Skip to main content
01

Built for Tourism & Hospitality

OTAs took 37% of your industry's bookings last year.

We build direct booking platforms, itinerary tools, and guest portals for hotels, tour operators, and attractions, so you own the booking flow and the guest data. Stripe handles multi-currency payments, and channel management keeps availability in sync across Expedia, Airbnb, and Viator. We also build the destination's marketing site.

queencityriverboats.com

Our work · Queen City Riverboats + Destiny Yacht Charters, built by Upforge

A warm forge glow behind drifting steam, like tourism direct booking software bringing a guest's next step into focus
02Sound familiar?

Why tourism operators keep giving away their margin

37%

of tour and activity bookings now come through OTAs

Arival's 2026 Global Operator Landscape (5,000+ operators) recorded OTAs surging to 37% of bookings, along with the starkest decline yet in operators' direct website share. (Arival (Global Operator Landscape, 4th Ed.), 2026)

30%+

commission rates some operators were quoted in GetYourGuide's 2025 increases

Arival documented operators receiving roughly 30 days' notice of commission hikes reaching or surpassing 30%. A rented sales channel can reprice itself whenever it likes. (Arival, 2025)

1 in 2

tour operators still have no online booking system at all

More than half of tour operators, per Arival's technology study of 3,500+ operators. Every one of them is handing direct-booking demand straight to the OTAs. (Arival (Technology & Connectivity report), 2023)

03The shift

The same tourism & hospitality business. A different machine.

Shift 01

Today

OTAs skim every booking, at rates they can raise on 30 days' notice

With Upforge

Direct booking through your own platform, zero commission

Shift 02

Today

Emailing itineraries and answering the same questions

With Upforge

Digital itineraries and a guest portal with self-service

Shift 03

Today

Bookings scattered across OTAs with no unified guest view

With Upforge

Channel manager + CRM so every guest is in one place

04What we build

Built for how tourism & hospitality actually works.

01

Direct Booking Platform

Your own booking flow for tours, packages, or stays, with payment processing, confirmations, and upsells, and no OTA commission. We build booking flows designed to convert, with calendar availability, dynamic pricing, and package builders that let guests customize their trip. Stripe handles payments, including deposits, installments, and full prepayment. Confirmation emails and pre-trip sequences go out automatically, so guests stay engaged from booking to arrival without staff effort.

Learn more about Direct Booking Platform
02

Itinerary & Guest Tools

Digital itineraries, self-service updates, and a guest portal, so your team answers fewer emails and guests get a smoother trip. We build interactive itineraries with maps, timing, packing lists, and meeting points that guests can open on any device. Guests reschedule and buy add-ons on their own, which cuts inbound messages. Automated pre-trip emails send the right information at the right time instead of burying guests in a single info dump.

Learn more about Itinerary & Guest Tools
03

Channel Management & Automation

Automated confirmations, follow-ups, and reporting, plus rates and availability synced across the OTAs and your direct site. Our channel management layer keeps Expedia, Airbnb, Viator, and your own site aligned, so you never double-book. Rate rules let you price OTA listings above direct to steer guests toward commission-free bookings. Post-trip review request sequences and rebooking campaigns run automatically to turn one-time guests into repeat visitors.

Learn more about Channel Management & Automation
Free tourism & hospitality audit

Want to know what your current setup is costing you?

The free audit checks your website the way your tourism & hospitality customers experience it (speed, mobile, accessibility, and search visibility) and puts what's worth fixing in writing. It's automated and free, and the report is specific about what it finds.

06What changes

How the machine removes each problem.

01

Booking costs

Compare direct booking costs with marketplace commissions using your records.

02

Booking channels

Measure which channels produce bookings and how their mix changes.

03

Guest information

Make trip details and common answers available before guests contact the team.

04

Guest records

Bring permitted booking and guest details into a shared operational view.

Tourism & Hospitality FAQs

Common Questions From Tourism & Hospitality

Yes. We build channel manager integrations that sync availability and rates across Expedia, Airbnb, Booking.com, Viator, and your direct site in real time, so nothing gets double-booked and nobody updates rates by hand on each platform. Rate rules let you price OTA channels higher than direct to incentivize commission-free bookings. Changes on one platform propagate to all others within seconds. See our automation capabilities.

