Origin passes on a service fee to customers booking your offerings, so the Origin platform doesn’t cost you anything directly. The only costs to you are the Payment Processing fees to Stripe, which are 2.9%+30¢ on every booking. You have the option to pay the Service Fees yourself if you want, and you can adjust this by half-percent increments.
Our Service Fees are split immediately when the booking occurs so we don’t have to bill you later.
Yes! You can import your bookings to speed up the onboarding and account setup. This will also help you avoid overbooking and confusion since you’ll have all of your previous bookings in your Origin calendar. To learn more about imports, please check out this detailed article: How To Use Origin’s Importing Technology
No, we don’t take commissions from you. The only fees you pay are the payment processing fees to Stripe when someone books, which are 2.9% + 30¢. Your customers pay a Service Fee which is how Origin makes money. You can choose to pay this Service Fee yourself, in part or in whole.
Nope! Automated emails and text messages are all included in Origin for free, and they’re sent out to your Customers and Guides after a booking is made.
Nope! Digital Waivers are free and included with every Origin account. We built our own Digital Waiver system so you don’t need tp pay for a 3rd party system, and so it integrates better with the rest of our platform.
The Origin platform works for solo guides or businesses with rosters of 30+ guides. You can configure your Listings and Schedule to work with your business in a variety of different ways, making the Origin platform perfect for traditional Tours & Activities, ticketed events, or even rentals.
For example, we work with all kinds of amazing businesses in these areas: Rock Climbing, Mountain Guiding, Bike Tours, Multi-day Adventures, River Rafting, Fly Fishing, Fishing Charters, ATV/UTV Rentals, Surf/SUP Lessons, Walking Tours, and more.
No, Origin is not a marketplace or a reseller. We don’t advertise for you, which means we don’t demand a commission from you when a booking occurs.
Origin is a platform you can easily set up and connect with your website, so your customers always have a direct experience with your business. Think of Origin as the bottom of your “Sales Funnel”, the place where bookings and purchases are made.
No, Origin does not integrate with any OTAs (Online Travel Agencies). We’ve heard from businesses that they’re tired of paying 25-30% commissions, having no access to customer details, and predatory “Lowest Price Guaranteed” agreements.
We urge businesses to take control of their own marketing and advertising so they can control their destiny, all without anyone making you compete against yourself. We believe focusing on Direct Bookings is the healthiest way for your business and the entire industry to progress.
We’ve created an innovative platform to help you book and manage your guided experiences and tours. We design our software to help you by keeping trip reservations and staff availability up-to-date, prevent overbookings with a purpose-built resource management system, and even give you the ability to set how to automatically assign guides to newly booked trips. See for yourself:
Origin can integrate with any website! There’s no coding or plugins required, so that means you can use platforms like WordPress, Squarespace, Wix and more, or connect Origin with a fully custom website.
We have seen businesses signup and process their first booking in the same day, all setting it up on their own. We’ve also seen more complex integrations which take a week or more if your developers or other partners need to get involved.
We usually find that the actual set up of your account in Origin is the fastest part, and communicated with partners or developers is what takes the most time for implementation.
Yes! Making a multi-day tour or adventure is as easy as adjusting the duration in the Listing Settings. We have the Duration entered in as Hours so you can be more precise about when it starts and ends.
When you add that Listing to your Schedule, you will see it span across multiple days. Any Guide or Inventory item assigned to this particular trip will be blocked out for the entire duration so they can’t get booked for something else at the same time
No, Origin is not a custom development agency or “Dev Shop”, nor do we work as a contractor on custom projects. At Origin, we work to develop our platform that any tour or activity operator can use. We don’t have special versions of the platform for certain businesses, all of the work our team does goes into making our platform better for everybody.
The best way for Origin to build a new feature you suggest is to use our platform and add it to our “Feature Requests” section. This allows other businesses on Origin to vote on the suggestions, and helps us know what the most important things to build are.
If you don’t use Origin, we can’t build features you suggest.
We prioritize features suggested by current users of the platform, we will not build a one-off feature for someone not using our platform, or someone who is just browsing and wants to come back later. When we build new features, we want them to be something our entire community finds valuable.
There are three easy ways you can integrate Origin with your website, no coding required!
1. Copy and paste one simple link to embed our booking calendar widget alongside other content already on your trips’ pages. When a customer books, the fast & easy checkout opens automatically on your website without leaving the page (on desktop or mobile).
2. If you’re in a rush or don’t have time to build out your website, you can copy and paste the link to your pre-made Listing pages into a “Book Now” button on your website. This will open up the Listing page in a new tab, but the Listing pages are already designed for you with the details and images you provide when you set them up.
3. Sometimes website building platforms make changes that could impact our newest booking calendar widget. If you’re using one of these platforms and things don’t look quite right, we can supply you with our previous version of the widget that looks exactly the same as the new one, but does open the checkout page in a new tab.
Nope! You don’t need to set up any sub-domains to use Origin. If you’re using our embedded booking calendar widget, your customers will be able to book right from your website without redirecting to another tab, even on mobile. This means your customers will always know they’re booking with you, instead of being taken to another website with a different look and feel to enter their credit card.
You have complete control over your refunds! You don’t need to ask us permission or request a refund from our team. You can easily refund a booking partially or fully, and you are always in control of this.
We collect our Service Fees automatically from the transaction, and the money from your booking goes directly to your Stripe account, then to your Bank account. Stripe also deducts their Processing Fees from this transaction automatically.
We never bill you for Service Fees owed, and Origin never holds your money and sends you a payout later. Your money is yours.
Your customers will see your business name on their bank statements. During Origin’s onboarding, you will set up your Stripe account which is where you customize what this statement descriptor looks like so it is clear to your customers who they booked with.
If you have a large or high-volume business, you may be able to directly negotiate better processing rates with Stripe.
You might’ve seen platforms offering “Ridiculously low rates” or “Industry’s lowest rates”, but this means charging a higher percentage to your customers to pay part of the processing fee so it seems lower to you.
No, we will not run your business for you. If you need help or assistance setting something up, or are experiencing any difficulties, we are always happy to help you out. If you want someone else to run your business for you, you should hire some help!
No, but we can help you with account set up if you send us the information you want help with. If we are helping you set up your account and referring to your website, we may request additional info if it is not included on your website already.
If you are using someone else’s product or service, you usually have to pay for it, and Origin is no different. We have a flexible payment model so you don’t have to pay directly if you don’t want to (by passing Service Fees to your customers).
If you still don’t want to pay anything and expect everything to be free, we can’t help you out.
Origin is a company, companies don’t vote. We pride ourselves on having a team of people who have different backgrounds and ideas. We also pride ourselves on working with businesses who have different backgrounds and ideas. We don’t care who you voted for, and you shouldn’t care who we individually voted for either.
