For users of the TourCMS tour operator ecommerce platform

Introduce yourself!

Please use this thread to introduce yourself and your company.

Where are you based? What kind of travel do you sell? etc.

Right - I will start off..

My name is Alex Bainbridge. I am the Managing Director of Travel UCD - the company behind TourCMS. We are based in Southampton on the south coast of the UK.... Southampton is a large shipping port and now has 15 cruise ships based here.

If you call us it is likely you will speak to me.

A long time ago I was MD of a small tour operator selling adventure travel in the Middle East and Asia. However, more recently, Travel UCD have been working alongside larger travel companies managing large ecommerce projects.

TourCMS started development late 2003..... we started with a couple of customers to ensure that we had everything organised and ready for action.

So go on..... please come and introduce yourself here!

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Ralph Foulds on February 20, 2008 at 4:05pm: OK - Hi - I'm Ralph Foulds - one of the directors of Uncover the World Ltd. We are an independent tour operator, based just outside of Leeds, in the north of England.

We specialise in small group & tailor-made, cultural & adventure tours in Egypt & Jordan, Nepal and Thailand, as well as private private/tailor-made holidays in India, Vietnam & Cambodia.
We started out running overland expeditions on the London-Kathmandu route in the late 1990s, but now just run shorter tours (unfortunately not getting to go overlanding ourselves any more).

We've been using TourCMS since 2003/2004, and like to think we've helped in its development over the years, as well as working as a mentor on occasion and providing a 'client face' at trade shows.
We now power 4 main websites through our TourCMS account, and make extensive use of its features to manage client bookings & documentation, track our marketing, and to work with our suppliers abroad.

I'm happy to answer questions in these forums on various aspects of using TourCMS as a tour operator or other business - though if you're selling identical holidays to us, I apologise in advance for keeping a bit quieter ;)

www.uncovertheworld.travel; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Abby Nixon on February 20, 2008 at 4:19pm: Hello
My name is Abby Nixon and I'm originally from Chicago, Illinois. Currently, I'm in New York City awaiting the New York Times Travel Show. I will not stay in New York. I just want to take advantage of networking while here. Through TourCMS I attend to direct my travel company, Vanitytours.com to specialize in Asia travel and just this morning I received my notification to access the tours packages for FIT, incentives, luxury from an operator that excellent in the region.
I want to mix my marketing to clients who involve budget and luxury travel into their plans. I look forward to meeting with like-minded people on both travel and technology.

I lived in Chicago, San Francisco, Miami Beach and now in New York since July. I never been to London so I must drop in on the great crew of TourCMS on my first trip which a course I will book via TourCMS.

I tried to hit up London years ago while in the US Navy but I got caught in a restricted area to the crew while in Naples, Italy. Isn't it always the fun places you're not to attend? So I decided to create a travel agency to go everywhere but you can't tell your mom ;-(

I attended Columbia College Chicago as a photojournalism major and then transfered to the University of Missouri Journalism school. In Chicago I freelanced as a photographer, did a promo video for a women boutique store and worked in the marketing department of the Chicago Apparel Mart.
I got the bug for travel when I worked in the mailroom of a subsiduary company of United Airlines and then schemed my way into the trade marketing department. Eventually left for San Francisco (actually LA but I got lost) and got a job at an incentive firm that did travel, incentive and business meetings.

Ended up in Miami for some reason (oh yeah, I was freezing my butt off in Chicago) and started a company to do registration for events, also I did website design. The past 10+ years I've been heading to Asia so I believe it would be a great business module to offer.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Martin Hosie on February 20, 2008 at 7:24pm: Hello there

I'm Martin Hosie and I am co-founder and director of Uncover the World Ltd, a cultural and adventure tour operator based in the UK. I’ve been in the travel industry since leaving university some 15 years ago. I started out driving overland trucks - filled with fun loving young people - through the Middle East and Asia (London to Kathmandu, Istanbul to Cairo etc) and then started my own company – New Frontier Expeditions – to run my own truck trips. This company evolved into Fist48 adventure travel and then onto Uncover the World, which is where we are now.

Uncover the World specialises in providing active holidays to different countries around the world and at present we have dedicated websites for Egypt (Egypt Uncovered), Thailand (Thailand Uncovered) and Nepal (Nepal Uncovered) and will soon be launching a new one on Kenya. We sell a wide range of adventure and cultural tours from basic economy tours right up to all inclusive 5-star packages. We run set small group and private departures and we can also tailor make tours to our clients’ special needs. We have just launched a new range of family holidays, which are proving very popular.

