The Departure Board
Working notes on selling, running and growing a travel business — written by people who do it, for people who do it.
Sales28 Jul 20267 min
The 11pm enquiry, and what it costs you by morning
Most travel enquiries arrive outside office hours. The operators winning them are not staying up — they are answering while asleep.
Operations14 Jul 20269 min
Slab pricing without the spreadsheet that only one person understands
FIT and GIT rate cards are where margin quietly leaks. A short guide to structuring slabs so a quotation prices itself.
Operations30 Jun 20266 min
Vouchers that issue themselves the moment the advance clears
The gap between payment and paperwork is where operators lose evenings. It is also the easiest thing to automate well.
Growth18 Jun 20268 min
What a repeat traveller is actually worth to a tour operator
We modelled acquisition cost against lifetime value for 60 operators. The gap is larger, and slower to appear, than most teams assume.
Sales2 Jun 20265 min
WhatsApp templates that do not read like a bank
Approved templates are a constraint. Used well, they are also the difference between a message that gets read and one that gets muted.
Operations21 May 20267 min
Closing the month without chasing four people for numbers
Receivables on one side, supplier payables on the other, and a reconciliation that takes an afternoon instead of a week.
Field notes9 May 202610 min
Field notes: selling the Serengeti shoulder season
Three weeks with ground handlers in Arusha, and what it taught us about pricing a season most operators skip.
Product24 Apr 20266 min
Why one traveller record beats five integrated systems
Integration moves data between systems. A single record means there was never more than one version of the traveller to reconcile.
Growth8 Apr 20267 min
Building a B2B portal your agent partners actually log into
Most agent portals are quietly abandoned within a quarter. The ones that survive share three unglamorous properties.
Product27 Mar 20265 min
Automation that earns trust: start with what nobody wants to do
Teams do not resist automation. They resist automation that has been wrong once, and they remember for a long time.