Bókun

Avantages

Exposure increases and eases the reservation process.

Inconvénients

The commission is kind of high and I really don't know if it's Bokun or Viator the one that determines it.

Avantages

integrated with friendly use website builder

Inconvénients

Customer support always ready anytime to solve our problem

Avantages

competitive price and versatility of functionality

Inconvénients

N/A since i just started to deploy products

Avantages

Bokun is one of easiest to do your ads and sell your products,

Inconvénients

The things i like about Bekun is the simplicity of their work

Avantages

In the Icelandic tourism industry, in which I used to work for 5 years, Bókun seems to be insurmountable when it comes to booking activities related to a trip, be it individual or (small) group excursions. It is a wonderful attempt at pooling all operators into one platform.

Inconvénients

Maintenance during business hours without any notification toward operators, resellers, and administrators.
Synchronisation issues between Bókun and operators on what is available and what is not (group size/vehicle capacity etc.) resulting in extremely iffy situations with clients as well as between operators and resellers.
Less enthusiastic customer support, available only during banking hours, definitely not on weekends.
No updates on changes regarding bookings in the system - unless one does everything in triples: updating Bókun, notifying the operator, wait for confirmatiom from operator, notify client.
Key-word search is quite cumbersome.
Software getting less and less user-friendly with every update.
Inability to edit certain aspects of bookings and the invoice, so one has to cancel everything, and re-book, while keeping their fingers crossed that the re-booking will work and no one will take the seats while Bókun is thinking its life through.

Avantages

It's been good overall. What we use them for is a means to have an attractive booking calendar on our website for our customers to use to book our tours. Their platform allows for integration with some good sites like Expedia and Tripadvisor where we can also sell our tours. Platforms such as Airbnb experiences have to be dealt with manually but the booking desk on bokun.io allows for this pretty easily. It also manages availability of seats on our tours and has some good features such as automated messaging and custom exports for your sales data.

Inconvénients

Right at this very moment my biggest gripe is with their Policy towards cancelled bookings through their platform. It's not like we've lost a crippling amount of money but it's that they're not taking a strong supportive stance towards their customers.

How it normally works is if someone books through Bokun, then bokun will charge you 2.9% of the total amount of the sale. They add up all the sales for the month then charge you for it in the next calendar month. If someone books and cancels and your refunds policy allows for them to get their money back Bokun won't charge you. But if they book and then don't cancel till the month following or later then your fee is kept by Bokun. In the whole of 2019 we had this happen a total of 5 times. In March 2020 because of the lockdown on travel we had a total of 30 people cancel who had booked in February or earlier meaning we'd paid bokun fees for their bookings. it amounted to about 2,500 euro of sales refunded and bokun's fee at ~3 percent was something like 75 euro. I've been in contact with their support getting replies like 'Sorry this isn't refundable' to eventually a very vague 'we understand this is a difficult time but we deal with these issues on case by case basis' response. I'm sorry but it's not good enough. We've offered our customers all of their money back, PayPal is waiving their fees, Braintree is waiving their fees, the tax man is waiving their fees. It's about doing the right thing. They're not right now.

Avantages

The possibility for resellers to gain access to your products.

Inconvénients

Fairly many bugs in the system and exploitative terms & conditions. For tour operators: If a tour gets cancelled by the customer for whatever reason (sickness, travel restrictions due to covid 19, change of travel plans etc.) Bokun keeps all fees paid for the bookings if it is cancelled later than 1 month after the booking was placed by the customer. In total our company has lost about 10k NOK due to this policy, and we are expecting to loose quite significant amounts due to all the covid 19 related cancellations. While we refund the customer, being an understanding company that treats our guests with respect and doesn't take money for a tour that the guest cannot attend due to the world being in a crisis, bokun still takes the fees leaving the tour operator not only without income but with the burden of having to pay a fee for a booking that was cancelled!! At the same time their marketing strategy is trying to make them seem understanding and helpful to its users. Pure hypocricy! After having used bokun for quite some time now we have decided to look for an alternative booking system with less technical issues, provided by a company that values its customers and treats them fairly.

