A day-by-day travel quotation gets accepted when the reader can see the trip in the order they will live it, find the price for their own party in one line, choose between options that differ in one thing, and know exactly what is included and how long the price holds. Everything else is presentation. This is the structure, the arithmetic, and the mistakes that lose the booking.
What goes into a day-by-day quotation
The client reads it to decide; your operations team reads it later to find out what was promised. Each part serves both.
| Part | What it answers | What goes wrong without it |
|---|---|---|
| Trip card | Who, where and when: the party, the places, the dates and nights | The client checks it against the wrong enquiry |
| Price per person, all in | What each kind of traveller pays: adult sharing, child with and without a bed, single supplement | A lump total the client divides by headcount, wrongly |
| The days | What happens each day, and where they sleep that night | A night with no hotel that nobody noticed |
| Hotels | Hotel, room type, meal plan, nights | "Is breakfast included?" as the first reply |
| Options | The one thing the client is choosing between | Two proposals that differ in five ways, compared on price alone |
| Optional extras | What they can add, at its own price | Extras folded into the total, so the headline looks dear |
| Included and not included | The edges of the price | Arguments at the end of the trip |
| Validity | The date the price stops holding | An acceptance three weeks later at last month's rates |
| Terms | Your payment schedule and cancellation policy, in your words | Your policy read for the first time after a cancellation |
Build the days first, then price them
Lay out the trip before you touch a number. Pricing a list of services and arranging them into days afterwards is how a night goes missing.
- Date every day from the start date. Day 1 is the arrival, the last day the departure.
- A stay spans its nights. Three nights from the 10th means the 10th, 11th and 12th, checking out on the 13th. The same half-open rule that matters when you are loading contracted hotels, tours and transfers matters here.
- Every night has exactly one roof. No hotel, or two hotels on the same night, is the structural error to look for first.
- Arrival and departure days need a transfer, or a line saying the client arranges their own. Silence reads as "included" to a client and as "not booked" to your operations team.
- Days at leisure are days, not gaps. Print them, so the client can see nothing was forgotten.
- Write each day for the reader. "Arrival and private transfer to your hotel" belongs on the quotation. Pick-up times, supplier references and meeting points belong on the voucher, once the booking is confirmed; what a hotel voucher must show is a different document with a different reader.
Write meal plans out in words as well as codes. BB, HB and MAP are clear to the trade and opaque to most clients; the travel trade glossary is a fair test of which words need spelling out.
Options, variants and optional extras: which one to use
These three are different tools, and using the wrong one is how a quotation becomes hard to compare.
| The client is deciding… | Use | How it prices |
|---|---|---|
| between two hotels for the same nights | One option per hotel | Each option has its own total; transfers and tours shared by both are typed once and count in each |
| between a standard and an upgraded version of the whole trip | A variant of the whole trip | One version is marked recommended and gives the headline price |
| whether to add something | An optional extra | Its own price, shown after the total, never inside it |
| nothing yet: they want one price | A single option | One total |
Two rules keep options honest. An option differs in one thing, so the difference in price is the difference in that thing. And one option is recommended, because the client asked you for advice as much as for prices.
Price from your rate sheets, not from memory
A quotation priced from memory is priced at whatever the last one said.
- Seasons are dated windows, and when two overlap you need one rule for which wins, decided once. A common rule is that the narrower window wins, so a festive week inside a high season takes its own price.
- Hotels are room type × meal plan × season, by occupancy, not one price per room. A stay that crosses a season boundary is priced night by night: two lines, not an average.
- Children are priced by the hotel's own age bands, with and without a bed. Put an infant on the quotation even at no charge, so the paper shows they were counted.
- A private transfer is priced per vehicle for the party, and the right vehicle is the cheapest set that seats everyone with their luggage. A shared transfer is priced per seat.
- A tour is per person by age band, or per group when it is private.
- Cost in the supplier's currency. Type the cost the way the supplier invoices it, price in the client's currency, and keep the exchange rate you used with the quotation. Whether you add a safety margin to that rate is your decision.
- Markup is yours. Flat per traveller or a percentage of cost, one figure for the account or one per agency: the vocabulary is in net rates, markup and agent tiers.
In the iTravel travel CRM these rate cards sit in your own library, and the quotation builder prices each line from them for the party on the quotation: the room by occupancy, the vehicles by headcount, the night-by-night split across seasons.
