FIT and custom travel software for tour operators.

What is FIT tour operator software?

It is one half of a multi-day operator's selling system. The other half is scheduled departures, where a fixed date is sold seat by seat. The two are different kinds of work, but they end in the same place: a booking with passengers, segments, a payment schedule, and vendors to confirm and pay. That is why FIT software works best as part of tour operator software rather than as a standalone quoting tool: the quote is the beginning of a record that operations and accounting will use for months.

Why custom quoting is the hardest sale in the business

A scheduled departure is priced once and sold many times. A custom trip is priced from scratch for a single client, and the pricing has to hold up when the itinerary changes. Several things make that difficult.

• Costing happens at the service level. A hotel is a room type, a rate for the season, a number of nights and rooms, taxes, and a cancellation deadline. A guide is a day rate. A transfer is a vehicle. The trip price is the sum of dozens of these, each with its own supplier and its own rules.
• Net cost and selling price are different decisions. The net cost comes from the contract. The margin is a choice made per proposal, sometimes per client, and the package price the client sees has to be reconciled with both.
• Proposals change. A client asks for two more nights, a different hotel, or an extension. Each change is a new version, and the operator needs to see what was offered before, what is current, and what was accepted.
• Some services are confirmed before the client accepts. A hotel hold or a guide booked for peak season is real inventory. A revised proposal has to keep those confirmations rather than lose them.
• Agencies are often in the middle. The proposal may go to a travel agent who presents it under their own brand, needs net pricing hidden or shown, and earns a commission on the result.
• The document has to sell. Clients decide on the proposal they can picture. Day-by-day narrative, images, inclusions, and terms all have to come out of the same data that operations will use later.

From inquiry to booking: the custom quote workflow

The steps below are how the work runs inside Tourcube. Other systems use different labels for the same stages.

1. The quote is opened

   An inquiry becomes a custom quote: the contact, estimated travel dates, destination, adults, children, and rooms. The quote is linked to the client record, so past trips and preferences are one click away. How inquiries and client records work →

2. A proposal is built day by day

   Services are added from the vendor and product catalog and grouped by travel day: a transfer on arrival, a hotel for two nights, a rail segment, a private guide. Each line carries its vendor, dates, quantity, net cost, extended cost, and confirmation status.

3. It is priced to a margin

   The proposal totals net cost and extended cost live. A target margin sets the selling price; package pricing presents it the way the client will see it. Planning fees, where charged, are recorded on the quote.

4. It is presented under your brand

   The proposal document is generated from the same segments: itinerary narrative from templates and the content library, images, inclusions, and terms. It goes out as a branded PDF or a secure web-view link, co-branded or white-label when an agency is presenting it.

5. It changes, and a new version is kept

   Rather than overwriting the proposal, a revision becomes a new version on the same quote. Earlier versions stay as archived or read-only copies, so the history of what was offered is preserved and can be compared.

6. The client accepts and it converts

   The accepted proposal becomes a booking with its segments intact. Services confirmed during quoting keep their confirmation numbers; services dropped in the final version are held as unused confirmed segments so they can be released or reused. What the booking record holds →

7. It is operated and paid like any booking

   From here the custom trip is a booking: remaining vendors are requested and confirmed segment by segment, the payment schedule collects deposits and the balance, vendor payments are requested in the supplier's currency, and final documents are generated. How the money moves →

The catalog underneath: vendors, products, and contracts

Fast, accurate quoting depends on something that is not on the quote screen at all: a catalog of suppliers and what they sell. When the catalog exists, costing a day is a lookup. When it does not, every quote is research, and the proposal document has to be written from scratch.

In Tourcube the Products module is the foundation of both pre-packaged trips and custom quote proposals. The same vendor record and contract feed a scheduled departure's budget and an FIT proposal's costing. See the vendor and product screens →

What to expect from FIT software

• Costing from contracts, not memory. Net rates by season, taxes, and policies come from the vendor record, with the option to enter a price ad hoc when a service is new.
• A day-by-day builder that operations can use later. Each line is a segment with a vendor, dates, quantity, cost, price, and status, not a paragraph of text.
• Margin as a control. A target margin on the proposal, with net, extended, and package pricing visible together.
• Versions that are kept, not overwritten. Current, archived, and read-only proposals on one quote, with a comparison view.
• Confirmed services that survive revisions. Holds made during quoting carry into the booking or are parked as unused confirmed segments.
• Presentation from the same data. Branded documents and web links generated from the segments, with templates, pre-defined content, and brand-specific PDF design. Itineraries from the booking →
• Agency handling. Co-branded or white-label output, agent portal access, price suppression for wholesalers, and commission on the resulting booking. Selling through the trade →
• One-step conversion. The accepted proposal becomes the booking, and the booking becomes the record for payments, vendor confirmations, documents, and history.

Custom quotes and proposals in Tourcube

Tourcube handles custom FIT and group trips through a custom quote record with versioned proposals. The quote carries the contact and trip identity, passengers, communications, comments, tasks, unused confirmed segments, custom fields, and the planning fee. Each proposal on it is a full working document with its own pricing, segments, itinerary, package pricing, thumbnail and operations thumbnail, documents, communications, and history.

Pricing works from net-cost work-ups drawn from vendor contracts or entered ad hoc, to a target margin. Proposals go out as co-branded or white-label documents by email or secure web-view link. When a proposal is accepted it converts to a live booking with confirmed segments preserved, and each segment then runs through the vendor confirmation workflow: requested, availability confirmed, booking confirmed, pending, or not required. The AXUS integration produces final timing documents automatically.

See the custom quote screens on the Selling page →

Tour operations, subject by subject

All resources →

These guides explain how multi-day tour operations work and what software should do about it. Start with the overview, or go straight to the part of the business you are thinking about.