Avantages

The best part of this reservation software is the marketplace that allows you to contract directly with other suppliers and resellers of tours and activities. Live support is also a good feature that most other reservation systems don't have. The help articles are quite extensive as well. Product import from Viator is a great feature.

Inconvénients

There are some annoying bugs and features that can leave you clicking around furiously to find a solution for quite some time, eg. the setting up pricing was a mess. The software is being developed constantly and it's possible that these issues have been fixed since, but I got quite frustrated a number of times when setting up the products.
Also, raising the commission from 0.1% to 2.9% without any prior notice was not cool -- I thought the agreement was that we were paying with data to Viator... and now we're paying both ways. The OTA-owned reservation systems are creating data oligopoly situations similar to that of Google which is not the right direction in my opinion.

Alternatives envisagées 

Checkfront et FareHarbor

Pourquoi passer à Bókun

The product was free to use for the first 6 months or so, and then it switched to a 0.1% commission, so it was the cheapest product on the market (before they introduced the current 2.9% commission of course).

Avantages

Being a Tripadvisor company makes the integration with Viator good

Inconvénients

It does not have a Package Creation Feature at all
Plenty of bugs and they don't even know when they will got them fixed
Backend seems from 15 years ago
The email options are a joke

Avantages

So many functionalities and features that can cover the demands of tour operators and travel agencies. Pricing is is very fair compared to alternatives. You can even find partnerships within the software. An overall very nice booking software. Ended up using it after a long market research. And can say I'm satisfied.

Inconvénients

Since bokun was recently buyed by tripadvisor I believe it hasn't "settled" to what viator wants to provide. Things have been fixed and I believe that there are plenty more that will be included by viator to make this booking software the top one. Many hasitate knowing that this is not a privately heald software but viator being behind it but I personally can't see why this is something that bad? On the contrary this can be something really good making you feel safe being partners with one of the leading companies in the industry.

Alternatives envisagées 

FareHarbor

Pourquoi choisir Bókun 

Many more features. Bookworms is an overall good appointment booking system but when it comes to travel services bokun rocks!

Logiciel antérieur 

Bookeo

Pourquoi passer à Bókun

Features, ease of use, pricing. Overall bokun felt that meets my business needs better than any other alywnr in the market.

Avantages

It is easy to use if instructions are followed, Support Service is always there to help you or willing to get the work done for you, they are very courteous and attentive. Bokun has so many features to helping optimize Online Booking according to your customization. One gets so much for so low of charge. Helps a lot to interact and create partnerships with other users and companies from all over the world. Definitely 100% satisfied with Bokun.

Inconvénients

I cannot think about anything that I like the least, perhaps at the start of becoming a new user I might had found it a little too much of information to learn, especially because it was also a new software and lots improvements were done to make it functional, but now it works flawless for me.

Avantages

The look & Feel is great and obviously much effort was put into this. The whole system is fairly intuitive and quick to learn. The help documentation is extensive and written well. Should you not find your answer the help team is quick to respond. Fairly easy to set up, the web modules all look good, the dashboard works well in managing your sales and tours in real time. Setting up agents and affiliates also fairly easy to accomplish. Integration with marketplaces such as Viator also quite smooth, all in all, a good experience and would definitely recommend using.

Inconvénients

One small issue, no warning when an agents credit is about to reach its limit but we can live with it :-)

Avantages

When we decided for Bokun it was the mix of an online booking system for accommodation, activities plus the all Bokun Marketplace where you could connect with suppliers and vendors from all over the world and resell their products or have them resell yours.

Inconvénients

It was rather complex to get acustomed with the product. Bokun is not a simple "plug & play" solution. You will have to own a good amount of time, dig in, get to know it and then strategically plan what you want to get out of the system and how, before doing it.
A clear con today is that Bokun no longer has a focus on the accommodation section, unfortunately. Because we were on it from the beginning we still have access to the tool, which is sadly our most important tool. But Bokun is no longer putting any effort into developing the accommodaton part.

