Pricing logic used for XMS Tour Management Module

Explanation of how the pricing logic works and how to best present your pricing structure

The costing functionality has been greatly simplify and should be a lot easier to use.

Making it easy for your client to find the prices is paramount to marketing anything. This is not always easy to achieve when writing a program that needs to cater for an infinite number of different scenarios.

In this article I am going to explain how the pricing logic works and why it is working in that specific way.

Pricing your tours.

During your tour configuration you will, eventually end up at the bottom of the page where you need to define your tour pricing.

To manage your costing click the button to open the list of pricing blocks.

Adding a new pricing block click “add new”, enter your information and click “insert” or edit an existing block, update your prices and scroll down then click “insert as new” to add a new block based on the original block.

The information you enter is as follows:

• Tour – Select the tour this price block belongs to
• Select the “Available From” and “Till” dates this prices will be valid for
• Minimum group size and Maximum group size.
  If this price is only applicable to a single person, set your minimum to 0 (zero) and maximum to 1
• Cost per person
  Enter your price in your usual website currency
• Single Supplement
  If this group includes a minimum of 1, you can define a single supplement that will automatically be added to the “1 person” price
• Costing Active – Set this to “Yes” to have it display on the website and used during the “day trip” booking process.

The “Extras for hire” fields is simply there to allow you to offer additional items for hire that the average person don’t have or forgot to bring with. These items are not automatically included in any costing anywhere.
example might be “Water Bottle” and price 1.50

The prices above will display as in the image below on the website.

I just noticed there is a mistake where 2 blocks have overlapping pax group sizes. That should be avoided.

Two different “types” of tours and how the pricing works during a booking.

1. Scheduled departures
   As the name implies, this is tours that have a fixed schedule of possible departure dates and most probably it will be a “multi-day” tour. This will usually be booked well in advance of the actual tour date and lots of planning needs to be done in terms of accommodation, food and support services. The end result in terms of pricing on the website will be a guide price that would cover everything that a “usual” guest would need.
   As the planning continues the final price for the client will most probable be different from the actual advertised prices.
2. Non-scheduled departures.
   This will be your tours that are available to be booked at any time and usually a single day tour that will not require any special arrangements. The prices for these type of tours would normally be set and not negotiable.

Scheduled Departure configuration and booking request.

For a tour to “qualify” as a scheduled tour, you need to add the departure date to your scheduler. When defining your tour you will need to “link” the tour to your scheduler by setting the “Scheduled Departures” option and selecting the “Schedule” from the drop down list. Make sure you have tours scheduled in advance for this to work.

This will allow the guest to select a specific “scheduled departure date” from a drop down list during the completion of the “Booking Form”.

Because of the nature of the tour (multiday, probably), we do not attempt to quote a price on the booking request page, but merely ask the client the total number of guests and other information. The tour operator then responds with an appropriate “proposal” then guest needs to accept and make payment on.

Non Scheduled Tours configuration and booking request form

In this case, assuming you configured your extra scheduler/bookings items you are going to select a schedule from the single day drop down list.

This will cause the booking request form to work slightly different. Now we want to quote a price to the client so they can make the booking, we can confirm the date they selected and get them to make a payment with the minimum amount of fuss. So you would typically use this for “day trips” that can be easily put together and preparations made for the client

You still have the option to make changes to the final cost for the tour before the client finally accepts and make payment. The additional “Rent items” is not included in the calculated price because, as in this example, bike rent prices are going to vary depending on the size and type of bike they want to rent.

On the non scheduled tours the client now has the option to select a “Preferred” and “Secondary” date they would like the tour to depart on. The costing will however only be done on the preferred date.

The “Number of Guests” is a simple “text” field to best accommodate mobile devices. As the client increases the group size the price will be automatically calculated based on the cost you defined for the tour depending on the date the guest selected. Additional rentals are excluded from the quoted price.

Summary

• Scheduled Departures
  If your tour is link to a scheduled departure date, the booking page ask the user to add the number of guests. This then kick start the booking process and depending on the client requirements the price will be determined and quoted to the client.
• Non Scheduled Departures
  Your tour is linked to a departure schedule, the booking page check availability against the schedule and allow the guest to to select the number of guests and the totals are calculated and displayed. When the tour operator receive the booking request they can quickly look at the dates and confirm/accept the booking without to much hassle.