Pickup lists and headcounts for small tour operators
For a small tour operator, the evening before a tour is often spent copying bookings into a spreadsheet, working out a pickup route and messaging it to the driver and guide. When something goes wrong the next morning, a missed pickup or a guest who was never on the list, it usually started in that spreadsheet.
A consistent routine makes it faster and more reliable.
What the list needs
For each departure, the guide and driver need one list with, for every booking:
| Column | Why |
|---|---|
| Pickup time | Drives the whole route. Sort by this. |
| Pickup place | Hotel name and area, exactly as the driver knows it. “Lotus Hotel, 12 Ma May St”, not “Old Quarter”. |
| Lead guest name | The name the guide will call out. |
| Adults, children, infants | Seats, life jackets, meal counts and entry tickets all depend on it. |
| Phone or messaging contact | For the “we’re outside your hotel” message. |
| Balance to collect | So the guide knows who still owes money, and how much. |
| Notes | Dietary needs, mobility, language, birthdays. |
At the top: the departure date and time, the tour name, the vehicle, the guide, the driver and the total headcount.
The routine
1. Close bookings at a set time
Pick a cut-off, such as 18:00 the day before, and stop taking bookings for tomorrow after it, or treat late bookings as exceptions you handle by phone. A list that changes at 22:00 is a list that’s wrong at 07:00.
2. Pull bookings into one place
If you sell through your website, OTAs such as Viator or GetYourGuide, and hotel desks, gather all of them for the departure. Missing a channel is the most common cause of a guest not on the list.
3. Fill gaps before building the route
Any booking without a pickup place or phone number? Message the guest now. Without those, the route can’t be right.
4. Build the route
Group pickups by area, then order them by distance from the first stop. Allow realistic time between stops: five minutes in the same street, fifteen across town in traffic. Then work backwards from the tour start to set each pickup time.
Send each guest their pickup time individually. A guest told “between 7:30 and 8:00” will be ready at 7:55.
5. Check the headcount three ways
Before sending the list, check that the total matches:
- the sum of the bookings
- the seats in the vehicle
- the tickets, meals or equipment you’ve reserved
If any of the three disagree, find out why tonight.
6. Send it in a form that survives a bad signal
A message with the list as text, or a PDF, works on a mountain road. A link to a spreadsheet that needs data doesn’t. Ask the guide to confirm they’ve received it.
On the day
- The guide ticks guests off as they board and messages anyone who isn’t at their pickup point within five minutes.
- No-shows are recorded on the list, with the time the guide waited and tried to contact them. You’ll need it if the guest disputes the charge.
- After the tour, the list goes back to the office with balances collected and notes, so tomorrow’s list starts clean.
Fewer spreadsheets
Every step above uses information that’s already in your booking system. Our Hotel & Tour Ops plugin will build the headcount and pickup list for each departure automatically from WP Travel Engine, WP Travel or WooCommerce Bookings. Until then, the routine works just as well by hand, and if you’re choosing a booking plugin, see our comparison of tour plugins.