that your prices do not change that often and that drastically. 

So, regardless of how your business works and how much the exchange rate fluctuates, your number of bookings will continue to rise or decline depending on the demand for your services. 

Understanding your booking data

There are different angles to analyse your data from. With TrekkSoft's Reports and Business Intelligence tools, we make it a little easier to find these metrics. If you're not a TrekkSoft user, don't worry. A basic working knowledge of Excel spreadsheets or Google sheets should be enough to help you find out where your business stands. 

1. Monthly booking volume

Having an overview of how your overall inventory of products are performing in the market on a monthly basis is a great first step towards tracking your business performance. If your bookings are growing steadily each month, you can bet your finances are heading in the right direction too. 

To find this in your TrekkSoft account, head over to Reports in the left hand menu and select Sales Reports. 

2. Top performing sales channels

In TrekkSoft, we make it easy for you to track the performance of your sales channels. In our Sales reports, you'll find a comprehensive report of how each booking agent, hotel concierge or online marketplace is performing.

Why is this information vital?  

Because it gives you an idea of where you should allocate more time and resources. Say your tours are doing well on an online marketplace, why not spend an hour or two polishing your tour descriptions and images on that platform? Or you could get on the phone with your account manager for that marketplace and negotiate a better commission rate? 

If a booking agent is doing well, you could consider offering them a larger selection of activities to sell. Or you could provide them with better tools to sell your services, maybe even an agent account if they don't already have one. 

Download these free templates now: How to track your monthly marketing and sales performance

3. Hot sellers

One of our favourite features of the Business Intelligence tool is that it shows companies what their best sellers are with just a few clicks. You can compare performance over two different time periods to find out how different tours perform in different seasons. You can even select the activities you want to gain more insight into. 

Based on this data, we can see which tours and doing well and from there, we can start to experiment.

You could increase the price of the tour to bring in more revenue or start offering Add-ons for that tour to increase overall revenue made on that tour. Perhaps, you might just want to increase the number of guides running that tour so that your can accommodate more customers. 

As for tours and activities that aren't doing so well, you could dig deeper to uncover some interesting insights. What do people say about that tour on TripAdvisor? Who are the people who tend to book those tours? Do they fit in with your overall customer base?

Finally, does the tour bring in enough bookings such that you continue to make a profit from these products? If not, perhaps it's time to consider removing them from your inventory. 

To find this in your TrekkSoft account, head over to Business Intelligence in the left hand menu and select Overview. 

What next?

From here, I'd recommend that you figure out how much revenue our top products are bringing in and how you can increase the revenue for each booking. 

While the price of your tours shouldn't change that much, consider upselling your customers by providing Add-ons like photo packages or renting out GoPros. Alternatively, you could bundle 2 or 3 of your most popular tours together and throw in a 5% discount to create a package that's simply irresistible. 

There are various ways to go about increasing the value of your bookings and as a business owner or marketing professional, I'm sure you already have a tonne of ideas. 

Good luck!

It's time to double down on your strengths and take your business to the next level.

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