A chauffeur company can start on Viator or GetYourGuide without Bokun or Rezdy, using each platform’s own supplier tools. A system pays once you sell on several platforms or run real tours. Bokun starts free, then $49 a month plus 1.5% per booking, with no fee on Viator bookings on its normal plans. Rezdy starts at $49 plus 3%. Test with a real transfer before paying.
Do you need Bokun or Rezdy to sell on OTAs?
Probably not on day one. Both Viator and GetYourGuide let you build listings in their own supplier tools, and neither page we read says a booking system is required. A system starts to earn its cost once you sell on several platforms and spend real time keeping availability the same on each of them.
Viator’s own guidance treats a reservation system as advice: it says it is “wise to consider” one, and warns that managing availability by hand with spreadsheets or email can limit sales. GetYourGuide says that connecting a system helps with availability and pricing, and that you “must create your product in the Supplier Portal before connecting it to your reservation system”. So the listing comes first in either case.
What are Bokun and Rezdy?
They are booking systems built for tour and activity companies. Each one holds your products, prices and availability in one place, takes bookings from your own website and passes availability to the platforms you sell on. Viator names both among the systems it connects to, and GetYourGuide lists both under its premium and advanced partners. Viator’s site also describes Bokun as part of the Tripadvisor family, which owns Viator.
| Bokun | Rezdy | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly fee | Free plan, then $49, $149 or $499 | $49, $99 or $249 |
| Fee on online bookings | 1.5%, 1.25% or 1%, by plan | 3%, which you can absorb or pass on to guests |
| Fee on offline bookings | None | $1, $0.85 or $0.70 per booking, by plan |
| Fee on Viator bookings | None, except on Channel Manager plans | Not stated on the pricing page |
| Free trial | 14 days | 21 days |
These are the prices each company published on its own pricing page on the date in the sources. Check them again before you sign, and check what you will pay in your own currency.
What would it cost you?
Work it out on your own bookings, because the percentage matters more than the monthly fee once you are busy. At a 3% fee, a €200 booking costs you €6 on top of any platform commission. At 1.5% it costs €3. Multiply that by the online bookings you expect in a typical month, add the monthly fee, and compare the total with the hours you would otherwise spend updating calendars.
A booking from an OTA already carries that platform’s commission. So add the system’s fee to the commission when you check what a trip leaves you, and run the numbers through the OTA commission calculator. A margin that looked fine on a listing can get thin once both fees are in.
Do these systems suit a chauffeur company?
Partly, and it is worth testing before you commit. They were built around tours: a product runs at set times with a set number of seats, and people book places on it. That suits a fixed-departure day tour or a golf day well. Airport transfers work differently, because the price depends on the route and the vehicle, and any pickup time may be possible as long as you have a free car and driver.
During the free trial, set up one real transfer and one real tour, and check these points.
- Pricing by vehicle: can you charge for a car and not per person, and show different prices for a saloon and a people carrier?
- Availability: can it reflect the real limit, which is your free vehicles and drivers, rather than a number of seats?
- Pickup details: can you collect a flight number, a pickup address and the number of bags?
- Your dispatch system: will a booking reach your drivers on its own, or will somebody retype it? If it has to be retyped, you have traded one manual job for another.
That last point decides most cases. A chauffeur company already has a dispatch or booking system for its daily work, and a tour system does not replace it. The limo booking software guide covers what the daily system needs to do.
When is it worth paying for one?
Add a system when you can answer yes to most of these.
- You sell on two or more platforms, and you have at least once sold the same car twice.
- Your tours or fixed departures are a real part of the business, beyond one or two listings.
- You are losing time to updating calendars by hand, and you can put a number of hours on it.
- You want customers to book those tours on your own website as well.
If you sell only a handful of transfers on one platform, keep working in that platform’s own tools. Block out the days you are full and spend the money elsewhere. Read the Viator and GetYourGuide supplier guides first, because each has its own rules on what you can list, and GetYourGuide restricts plain airport transfers.
Which one should you choose?
Choose by what you will sell most, and test both if the answer is unclear. If most of your platform sales are on Viator, Bokun’s pricing has an obvious appeal, since it publishes no booking fee on Viator bookings on its normal plans and has a free plan to start on. If you need many agents and resellers, Rezdy says all of its plans include unlimited OTA, agent and reseller connections, and it lists access to more than 12,000 agents.
Keep an eye on the terms as you compare. Bokun charges for Channel Manager plans separately, with pricing on request, and that may be what you need if another system is your main one. Rezdy’s 3% applies to online bookings on all three plans, so moving up a plan lowers only the monthly and offline parts of the bill.
We have not used either system on a client account, so we do not recommend one over the other. The trial periods are long enough to find out what you need to know, as long as you test with a real transfer and a real driver rather than the sample tour they give you. The Bookings from OTAs page shows where platforms fit into the rest of your sales.