Io Tours — tours and office management

IO TOURS has operated in Chania since 1989, with 40 company-owned coaches, 50 drivers and daily excursions across Crete. Every day it carries hundreds of visitors to and from the airport on behalf of tour operators, while its excursions are sold through hotels, agents and sales reps. We built one system that handles both, designed around the way the company actually works.

Airport transfers without typing. Tour operators’ arrival and departure lists come in as PDF or Excel files and are imported automatically: coach, flight, hotel, passengers and pickup time for every stop. Arrivals, departures and other transfers appear in one filterable list. Each run is assigned a vehicle, driver or partner, and flights are tracked live, so a delay shows up immediately. Digital transfer orders are submitted to the government platform in bulk with one click, and the system shows which went through, which failed and why.

Nothing was lost. For excursions, the company used to rely on third-party cloud software. We replaced it, and the entire history moved to the new system: over 10,000 bookings, nearly 400 tour operators, 390 sales reps, 1,300 hotels and 480 pickup points. Before the switch, every figure was checked one by one. Bookings, cancellations and totals match the old system exactly.

Partners at the centre. Each tour operator has its own price list by area and period, so the right price appears the moment a booking is made. Sales reps have discount limits that the system checks before saving. Commissions are recorded on every booking, ready for settlement.

From booking to bus. Every hotel is linked to its nearest pickup point. Each excursion has a calendar showing occupancy and free seats per day. Driver pickup lists print by excursion and stop. Customers get a voucher with a QR code, printed or as a link.

A three-language website with online booking. The new website is in English, German and Greek. Visitors find excursions by category, day or price, see only the days each tour runs, and book with pickup from their hotel. They pay online or on the bus. Bookings go straight into the system, and unpaid ones are released automatically. Every page is optimised for search engines.

The whole business in one place. The same system covers excursions for Greek customers, customer records with documents and payments, and a dashboard with the day’s figures. Every change is logged: who made it, when, and exactly what changed.

The result: one team, one system. The office, sales reps, drivers and website customers all work on the same data, with no double entry.