Avantages

The opportunity to get in touch with so many suppliers around the world. The function of the system to connect seller and supplier.

Inconvénients

When the system forwards the booking confirmation to the supplier, the supplier doesn't receive the contact details of the customer.

Avantages

Bokun's features keep getting better and better. With Bokun's new interface and booking widgets it's a much easier process for customers to book products. In fact, the number of clicks to make a booking has been reduced thanks to the new popup booking widget which also retains whatever has been added to the cart.

Inconvénients

They are not many cons to using this free software - Apart from being able to have global questions which can be shared between products!

Alternatives envisagées 

Rezdy

Pourquoi passer à Bókun

Bokun offers a much easier solution to creating experiences and tours. This product is fool proof, and if you decide to come over from another platform - You'll be welcomed by the helpful staff!

Avantages

The ease of use, the number of tour operators available through the platform, constant updates, and a solid customer support. Their UI is user friendly now that they remade most of it and is actually a massive upgrade from what it used to be.

Inconvénients

Sometimes, they would break the API and not inform anyone about it, creating massive problems until fixed. They also had some cache issues with availability, but that has since been fixed.

Alternatives envisagées 

Rezdy

Pourquoi passer à Bókun

Ease of use, number of tours and operators in the system, and a generally user friendly interface.

Avantages

The customer service! Very quick, very clear, very helpful for all kind of questions and problems.

Inconvénients

For example it should be more easy to make bookings for travel agents or clients which are not in the marketplace. It is a bit complicated to first set them all up as affiliates or agents and then make the bookings for them. Imagine, often hotels or booking offices call in to make a booking and I have to be much quicker to put the booking in.
The software is therefore in my opinion too limited to the marketplace.

I usually use the booking desk to put new bookings in but unfortunately it does not safe the commission here. I have to put it in as discount after I finished the booking.

Avantages

nothing in particular some parts are good others not so good. Nothing on the top of my head I can think of.

Inconvénients

The API is often changed without letting us know.
That extras was changed so that each product has its own extra instead of many products can have the same extra. We rent out equipment in about billion tours, imagine if we need to change the picture of lets say the hiking shoes.

Avantages

Great API connectivity with key partners to ensure that our reservation information is up-to-date and accurate. Easy to add schedules, make modifications and update as necessary.

Inconvénients

Still missing important features with incoming bookings that are necessary for our work: notably we receive no information on the language of the activity of the reservation. We also cannot create one-off bookings/reservations of on request services; if we were able to create orders with one-time products/services instead of being restricted to selecting something form the catalogue, Bokun would satisfy all of our reservation needs.

Alternatives envisagées 

Rezdy

Pourquoi passer à Bókun

At the time, the size of Bokun corresponded with the size of our company, which was excellent as we were sure they would understand our specific needs and point of view when using the platform.

Avantages

Easy to use, used to be great for small businesses.

Inconvénients

We had some issues with customers paying on the mobile phone through stripe on Bokun and has now become unaffordable for small businesses.

Avantages

Whatever we needed it to do, it did. Rare were the cases when we could not set up products as we wanted them and then the developers listened and made the options available. If you are looking for software to offer your tours or sell other companies' products, Bókun is the way to go.

Inconvénients

Sometimes it had down time that lasted for longer periods of time.

Alternatives envisagées 

Rezdy

Pourquoi passer à Bókun

Because of the lower price and because they offered the largest number of activities in the countries we were interested in.

Avantages

I am a sole proprietor operating food tour experiences. When I purchased Bokun they assigned a person to help me set up my site. That person would check back with me and any questions I had I would reach out to them. This allowed me to get up and going super quickly.

Inconvénients

I still needed some help in getting it all set up so it's still a little bit more difficult than it should be. The only problems I had were when I would make changes that would throw the synchronization between the different OTA's out of whack and it wasn't immediately evident what it was that I did at the time. However, those are operator errors (my errors). Each time it happened, Bokun would help me out by letting me know exactly where those errors were made.

