Your Go Cotswolds tour booking experience just got better!
It’s been a long time coming… but this small family business has finally got with the times and upgraded to a fancy-schmancy new Cotswolds tour booking system! Enormous thanks to the fabulous folks at Xola for getting us set up – we love it!
And while we know that you, the customer, might not be quite so enthusiastic as I am about our new software, it has some great features that you’re going to really appreciate when you book a tour with us. Here are 5 brilliant things about it!
1. It’s faster – get that Cotswolds tour booking locked down super quick!
Before now, we’d been using a pretty basic online booking system. It did everything we, and you, needed it to do (most of the time). But, while your customer experience may have been fine, behind the scenes it created a lot of extra work for our back office team (a.k.a. Lisa). There were a LOT of spreadsheets…!
As well as significantly speeding up our back office processes, our new system works a lot faster on our website too. It’s a much smoother, slicker system, with fewer clicks needed to lock down your Cotswolds tour booking. You’ll also get instant confirmation of your tour booking and payment, sent automatically to your inbox – and your phone. Hurray!
2. Manage your own Cotswolds tour booking at the click of a button
A VERY cool feature of our new Xola booking system is that you can now manage your own booking!
Before, if you needed to change your pick up point, or update your phone number with us, you had to call or email us. Likewise, if you wanted to change the date of your tour, or even cancel your tour, you had to get in touch with us directly. Since we’re a small family business, we’re not always at our desk to be able to handle those requests immediately. And that’s annoying, right?
Now, when you book a tour with us, you’ll see a green button on your confirmation email, inviting you to ‘Manage your booking’. Click this button to easily and immediately update your contact details, change the date of your tour or your pick up point, or even cancel your tour.
3. Text messages!
As well as automated email confirmation, we can also use our new booking software to send you text messages! Don’t worry, we absolutely won’t spam you! But you’ll now get a text message to confirm your booking and any amendments you make. You’ll also get a helpful reminder the day before your tour, and a little nudge after the tour to leave us a review 🙂
We’ll also send your guide’s name and number straight to your phone by SMS, so you don’t have to scroll through all your emails if you need to contact us urgently.
4. At-a-glance availability – instantly check which tours are available and when
Our tour booking calendars got a new look! When you click the ‘Book Now’ button for a tour on our website, a calendar will pop up. This calendar will not only show you which dates are available or not, but you’ll also be able to see exactly how many spots are left for a particular tour.
This also brings me onto the next awesome feature of our new Cotswolds tour booking system, which might just be my favourite….
5. Join a wait list – get notified if a spot opens up for a fully booked tour
Oh no! The tour you want is fully booked! Or, there’s only 1 space left but you need 3! You can now join a wait list.
When you join a wait list for one of our tours, you’ll be automatically notified by email if we get any cancellations that open up enough spots for your group. Joining a wait list doesn’t guarantee that you’ll be able to join the tour, but if we some spaces do open up, then you can take action to secure your Cotswolds tour booking right away.
We’ll also be notified when we have a wait list. This means we can open up extra availability for the tour, if we have guides and vehicles available.
6. Easy gift vouchers emailed straight to your inbox
We love to gift experiences, not things, don’t you? We’ve always offered gift vouchers for our small group tours, but the process was a little clunky, and since it wasn’t instant, it was no good for those last-minute oops-I-forgot-a-birthday-tomorrow moments!
If you loved your Cotswolds tour booking and want to gift a tour to someone else, well this just got a lot easier!
To buy a Go Cotswolds gift voucher, simply head to our Gift Vouchers page and hit ‘Buy Gift’. You can choose to purchase a voucher for a specific small group tour, or you can choose a monetary value, which you or the recipient can put towards a small group tour later.
If you know the date you want to take a tour with us, we’d always recommend that you book a specific date right away – that way, you’ll avoid disappointment if you come to use your voucher later on and find the tour is fully booked! But for birthdays, Christmas, Easter, Mother’s/Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day, thank you gifts, leaving presents, or just-because presents, a Cotswolds tour makes a great gift. If you choose to buy a voucher for a specific tour, then the recipient can now actually choose to use that voucher on a different tour, if they prefer.
Ready to make a Go Cotswolds tour booking?
Right now, you can book our small group Cotswolds in a Day tour, our Cotswolds Walks & Villages small group tour, and our Private Cotswolds in a Day tour on our website.
Custom private tours can’t be booked instantly online, but once we’ve helped to create your perfect tour itinerary, you can still pay securely online. Contact us to discuss a custom private tour.
If you’re not ready to book a tour yet, then sign up to receive our newsletter. We’ll send you our news and offers around once per month, so you can keep Go Cotswolds in mind. Sign up here.
