Tours' turn to shine on the net

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This was published 14 years ago

Tours' turn to shine on the net

Variety ... advances in internet engines mean you can pre-book tours around the world.

Variety ... advances in internet engines mean you can pre-book tours around the world.Credit: Patrick Cummins

You've mastered booking flights and hotel rooms online – why not have a go at booking your tours and activities too? It wouldn't have been worth the hassle a few years ago, but improvements to booking engines mean it's now easier to make "point and click" bookings for anything from museum tours to thrill seeking.

Tourstogo.com, named Queensland Business of the Year in the recent Telstra Business Awards, sells more than 2500 Australian tours through its website and is a model for how easy the process can be.

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The Cairns-based company has adopted a Wotif-style booking engine that gives you actual availability and prices for given dates, so you don't have to wait for someone to get back to you.

And while tour prices usually vary little day to day, the site displays "hot deals" for selected dates, similar to what you see on accommodation booking sites such as Wotif.

Tourstogo so far only sells Australian tours, but there are other options for booking overseas tours and activities.

Qantas Holidays has adopted a user-friendly tour booking engine (qantas.isango.com), making it easier to search and book more than 5000 tours and activities around the world.

It used to be a case of choosing your destination and then leafing through pages and pages of the relevant brochure; now you can search by country, region or city and by type of adventure, from extreme adventure to bird-watching tours.

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You can also search by clicking on a map, if you find that easier, and you can choose different currencies if you want to compare prices from other sources.

Just like booking a flight or hotel room, all you have to do is choose the tour, enter your credit card details and print out the confirmation to take with you.

Aside from saving you time and ensuring you are booking with reputable operators, browsing a good tour booking site can give you ideas for tours and activities you might not have considered.

For example, you might go looking for a wildlife-viewing safari in Africa and discover you can do it from a hot-air balloon or on elephant back.

Many tour booking sites also allow you to put available tours in price order, so you can find something that fits your budget.

One of the best options for finding good day tours is Viator (viator.com), a company started by Sydney entrepreneur Rod Cuthbert 14 years ago, in the early days of online travel sites.

Cuthbert recognised an opportunity in tour bookings while other companies were focusing on flights and accommodation. Viator is now a multimillion-dollar business with thousands of tours on offer.

The Viator site takes the concept one step further by encouraging travellers to rate the tours they do (a concept you might be familiar with from the accommodation site tripadvisor.com).

You can search for the most popular trips, the highest-rated trips or by price, then read reviews posted by other travellers. The site says it guarantees the lowest prices for its tours.

You will also find the Viator booking engine incorporated into other travel websites, such as Harvey World Travel.

Another site with a good range of tour bookings is Total Travel (totaltravel.com), which covers Australia, New Zealand, Britain and the US. This site is not as easy to search as some but does have a good range of tours, along with a selection of deals.

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