Industry
What per-booking fees actually cost a tour operator
July 11, 2026 · Max · 6 min read
Published per-booking fees in tour booking software run from 0% to 6%, and the rate is only half the question. The other half is who the fee lands on. On a $650 private charter, 6% is $39.00 and 3% is $19.50, but on some platforms that money comes out of your payout and on others it is added to your customer's total at checkout.
Every figure below was read off the vendor's own page on 16 September 2026, and the full table with sources is on what tour booking software actually costs.
The published rates
- Bókun: 0% on its free plan, then 1.5%, 1.25% and 1% as the monthly fee rises. No fee on Viator bookings or offline bookings.
- Rezdy and Checkfront: 3% on online bookings. Both let you absorb it or pass it to the guest.
- FareHarbor: 6% on direct bookings, but only for operators who have been live twelve months and did less than $35,000 in online direct bookings in the previous year. Added to the activity price, so the guest pays it. Plus 2% on API-generated bookings.
- Peek Pro and Xola: no rate published. Xola states it charges your customers a partner fee without saying how much.
What that is worth over a season
At a $650 average booking, absorbed rather than passed on:
| Rate | Per booking | 30 a month | A year at 30 a month |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6% | $39.00 | $1,170 | $14,040 |
| 3% | $19.50 | $585 | $7,020 |
| 1.5% | $9.75 | $292.50 | $3,510 |
Pass the fee to the guest instead and it costs you nothing off the margin. It costs you at the checkout, where a $650 quote becomes $689 and the customer was not expecting it. Somebody pays it either way.
Where a percentage is the better deal, and where it stops
Against a $99 flat monthly plan, a 6% fee is cheaper until you are doing $1,650 a month in bookings. A 3% fee is cheaper until $3,300 a month. Bókun's 1.5% is cheaper until $6,600 a month, and its free plan is cheaper than everything, always.
If you are below those lines, take the percentage. A flat subscription is not automatically the better buy and any vendor telling you otherwise is selling, not advising.
Above them, the argument for a flat fee is not only that it is cheaper. It is that the number is knowable in advance, it does not grow as you succeed, and it does not put a line on your customer's receipt that you did not write.
Where FleetDesk sits
FleetDesk, dispatch software for tour operators, charges a flat monthly subscription and takes no percentage of anything. There is no mechanism for it to: it does not process your payments, so there is no checkout for it to add to. Your customer pays you the way they already pay you, and FleetDesk tracks what is outstanding and emails the reminder before the trip.
That also means it has no public booking widget and does not sell seats to strangers on your website. If that is the job, one of the platforms above is the right tool.