About our tour store

There are many online platforms offering tours to clients, both embedded and on external sites, so why did we feel the need to build our own?

Understanding our own business

“Software as a Service” vendors and online marketplaces have offered advanced features for small to medium sized enterprises that would previously be out of their reach. Their limitation however is they cannot truly understand and cater to all businesses. They might be able to sell tickets for a scheduled sightseeing tour in Hong Kong but they invariably do not have the flexibility accommodate the highly customisable private day tours that The Colombian Way offers. Shoehorning our business into an off the shelf platform would be an unacceptable compromise.

What about that flexibility?

Our tours often have different start points, especially in the coffee zone where all tours can commence from different departments. We can offer a tour with or without a guide, we can offer the option to include lunch or not. We can give clients the chance to combine tours with other nearby destinations. We can offer no cost options and alternatives without clients having to reach out to us to request a something specific. The tour store empowers clients to make informed choices and enables them to configure their own tours.

Intelligent calendar functionality

Choosing the date for a tour is easily achieved with our clear and simple date picker. But behind the scenes that simple calendar is working within multiple powerful parameters that instantly determine on which days your tour can be offered.

Super-conditionality. What’s that?

Super-conditionality is really the backbone of our tour store and unique to our platform. It is what allows us to offer the broadest range of customisations, it is limitless. In laymen’s terms, literally anything can be dependent on anything else.

When a tour is configured it is not just the price that updates, other options also change subject to what has already been chosen. For example, you want to add lunch at Recuca? Then the start time options change, there would be no point taking you there after lunch.

Want to add Guatavita to paragliding in Sopó? Then as well as the start time changing to allow you a full day, the calendar updates to prevent this being booked on a Monday because Guatavita would be closed.

Want to do a coffee tasting experience in Bogotá at the weekend? Then the time options change because it is the weekend. If you add transport then the start times are different yet again, the pick up location field will also be activated. How many participants there are determines which tour you can book.

Want to add a birdwatching guide in Chicaque? Then we have already configured the tour store to offer you earlier start times to see birds.

Super-conditionality allows us to take years of experience offering tours in Colombia and embed that knowledge in our tour store. It is not possible to book an impractical or unfeasible tour. It is not possible to offer this level of detailed configuration within any other platform.

Clear per-person pricing in multiple currencies

Because of the way our tour costs are calculated, our per-person costs are non-linear. Our tour store displays a clear per person price which updates in real time as you configure your tour.

We offer 25 different currencies, that means that 99.7% of our clients are paying in their own currency.

Read more about website prices.

Multiple payment options

Our tour store offers users the broadest possible choice of secure well-known payment options. Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Maestro, Discover, Google Pay, Apple Pay and PayPal. All options integrate perfectly with our tour store to confirm your booking and update its payment status.

Hotels, thousands of them

The efficient operation of our tour store is based on clean accurate data. We have built a database of over 5000 Colombian hotels with correctly formatted addresses. When booking, just start typing a hotel name in the pick up location field and the full name and correct address will appear. Not only does this increase usability for clients but offers us certainty that the data is accurate.

Pick up location hotels are destination specific. Clients are only shown hotels applicable to that tour.

Is it a marketplace?

No. Sites such as Viator are indeed marketplaces and often offer duplicate tours with similar information from multiple vendors. This lacks clarity and causes confusion. We only offer our own tours with clear consistent information about options and pricing. It is not possible for third parties to add tours to our tour store. We do not offer tours simply because they exist or someone else offers them elsewhere, in fact you might notice certain things absent from our tour store. In contrast we often work hard to develop tours that nobody else offers. We offer over 100 tours all over Colombia, many with multiple options and customisations.

We are confident that our tour store offers the best curated portfolio in Colombia.

Client reviews

Clients are able to add tour reviews to help future clients make choices. User reviews are fully schema.org compliant and aggregate scores appear in Google search results.

Usability on any device

From the largest desktop monitor to the smallest smartphone. The tour store has been designed to work on all devices, particular attention has been given to devices of all sizes and in all orientations. The smallest devices such as the iPhone SE even have their own design to optimise the tiny amount of screen space. We are certain that no other platform offers us this level of usability and interoperability. Our custom library of icons has been designed to offer clarity across all screen sizes whilst sharing the chunky and simple design language that exists throughout our website.

We didn’t reinvent the wheel

We only made the wheel better. Our tour store is built on proven and trusted technologies, and licensed software from many third party vendors. E-commerce functionality, caching technology, currency conversion software and electronic payment gateways already existed. We simply made it work perfectly for our business.