Avantages

We have been using Bokun for roughly six months now. I spent 12 months trying and discarding other online platforms for tour sales because they were either too hard to use (even for a techie like me) or they lacked functionality. We were starting with almost no online sales and as a small business our budget was quite low. I was looking for a system with lots of functionality, connections to the OTA's and scaleable pricing. AND BOY did I find it!

Inconvénients

There's nothing I don't like- just take note that with an amazing array of functions comes many moving parts. You need to be quite good to manage it all- but if in doubt their support is terrific and can take the hard parts off your hands.

Alternatives envisagées 

Rezdy

Pourquoi choisir Bókun 

We needed added functionality.

Pourquoi passer à Bókun

Added functionality & a beautiful interface. PRICING also.

Avantages

I joined Bokun when they got acquired by Tripadvisor. The small commission was at drove me in, but then I realized it was so much more. It was easy to use, easy to integrate on our website with the widgets and I even found a payment provider better than the one I was using that connected well with them. But I would say the best is their customer service. The whole team is just nice and I've met a few of them at Arival as well. I always tell people when they start using bokun on my team or other teams (to which I have recommended bokun to) - the chat is your best friend, backed by very good tutorials!

Inconvénients

Initially, the fact that the bookings could not be seen in a calendar was a difficulty, but it has been fixed.

Avantages

The redesigned user interface is great. It is now simpler to use and product management is much better than a few years back when I first used Bókun. I like the ease of finding historical bookings for customer service issues.

Inconvénients

I used to like their pricing policy until they changed it recently. Now it became much more expensive than it ever was before (ever since there was a flat fee paid per account, thankfully that is no longer the case). In general, other than the price surge, I think it is still one of the best booking systems out there. There were some issues with availability and accessibility to service some time ago but less since they switched owners. I worked with a company that used Bókun's API to book tours and setting the API was a bit challenging due to their API documentation being a few iterations behind the actual code.

Avantages

It is cheap and works very closely with Viator (TripAdvisor Experiences) and Expedia

Inconvénients

The fact that it is owned by the biggest player, i.e. Tripadvisor. First of all it is a big advantage but at the same time a risk with regards to GetYourGuide (another very strong partner of mine). So I use two Reservatins System. I work with bokun and have Viator, Expedia, Musement, Holibob, TourHQ etc. connected and on the other side I use GYG directly.

Avantages

The best part of bokun is the marketplace. It allow you to connect your business to thousands of businesses.

And, as far as I know, bokun has the biggest businesses pool. Because of this, if your priority is b2b, I think that this a great option.

Inconvénients

At the time I was using it, customer support was the worst part of it. I think it was a new team, so they didn't knew the features and they seemed like bots because when you exposed a problem, they just searched for related articles and suggest you to read them.

Also, you just could talk to them via chat or email. And, since this is for business, I think that they should a phone support also.

The checkout widget that they provide to our customers is also very weak, compared to other solutions. It has spelling erros, because they do automatic translation and because they don't create a suggesting safe UX. Even after exposing some spelling errors on the widget, because they use automatic translations, they weren't willing to fix that.

Avantages

Simple, streamlined booking widget (for your website) and easy-to-use property management dashboard

Inconvénients

Doesn't provide sales spreadsheets with HST information (which I need for tax purposes in Canada)

Avantages

Very good customer service. The live chat is efficient.

Inconvénients

The availability syncronization with viator and trip advisor is not direct and changes take too long to reflect.

Alternatives envisagées 

Rezdy

Pourquoi passer à Bókun

Connection with Viator and Tripadvisor.

Avantages

Nothing I don't like it at all. Horrible customer service to boot

Inconvénients

The communication of talking to a person. First they will try and blame you then they don't explain why stuff happens a fact that makes it seem they could care less about you.

Avantages

Customer service
Pricing
Constant development

Inconvénients

Just need to add separate entry process for different segments

Alternatives envisagées 

TrekkSoft

Pourquoi passer à Bókun

Raw and fresh versus big market player

Avantages

When Bokun launched, I loved the product. It was affordable, solid and easy to implement into my website. The worst is that they slowly because just another one of the bunch by suddenly increasing their transaction feed. Now they've just become a subscription service and they put you into their PRO plan knowing that few people check all their emails and this way they will charge you when their plans change in November. Now their pricing is no longer affordable and they no longer have any meaningful differentiation from the dozens of similar software out there.

