Advanced Travel Planning and Pricing System for a Tour Operator
TRIPorganiser is a family-owned tour operator based in Edinburgh, Scotland. They specialize crafting private tours throughout Scotland (and soon England), ranging from half-day excursions to multi-day adventures. Their focus lays on immersive, authentic experiences, with fully customizable itineraries.
The problem
The existing operating system could no longer support the company's rapid growth.
They had been relying on Excel spreadsheets and several other tools, including ClickUp, which became both functionally insufficient and increasingly difficult to manage across platforms. Their issues can be summarized in 4 main points:
- Disorganized workflows
- Inconsistent pricing management
- No tracking of client and supplier relationships
- Inefficient accounting and booking processes
Without a centralized platform, the company faced:
- Booking delays
- Missed reservations
- Miscommunication
- Operational errors
The Solution
A clear, unified, and user-friendly system.
The newly built Notion system serves as a central hub for managing trips, clients, pricing, suppliers, accounting, tasks, and bookings, consolidating data previously scattered across multiple tools and spreadsheets.
New system is composed of a well-structured system of relational databases, where:
- Trips database: is the central entity that connects to all other components. It stores basic trip information and maintains relationships with clients, pricing, suppliers, and income.
- Clients database: Trips can involve multiple clients, and the system tracks these relationships along with the income generated from each client.
- Pricing database : Each trip has associated pricing details that are directly linked to specific suppliers for transparent cost tracking.
- Suppliers database: The system maintains supplier information and their relationship with trips and pricing, streamlining the service procurement process.
- Income Tracking: Income records are connected to both trips and clients for comprehensive financial monitoring.
The system also includes custom dashboards, such as an accounting headquarters with views of expected income and expenses through linked views of Income and Pricing databases. Additionally, the team received instructional videos explaining the setup and automation workflows.
Custom Formulas
The Trips database contains 25 custom formulas that automate all calculations.
Team members simply need to add items to the pricing database. The formulas handle everything else, automatically calculating profits, per-person pricing, estimated revenue, commissions, VAT buffer, and more.
Database Automations
A total of over 40 tasks was automated using native Notion database automations.
When a status changes, the automation creates corresponding tasks, assigns them to the person who triggered the automation, and sets deadlines relative to the trip date. This automation prevents tasks from being forgotten before travelers' arrival and saves TRIPorganiser's internal team several hours each month by eliminating manual task logging.
External n8n Automations
We replaced fragmented booking flow with automated, reliable data flows that save hours and reduce manual errors.
For a tour operator managing multiple booking platforms, finance tools, calendars, forms, and client communications, every manual handoff creates risk: missed details, duplicated work, delayed updates, and avoidable mistakes. Using n8n, we connected these systems into streamlined workflows that move critical information automatically, keeping Notion as the central source of truth while ensuring the team, bookkeepers, guides, and clients always have the right data at the right time.
Automation 1. Syncing finances from Notion to XERO
Automation 2. Syncing Fareharbor bookings with Notion’s DayTours database and guide’s TeamUp Calendars
Automation 3. Gathering client trip details via professional Brevo emails that link to Webflow forms, then sending submissions to the Notion Client’s database
This last automation is the most impactful: for trips with many participants (even 150+), it automatically collects contact information, passport details, dietary restrictions, etc. as soon as clients submit them. Previously, this information had to be chased down for each person, and every client detail had to be entered into the system manually. For a single trip, it saves more than 2 hours of work on average.
Additional Features We’re Proud Of
Sandbox environment for new hires
Technology adoption can vary across a company. To avoid throwing new hires in at the deep end, and to protect the day-to-day operations system from unintended mistakes, we created a smaller copy of the full workspace, with all the crucial features. This gives new team members a safe place to experiment and learn how to plan and price a trip in Notion from start to finish. We also included sample client requests that they can use to practice the full planning process from beginning to end.
Capturing changes to the pricing sent to the client at every stage
Planning a trip is rarely linear. You propose a hotel, and the client prefers an Airbnb. You include one attraction, and they’d rather choose another. You plan relaxed days, but it turns out they want a fully packed schedule. With so many itinerary versions and pricing offers sent back and forth, it’s easy to lose track. In our system, every time a proposal is sent, a snapshot of the current pricing (including all included items) is saved in a backend database. So if a client later claims the first offer was 2× cheaper, you have the records to prove otherwise.
Trip snapshot formula highlighting key pricing elements at a glance
When pricing a trip, we want to see key details at a glance: our costs, profit, and the client price in EUR/USD/GBP. If we have one trip in the pipeline, we can open the page and see everything there. If we have hundreds of them, we need a snapshot for each trip that’s easy to access from multiple team dashboards and views. To make this possible, we implemented an elaborate formula that surfaces the most important pricing elements in a clean, well-formatted way.
Process Roadmap & Timeline
The initial database build was implemented over 3 weeks, with ongoing support, and more advanced features and automations provided afterward.
The TRIPorganiser team received comprehensive support throughout the entire process, from initial workflow examination to database structuring, implementation of custom formulas that automated 90% of data processing, user testing, team onboarding, and video tutorials. A retainer service was contracted to ensure a smooth team transition and allow for further system adjustments or developments as needed.
Customer Feedback
The best KPI for a business is customer satisfaction
TRIPorganiser's owner provided feedback that perfectly captures the quality of work delivered. Such positive responses fuel my passion and drive me to consistently give my absolute best.
