What is Bókun
Bókun is booking software for tour and activity operators. It is used to publish your experiences, sell them on your website, manage availability and departures from a booking calendar and distribute them to resellers and online channels, with a particular focus on Viator, which is built into its offering.
According to its pricing page, checked on 20 October 2026, it offers a FREE plan for managing Viator bookings, and paid plans START ($49 a month), PLUS ($149 a month) and PREMIUM ($499 a month), with a commission on applicable bookings of between 1% and 1.5% depending on the plan. Offline bookings do not pay that commission.
Does Bókun manage guides?
Yes, in part. Bókun has a resource management feature that treats guides, vehicles and equipment as resources: you link them to your experiences, the system assigns them to bookings according to rules and stops accepting bookings when no free resources are left, which helps avoid overbooking. Its help centre also explains how to reassign people from the summary of each departure.
Its approach is a sales one: the guide is a resource that limits an experience's availability. What we did not find described on its website is the way an inbound agency works with freelance guides: sending each service to the guide to accept or decline, talking to them inside the service and receiving their invoice linked to the services it covers.
Bókun vs Partners
| Need | Bókun | Partners |
|---|---|---|
| Sell tours on your website and on OTAs | Yes, it is its main purpose | No, Partners does not sell and does not connect to OTAs |
| Take payments from clients | Yes | No |
| Assign guides to a service | Yes, as resources of an experience | Yes, one or more guides per request, with a rate |
| Each guide accepts the service | Not described on its website | Yes, each guide accepts or declines; pending, partially accepted and accepted statuses |
| Messaging with the guide inside the service | Not described on its website | Yes, messaging per request |
| Guide invoices with VAT | Not described on its website | Yes, linked to their services, pending or paid |
| Services from tour operators | Designed for bookings from its channels | Yes, with reference, tour operator, PAX, language and tickets |
| Price | FREE plan and plans from $49 a month plus commission per booking | Free up to 5 guides; founder €49 a month excl. VAT; no commission |
When each one makes sense
If your business is selling places on your own experiences to the general public, on your website and on channels such as Viator, you need a booking system, and Bókun is one of the most widely used options.
If you are an inbound agency or DMC that receives groups from tour operators and shares services out among freelance guides, your daily problem is different: who runs each service, whether they have confirmed, what has changed and how their invoice is matched at month end. That is what Partners does, with guide assignment, the schedule, messaging per request and guide invoices.
Questions to ask before you choose
Before choosing between a booking system, a coordination tool or both, it is worth answering with the numbers from your own business:
- Where do your services come from? If almost everything comes from tour operators, schools or cruise lines, rather than tourists booking on your website, the booking engine matters little and coordination matters a lot.
- How many freelance guides do you coordinate? Beyond five or six, confirming each service by hand starts to eat up office hours every week.
- How many services have more than one guide? That is where most mistakes happen without individual acceptance per guide.
- How do you match guide invoices? If you do it today in a separate spreadsheet, look for a tool where each invoice is linked to its services.
- How much do you pay per booking? A fixed price per agency is more predictable than a commission as volume grows.
Using Bókun and Partners together
Many agencies have both needs. In that case the tools complement each other: Bókun sells and manages bookings, and Partners coordinates the guides who run those services. There is currently no automatic connection between the two: services are created in Partners by hand, with bulk requests or by importing an Excel file exported from your booking system.
Partners is free up to 5 guides, and the first 25 agencies get the founder price of €49 a month excl. VAT for the Pro plan, fixed for as long as they keep their subscription. No commission on bookings. See pricing or request your 30-day trial. The app interface is in Spanish.
Sources
- Bókun, pricing (accessed on October 20, 2026)
- Bókun, resource management (accessed on October 20, 2026)
- Bókun, help centre: Resource management (accessed on October 20, 2026)
Updated on October 20, 2026
