Pricing, rate cards, hotel contracting and the quotation workflow — written for tour operators, travel agencies and DMCs.
13 articlesHalf the disputes on a confirmed booking start with a word rather than a number. Here is what each one means on a rate sheet, and what it costs when it is assumed.
Read the postTransport is the second largest line on most itineraries and the one most often quoted from memory. What it actually costs, in the order the numbers appear.
Read the postEvery operator has a cancellation policy. Far fewer have one the client agreed to in writing before the advance was taken.
Read the postAn enquiry has a half-life. The obstacle is almost never willingness — it is that answering properly means rebuilding a costing from scratch.
Read the postAn agent comparing three catalogues prices the two that answered. Here is the internal cost of the ones that did not, and how to close the gap without inventing a number.
Read the post
The disputes are almost never about the price. They are about what the price was supposed to cover — here are the twelve lines that decide it.
Read the post
Same hotels, same route, same vehicle class — three different per-person prices. If yours come out close to each other, something in the costing is wrong.
Read the post
A rate sheet arrives as four numbers in a WhatsApp image. Six months later a booking is disputed. Here is what was missing from it.
Read the post
The question is not what the exchange rate is. It is who carries the movement between the day you quote and the day you pay the supplier.
Read the post
A room rate is not one number. It is a grid of room category, season and meal plan — and every quotation you send is a lookup into that grid.
Read the post
Your cost, your margin and your client's price are three different numbers. Here is how one quotation holds all three without ever showing the middle one.
Read the post
PDF, Word, email and WhatsApp — plus a white-label version for the agent who is reselling you. All from one document, so they cannot disagree.
Read the post
Most operators rebuild the same nine-night costing from scratch every time. Here is the shape that makes it reusable.
Read the post