A worked example: four days for two adults and a child
Say a family of two adults and one child aged 8 asks for four days and three nights in a city you sell. All figures are illustrative net costs in US dollars, and the example leaves out tax.
The days. Day 1: arrival and private transfer to the hotel. Day 2: full-day private tour with a guide. Day 3: at leisure, with an optional evening cruise. Day 4: private transfer to the airport.
| Line | Priced as | Net cost |
|---|---|---|
| Hotel, 3 nights, 1 double room, bed and breakfast | 100 per room per night | 300 |
| Extra bed for the child, 3 nights | 30 per night | 90 |
| Arrival transfer, private car | 45 per vehicle | 45 |
| Departure transfer, private car | 45 per vehicle | 45 |
| Full-day private tour with guide | 150 per group | 150 |
| Total | 630 |
Split it per person. The transfers and the private tour cost 240 whoever sits in the car, so share them across the three travellers: 80 each. Whether a child pays a full share of a private vehicle is your policy. An adult sharing the double carries half the room (150) plus 80, so 230. The child carries the extra bed (90) plus 80, so 170.
Add your markup. Say you add a flat 70 per adult and 30 per child.
| Traveller | Cost | Markup | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adult, sharing a double | 230 | 70 | 300 |
| Child aged 8, extra bed | 170 | 30 | 200 |
| Party of three | 630 | 170 | 800 |
Add the option. Option B is a better hotel at 140 per room per night, with an extra bed at 40. An adult now costs 210 + 80 = 290 and sells at 360; the child costs 120 + 80 = 200 and sells at 230. The party pays 950. Because the transfers and the tour are shared lines typed once, the 150 between the two options is exactly the hotel, which is what the client is comparing.
Add the extra. The evening cruise, at 40 per adult and 20 per child, sits after the total: 100 more for the party if they take it.
The headline reads "from 300 per adult sharing, option A recommended", with option B beside it and a date the prices hold until. The margin of 170 appears nowhere on the paper.
What a sent quotation freezes
Once a quotation leaves, it is a promise, and a promise cannot change while the client is reading it.
- Everything on the paper is fixed: the lines, the prices, the currency and exchange rate used, the options, the validity date and the terms.
- A change is a new version under the same reference. The earlier version stays readable, because the client is holding it.
- Acceptance records a name, a moment and a choice: who accepted, when, which option and which extras.
- After its validity date, it should say so to anyone who checks it.
For a DMC selling through agencies there are two papers. The agency's copy shows what the agency pays you, the gross and its commission. The client's copy can carry the agency's own brand, so the agency forwards it as theirs.
In the iTravel CRM a sent quotation cannot be edited in place: changing it makes the next version. If you also run the travel voucher software, the lines the client accepted become the services on the trip, ready for the vouchers.
Common mistakes that lose the booking
A quotation can be the right price and still lose the booking, because it is wrong somewhere the client noticed first.
- A night with no hotel, or two hotels on the same night.
- No transfer on the arrival or departure day, and nothing saying the client arranges it.
- A hotel line that does not say its meal plan, or a transfer that does not say private or shared.
- Dinner quoted on a night the half-board rate already includes.
- A stay shorter than the hotel's minimum stay, or a night the hotel has closed for sale.
- A compulsory supplement, such as a gala dinner on a festive night, missing from the price.
- Rooms that sleep fewer people than need a bed, or a vehicle with fewer seats than travellers.
- Someone travelling free on a line, usually a child added to the party after the line was priced.
- No validity date, or one already past.
The iTravel CRM runs more than forty checks like these before a quotation goes out. None of them blocks the send: whether a quotation may go with a day at leisure and no transfer is your call.
Before you press send
- The party matches the enquiry: adults, each child's age, infants.
- Every night has one hotel, with its room type and meal plan.
- Every transfer says private or shared; arrival and departure are covered or marked as the client's own.
- Each option differs in one thing, and one is recommended.
- Optional extras sit after the total.
- Included and not included are written for this trip, not pasted from the last one.
- There is a validity date, and the payment and cancellation terms are the ones you apply.
- No cost or margin appears anywhere on the paper.
- For an agency, the trade copy shows net and commission, and the client copy carries their brand.