Inconvénients

Their sneaky practices, constantly changing their plans and charging you unexpectedly. One cannot trust that this software will not change their plans and policies several times in the span of a couple of years.

Avantages

I like how the platform give both an option to buy the product now or just pay on the day.

Inconvénients

It would probably how bookings are placed on the calender. I'd like it to show them by coming dates as the trend now is all new bookings will be displayed on top pushing old booking far below and it makes it a bit difficult to keep track.

Alternatives envisagées 

Rezdy

Pourquoi passer à Bókun

I choose bokun as this was the platform used by viator which is the main platform were working with and honestly it was a great choice as customer support was thorough and made everything so easy when it comes to bookings management.

Avantages

I simply love Bokun booking system. It's simple to use, great possibilities, Sevice is great and they listem to their customers to improve the system

Inconvénients

I did not find any bad sides of the software because the service team they quickly solve the few problems I had.

Avantages

None at all. We've racked out brains and can't think of one positive thing to say about Bokun.

Inconvénients

Customer service is pathetic. Waiting up to a week for a response on time critical issues and even when they do reply, it's as basic and not relevant. Lost countless bookings due to delayed support.

Can't speak with anyone on the phone. APIs change without warning. Issues with customers receiving emails. Continually line of problems with the software which is badly thought out and executed. It would have the upside of being cheap, but then it takes so much of our time it ends up being more expensive than other software.

They are owned by TripAdvisor and Viator which we have similar problems with. Don't waste your time. In a nutshell - crap.

Avantages

Great reservation and booking system for Tours&Activities agents, suppliers...
Since around 6 months I am using Bokun actively. Thanks to the colleagues of Bokun who have contacted me and offered a half hour training 6 months ago. Since that time I have increased the number of my products to more than 100 and I have also now 6 active contracts with resellers and OTAs, which were listed in the Bokun Marketplace. I always get quick answers to my requests from their support team. The pricing conditions of Bokun is incomparable. %2.9!!!
And recently the experiences widget HTML codes for our website and any other place(Share link via Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp etc) is really great!!
Great Thanks to all the colleagues at Bokun in Iceland and Boston who have contacted me and also to other team members...
Ahmet V.
Holiday Experiences
Marmaris - Turkey

Inconvénients

The system and the features are easy to use, but you need some time till you get used to them. There are really endless details in the system, which can be used according to different needs of the users.
Some minor changes could be done so that it becomes more user friendly.

Avantages

The feature is very helpful to load,manage all of product we need.All of that is very easy to use also for beginner.This software can integrate with web and any and easy to create widget.

Inconvénients

the feature always updating following our needs.All of step very familiar,no need expert to use this software.I can create own website in this software also they integrating with payment gateway like TrustMyTravel.

Alternatives envisagées 

Rezdy

Pourquoi passer à Bókun

Bokun connected with tripadvisor,viator and other OTA when the first time I know this software

Avantages

Bokun gives us a thought oversight of our operations and helps us planing our tours ahead of time. Easy access to all bookings helps us sending out invoices at the right time which at the end of the day helps us with maintaining a healthy cash flow.

Inconvénients

I would prefer a more helpful dashboard to be really able to crunch the numbers and statistics, this year vs the next etc. needing to export a sheet to takes time and effort when it can all be easily added to the dashboard. For example we’d love to push one button to see a breakdown of nationalities compared now, compared to last month and recent years.

Avantages

Bokun is the ultimate software for travel operators and travel platforms alike. It provides 5-star service, a full on-boarding process with one of their experts. Plus, they are fully integrated with big travel platforms such as TripAdvisor and Expedia, so you get all bookings in one place and you don't need to check multiple platforms daily, which is a big time saver.
Moreover, Bokun provides beautiful and customizable widgets for your products to put on your website, which increases conversion rates.

