What is ‘ToursByUs’?
A portal to book tours with locals. It is a place where people local to a town/city/tourist area can offer tours to visitors. Similar to AirBnB, people can put up listings of tours they offer. Tourists visiting that place can reserve a tour with a local.
What constitutes a tour?
Tour can be a lunch/dinner invite at the home of the local. It can be an invitation to eat home cooked food, discuss their lives, and enrich the visit of the tourists allowing them to understand the life of the locals better. If I pluck and sell coconuts for a living, I could offer a tour of how I do that. I can create an experience out of it, and sell it to tourists who are visiting that village. A tour can be a visit to a museum, a fort, a food tour of the city, or a walking tour of the city center. A tour can be an invitation to a cultural celebration, a barbeque party, a guided snorkeling tour, a guided scuba diving tour etc. Basically, any experience that would be of interest to the customer.
Basic functionality
- Sign up/login functionality for locals & tourists
- Listing creation: allow local to create listing for tours
- Search functionality : allow tourists to look for tours within a city
- Messaging support : enable both parties to discuss logistics of the tour
- Reserve a tour: support payment functionality and reserving the tour
- Account management:
- My tours – view,
- functionality to cancel till 24 hour cancelation window
- My tour listings ( for tour operators)
- edit the listing
- My tours – view,
- the localPayment disbursement: After the tourist confirms that the tour happened, the account of the local is credited.
- Reviews: Allow verified tourists ( who had reserved tours) to review the experience
Advanced features
- Pro guide tag – Verified tour operators
Elements of a Tour
| Tour Image | <<image>> |
| Tour Name: | Flavors of Chinatown Food and Culture Walking Tour |
| Tour Duration: | 2 hours |
| Tour Days & Times | Sat & Sun : 10 am- 12 om. |
| Tour Description: | |
| Tour Cost: | |
| Other specifications | Age range, max participants, tour fitness requirements, disclaimers to be signed, |
| Address where the tour begins |
Search Functionality
– Search by city/zip code
– Search by tour name
– Search by keywords
Tour Search Result Page
Depict the tours in a tile format, with image and text. The image and text would be clickable and take you to the tour detail page. The text would contain the star rating and number of reviews received by that tour operator.
Tour Detail page
A scrollable image gallery
About the tour description
Details of the tour
Calendar view
Message the tour operator
Functionality to book the tour
About the tour operator
Messaging
Users and tour providers should be able to compose, send, receive messages, notifications on message receipt.
Reserve a tour
Provide the functionality to book a tour from the detail page.
Show users a form where they can enter additional details.
Waiver signing step?
Payment portal
Confirm booking
Confirmation email
Reminder Email
The system will send out reminders to both parties as the date for the tour comes closer.
Backend
Table to store information about the tour
Table to store the bookings
Table to store the user data