How to Sell Tours Online by Charging a Per-Person Deposit
To sell tours online, every tour needs its own listing — duration, difficulty, meeting point, what's included, and price per person — plus a percentage deposit that multiplies by the spots each person reserves.
Leticia has spent six years taking groups from Ciudad Valles to the waterfalls of the Huasteca Potosina, and until this summer her bookings lived in WhatsApp. If you want to sell tours online, her story will sound familiar: every Friday she answered the same five questions, got screenshots of transfers with no way to tell which departure they were for, and asked for a $500 deposit no matter if two people were coming or ten.
In July, a group reserved eight spots on the boat to Tamul with that same $500. Three showed up. That Saturday she left a couple on the shore because “there was no room left,” and the other five spots went out empty.
What does a tourist need to see before paying for a tour?
They need to know where it leaves from, how long it lasts, how demanding it is, what’s included, and how much it costs per person. If any one of those five things is missing from your page, they’ll ask you on WhatsApp — and while you’re answering, they’re already asking another operator.
A page for selling tours online is a page where every tour has its own listing, and people reserve spots and pay right there, without writing to you. In Proyecta, each tour’s listing has ten fields, and only the title is required:
- Title and Cover image.
- Description: what you see and what you do.
- Duration, in free text: “6 hours,” “1 full day,” “3 days, 2 nights.”
- Difficulty: Easy, Moderate, or Hard.
- Meeting point, with a clear landmark.
- Starting price, per person.
- Deposit (%).
- Inclusions: guide, transport, food, life jacket.
- Itinerary, step by step or day by day.
The question Leticia got asked most was “do you need to know how to swim?” Now the Tamul listing answers it: Moderate difficulty, “Life jacket” under Inclusions, and a line in the description saying the jacket stays on the whole way.
How does the deposit work when several spots are reserved at once?
It’s charged per person. The deposit is a percentage of each spot’s price, so a group of eight leaves eight deposits, not one.
The Tamul tour costs $1,200 per person, and Leticia set a 30% deposit — $360 per spot. A family of five pays $1,800 by card when they book, and the remaining $4,200 is paid on the day of the tour. If you leave the deposit field blank, the customer pays everything up front.
What matters isn’t the percentage — it’s that it scales with the group. With the old flat deposit, eight spots cost the group the same as two, and canceling didn’t hurt. Now a group of eight puts down $2,880 upfront, and since August no large group has flaked on her.
How do you know which date each order is for?
Because you ask when they pay. The page doesn’t have a calendar of departures, so the date comes in as a written answer: you ask Proyecta to have your tour checkout ask “What date?” and refuse to let them pay without answering it.
The answer shows up inside the order, in your dashboard. The question only gets asked when someone buys a tour — if you also sell Huasteca t-shirts, buying a t-shirt doesn’t trigger it. You can add a help line under the field, and it’s worth doing: the first week, someone answered “the next one.” Leticia added “Write the day and month, for example Saturday, October 18th,” and it hasn’t happened again.
What do you see when someone pays?
An order with the tour, the number of spots, the date the customer wrote, and what they’ve already paid you. If it was a deposit, the order says “Deposit paid” and carries a tag with what’s still owed, like “$4,200 due.”
On the day of the tour, when the family pays you the $4,200 in cash, you open their order, tap “Record payment,” choose Cash, Bank transfer, Card terminal, or Other, and confirm. The amount is already filled in with what’s left. And in the “With balance” filter you can see everyone who still owes you.
What doesn’t the page do for you?
Three things: counting the spots on each departure, charging two prices on the same tour, and notifying people when you cancel. Worth knowing before you launch it.
It doesn’t count the spots on each departure. Since the date is a written answer rather than a calendar, the page doesn’t know that Saturday’s boat already has 14 of 16 spots filled. You keep that count yourself, by reading the orders. If a departure fills up and someone already paid for that day, you message them to move their date.
It charges one price per tour. Whatever you write under “Starting price” is what gets charged per spot, even though the label says “starting.” If kids pay less, the listing won’t work that out on its own: Leticia created a second tour, “Tamul for under-12s,” with its own price, instead of explaining it in the description and charging a child the adult rate.
It doesn’t notify anyone when a departure is canceled. If the river rises and you cancel Saturday, messaging each group and moving their date is still on you. What does change is that you now have, in one place, who paid, for which day, and how much.
How do you start selling tours online this week?
By describing your page to Proyecta. Leticia wrote something like this:
“I want a page to sell my tours in the Huasteca Potosina. We leave from Ciudad Valles. Three tours: Tamul Waterfall by boat, 6 hours, moderate difficulty, $1,200 per person; cliff jumping at Micos Waterfalls, 4 hours, $650; and Sótano de las Golondrinas at sunrise, $900. A 30% deposit on all three, and ask what date it’s for at checkout.”
Before you share the link, check three things. That the prices and percentages are yours. That no sample tour you don’t actually offer got left behind — with payments switched on, that one can be bought too. And that, in a test purchase, the date question actually shows up.
And one thing to do this Friday: open the “With balance” filter, read the date on each order, and add up what people will pay you on Saturday. That number is the cash you’re going to collect at the dock — bring change — and it’s also the list of who needs to pay before stepping onto the boat.
If you want to sell tours online without spending every Friday answering WhatsApp messages, describe your tour operation to Proyecta and publish it.