Inconvénients

It is pretty complex to use, but that's both a strength and a weakness. They do offer professional on-boarding and a great resource library, which makes it relatively easy to learn for anyone with

Avantages

Functionally easy to navigate. Very easy for my team to customize groups or set up new products.

Inconvénients

The software meets our requirements. I would recommend to anyone.

Avantages

Ease of use and quick setup is at the core of the bokun system and they achive that without sacrificing more complex operations. We have regularly had demo's of other booking systems but none have provided us with the options and ease of use that Bokun has.
Job well done

Inconvénients

Sometimes it has been too easy to setup new products and we have ended up with too many to keep overview. Luckily, the bokun support is amazingly fast to respond when we get into trouble.

Alternatives envisagées 

Xola, Rezdy et TrekkSoft

Pourquoi choisir Bókun 

Ease of use and feature packed software

Avantages

3 things that I really loved are:
1. Super easy backend to manage products, sales and inventory
2. Marketplace to have swift alliances with fellow product suppliers to promote up-sell and cross sell
3. Very active customer support

Inconvénients

As the software is still undergoing design changes, there are a few hiccups that occur sometime. But these are easy to resolve with a website builder.

Avantages

Easy to manage bookings, good feature set around it.
Many sales and suppliers in the system, good sales canal.

Inconvénients

Management of the products can be complicated and often not working correctly.
Would like to see better management around staff, able to assign bookings on guide or driver guides.
The calendar on our web can be slow some times.

Avantages

You can do wonderful things with is if you know where to clic and what you are looking for.

Inconvénients

When it is updated, sometimes the Help section is not updated. There are some features that sometimes do not work properly or we would like seeing modified e.i. adding the day (Monday...) into the Activity Calendar rather than just the date itself.

Avantages

Speed, connectivity, ease of use, support.

Inconvénients

Adaptability and tailoring for specific needs. We provide special products and software is not so adaptable for such services.

Avantages

The options to define product. The website creator (which is a Duda solution). The powerful of managing products.

Inconvénients

Lack of flexibility for complex products (bundles)

Alternatives envisagées 

Rezdy

Avantages

The idea of using software to centralize our sales from different channels is simply amazing. Bokun helped us put in order many of our internal processes. Plus, it's simply useful to use the Marketplace to find new partners.

Inconvénients

I'm pretty good with technology but it was hard for some of my colleagues to understand the functionality of Bókun. I guess a better design would help. Also, trying to make things more simple and user-friendly would be great.
And sometimes it delays to load but not sure what the reason would be.

Alternatives envisagées 

Rezdy et TrekkSoft

Pourquoi passer à Bókun

Great price, great features, video tutorials to help, and from the very first moment they got my attention when I could see how easy it was to manage all our bookings.

Avantages

It is mostly user friendly. One can set up multiple types of tours with the new setup very easily and post on one's own website either a booking page or a widget.

Also the marketplace. Very accessible to sell and buy products from all that use bókun. We were really happy when the cost model changed into pay per sold item instead of fixed cost. That makes it easier for new buyers to join bókun and shop online.

Inconvénients

That transportation products were left out of the development

Avantages

At first, the structure and functionality of this software overwhelm but in no time the user will gradually start appreciating every little detail which makes it so easy to manage all aspects of a prospering tourism company. Bokun provides solutions for tons of different products and services. It also feels that they are always around to give you an extra tip to improve your business or use a new tool they just released.

Inconvénients

It takes time to learn how to operate this software, but this applies to everything serious and well made.

Avantages

It was free and only charged per transaction. Initially that charge was supposed to be 1%. However, it took quite some time to iron out the bugs and get it working so we have never managed to get a single booking through it.

Inconvénients

After 12 months of floods, bushfires and COVID, Bokun decided that everyone wanted to pay them $49 per month ($588 per year) even when there were no revenue streams to be had due to Australian borders being closed. We have spent the last 12 months setting up for new products so that we would be able to book them when borders start to open. However, we are now back to square one.