OTAs charge 15 to 25% per booking that scales with your revenue forever. A direct booking platform built with Stripe costs a flat development fee with zero per-booking commission. For an operator doing $500K in annual bookings through OTAs, that's $75K to $125K in commissions eliminated every year. The platform typically pays for itself within 4 to 6 months. See our application development services.

We build interactive digital itinerary tools where guests see their full schedule, accommodation details, maps with meeting points, packing lists, and activity descriptions on any device. Self-service rescheduling and add-on purchases reduce inbound communication. Automated pre-trip email sequences deliver relevant information at the right time instead of one overwhelming info dump. We build it through our application development process.

Yes. We design and develop destination and property marketing sites on Next.js with image galleries, immersive experience pages, and direct booking integration. They're built to rank for travel searches like "kayak tours in Loveland" or "boutique hotel Over-the-Rhine," and designed to turn browsers into booked guests. See our portfolio for examples.

A focused direct booking platform with Stripe payments and automated confirmations is typically 10 to 14 weeks. Adding itinerary tools, guest CRM, and channel manager integration with Expedia and Airbnb extends to 4 to 6 months. We deliver in phases, so you can start taking direct bookings while guest tools and channel sync are still being built. See our application development timeline.

Most tourism booking projects range from $5,000 to $50,000 depending on booking complexity, channel integrations, and guest portal features, and most land between $18,000 and $35,000. A focused direct booking platform sits at the lower end, while a full system with itinerary tools, channel management, and CRM runs higher. Operators doing $500K+ through OTAs typically recover the build cost within 4-6 months through eliminated commissions. See our application development page.

We build with Next.js on the frontend for fast, SEO-friendly pages, Node.js on the backend, and PostgreSQL for data. Stripe handles payments including multi-currency support. Channel integrations connect via official OTA APIs. The code is modern and documented, and any developer can maintain it. See our web development services for more.

We provide ongoing maintenance and support covering OTA API updates, seasonal pricing adjustments, feature additions, and performance monitoring. Tourism platforms need active maintenance as booking patterns shift and channel APIs evolve. It runs on a retainer: you put down a deposit, the work is billed against it at $150 an hour, and you get a monthly summary.

We build with Stripe's multi-currency support so guests pay in their local currency while you receive funds in yours. Tax calculation, currency conversion, and regional pricing rules are configurable per market. Booking flows support multiple languages if your guest base requires it. See our application development page for details on international features.

Yes. We build multi-product architectures where hotels, tours, and activities all run from a single platform with shared guest profiles and unified reporting. Each property or experience type has its own booking rules, pricing, and availability while management gets a consolidated view of revenue and occupancy across the portfolio. See our portfolio for examples.

Tourism & Hospitality: key facts (with sources)

  • 37% of tour and activity bookings now come through OTAs (source: Arival (Global Operator Landscape, 4th Ed.), 2026)
  • 30%+ commission rates some operators were quoted in GetYourGuide's 2025 increases (source: Arival, 2025)
  • 1 in 2 tour operators still have no online booking system at all (source: Arival (Technology & Connectivity report), 2023)

Sources

Each source opened and verified · last checked
  1. · OTAs surged to 37% of tour and activity operator bookings in 2025, and the study, based on more than 5,000 operators worldwide, recorded the starkest decline yet in operators' direct website bookings (published January 2026).
  2. · In June 2025 GetYourGuide notified select operators of commission increases on roughly 30 days' notice, with operators sharing rate increases reaching or surpassing 30%; after operator pushback, GetYourGuide reversed the increase for some (Arival, updated July 2025).
  3. · More than half of tour operators, three in ten activity operators, and one in four attractions do not use an online booking system, per Arival's survey of over 3,500 operators (2023).

Your tourism & hospitality business, running on your terms.

Tell us where the hours are going, and we’ll show you what a system built for your operation looks like, with a fixed price before any work starts.