Embrace Online Billing & Registration When Traveling

Whether you plan trips yourself or with a tour operator, it’s best if your students can register and pay for everything online. By leveraging online billing and registration, you’re making it easier for students to become involved and making your life easier: no more writing receipts, collecting forms, or asking “who hasn’t signed their permission slip yet?” and that’s just skimming the surface.

Register At Your Convenience

After you announce the trip, you can send out a link to a trip page that shows the trip itinerary, a trip video, and a button for registration. That means students can share the link and encourage one another or their family to invest in the trip. Simply put, online registration helps everyone make the decision to travel at their own convenience, which inevitably leads to more travelers.

Paying Online Is The Expectation

Technology has become so commonplace that paying for things online is the expectation. Travel is no different. Your students and their families will expect to pay online using a card. If that expectation isn’t met, they may feel like paying the old-fashioned way is too cumbersome, or worse, that the trip lacks legitimacy.

On the flip side, an online payment system will also open up the opportunity for auto-pay. Travelers can not only pay online, but they can have their card charged automatically for every scheduled payment so they can pay incrementally without ever missing a payment.

Eliminate The Middleman (You!)

If you’ve ever worked with a tour operator, you know that usually makes you the middleman (students pay you, you pay the tour operator). With an online billing platform, if you’re working with a tour operator, you no longer have to collect a single payment.

Imagine: no more writing receipts, spreadsheets, counting loose change, or depositing checks. Instead, you’ll be able to focus on the things that are really important: getting as many students involved in the trip as possible and making it one they’ll never forget.

Next Level Organization & Communication

Many group travel companies, including Green Light Group Tours, partner with GroupCollect to offer groups online billing and registration. Not only does this allow travelers to register and pay online, but directors can now benefit from some very helpful features:

You can make lists (hotel, bus, chaperone, etc.) all within the same platform the students use to register
You can export those lists once they’re created
You can text and/or email every registered student to give reminders
You can upload forms to be signed electronically during registration and see who’s signed them

The platform can be used in more advanced ways as well. For instance, you can see all the students who have registered for the trip but who have not made or are behind on payments. Then you can have conversations with those students to see what’s stopping them from moving forward with the trip. These conversations could convert students who didn’t think they could go into travelers that experience a trip of a lifetime.

Trip Protection Insurance

Trip protection insurance is another expectation in the travel industry these days. People want to know that if they invest serious money into a trip, that they can reclaim some of it if the trip is canceled or if they’re unable to go.

By using an online billing & registration system like GroupCollect, trip protection insurance is integrated into the registration process so each traveler will have the option to protect their investment from the beginning. Even if you’re planning the trip on your own, the ability to offer this to each student seamlessly will take a massive responsibility off your plate and give your students peace of mind.

Boost Numbers, Make Life Easier, Enjoy Your Trip!

When you embrace online billing and registration, not only does it boost your numbers and make life easier for everyone, but it opens up time to focus on other important things. As a director, instead of scribbling receipts and counting quarters you could be focusing on your day-to-day job or ways to make the trip even more memorable. Either way, we urge you to embrace online billing and registration next time you travel!

Special thanks to our business partners Green Light Group Tours and Erik Young for this article. Green Light specializes in exciting and educational travel experiences for your students.

Green Light Group Tours is providing this FREE download of tried-and-true tips and suggestions for creating the best travel experience ever! Instant download available HERE. Ready to request a quote for your next band trip? You can do that HERE.