We pride ourselves on our high level of service and our intimate knowledge of the countries in which we operate and we have a team of highly trained and dedicated staff.

We are currently planning to open an office in New Zealand and would also be interested in working with agents in the USA with a view to setting up an office there. We already have a small but growing client base it the USA and we are keen to expand this in the future. We are happy to hear from anyone wishing to sell our holidays and we offer generous commissions and incentives. Being a web based company our client base comes from all over the world and we can and do work easily with companies from just about anywhere.

Uncover the World has been using TourCMS since its creation and if anyone has any questions I would be more than happy to answer them. I have a pretty good understanding of the system after so may years using and abusing it.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by David Carruthers on March 19, 2008 at 4:13pm: I am David Carruthers a director of Conexo Global Travel based in the beautiful and historic city of York. I have just signed up for Tourcms to evaluate if and how it can be used to power parts of our website. Lots to learn and plenty of work to be done I suspect, so will tap into the comunity's expertise no doubt.

Conexo Global Travel; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by J.P. Obbagy on March 19, 2008 at 5:17pm: Hi, I'm J.P. from Good Earth Travel Adventures in Vancouver, Canada. We are looking at TourCMS as the cms solution for developing a new website. The goal is to better manage content, present our vacations more effectively, and eventually provide visitors with online tailoring and booking options. Things are looking promising with this system!; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Tom on March 27, 2008 at 1:32am: Hey my name is Tom from Raleigh NC. I am Receptive operator specializing in customized local African American Heritage Tours. Comprehensive travel and transportation services offering mini bus charters, airport and rail transfers, shuttle service, group tour planning, step-on guide services, plus sightseeing tours available for individuals and/or groups..; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by André Nel on May 12, 2008 at 5:59pm: My name is Andre Nel and I am married to Marieta, we have a daughter who are married to David and our grand daughter is Danielle and our sun Martin is 25 and is not married yet. I started my career in 1976 in the IT industry as a computer programmer.

My family love the outdoors. Me and Marieta decide to to start a touring company to share the beauty of the outdoors with our friend and to make new friends through our clients. I am also a active Mountain Bike rider and love to play golf to relax.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Bob Burgher on August 18, 2008 at 3:13pm: My name is Bob Burgher and I have been running Slovene Dream with my wife Darinka since 2005, specialising in holidays in Goa.
No, OK, just checking if you're awake: Slovenia.
Although we could claim to be experts in our previous respective fields, we started our business with no prior knowledge of the travel industry. But we did both bring an important skill with us: research. We researched the arse off the travel industry, and you know what? It is the most unprofessional, idiotic, inept, head-up-its-bum industry either of us has ever seen ever ever ever. Still, nothing like a challenge, eh?
Any road up, one of the things we kind of expected to find, was a choice of programs that would run our bookings, CMS, CRM, comms., online marketing, diaries etc... and we would have to make a choice between all these great programs that could integrate all of the above functions.
Huh! Fat chance. I still find it astonishing that there isn't one software developer in this entire industry who has figured out that integration is all: if it doesn't hook up to the accounts, or the email, or the rest of the stuff out there, it's just more 'stuff' for us all to be mired in.
However, given the cost of buying into the big boy's toys, and having chatted with you guys at that daft show in London, plus looking through your community thingummy, I think we'll give this a go.
(I just re-read that: sorry if I sounded as if we're a bit poncey - we're not really).

There will be a few questions though, f'rinstance:
What's this about not having room-level pricing (our business depends on it)?
How can TourCMS be integrated, if at all, with an accounts package like Sage or QuickBooks?
That's it for now.; ▶ Reply to This

Permalink Reply by Tanya Eldert on August 23, 2008 at 11:02pm: Hello from USA Family Tours. We are an inbound family tour company specializing in helping international families visit various cities in the USA. We use small 15 passenger vans to go from city to city, plus the auto train to go from DC to Florida. Currently we are doing tours in English and Spanish, but we plan to add at least German and Portuguese and will be open to other languages in the future. Our goal is to help families travel, feel safe and welcome while visiting America, and have fun with the whole family.

I am very pretty new to TourCMS. I'm currently finishing up the programming and hope to have it rolling in about 2 weeks. I'm also eagerly awaiting the agent section, since we will primarily be using agents and affiliates to sell the tours.

We are open to affiliates and agents who might want to market our tours to citizens in their countries who plan to come to this side of the ocean.; ▶ Reply to This