Itinerary planning is one of the major functions and day-to-day activities of a travel agency. The travel agency may sell ready-made tour packages or design tailor-made customized tour itineraries according to their client’s requirements. Tour itineraries should be carefully planned just because it involves a lot of work. In this article, we are going to explain how to plan a successful tour itinerary, what’s included in it, and the key terms on it.
What is a Tour itinerary?
The term ‘itinerary’ may be defined as the linking of all the journey points in a traveler’s journey, i.e. from the origin point, and in between stopping points for sightseeing at the destinations and back to the point of origin, which may not always be the case. We can describe it as the itinerary is a tour program in sequential order which is designed day wise to identify the origin points, destinations and route points, hotels, meals, mode of transport, sightseeing, car/coach and other relevant details related to the tour.
we can summarize it like this, tour itinerary is used to identify the origin, destination, and all the halts in a traveler’s journey.
Segments of an itinerary
Each particular portion of itinerary we can called as a segment. i.e. cultural triangle of the Sri Lanka. Anuradapura-Polonnaruwa-Kandy. it would be consist of following segments-:
1. Anuradhapura-Polonnaruwa
2. Polonnaruwa-Kandy
3. Kandy-Anuradhapura
Depending on the mode of transportation between destinations we can termed two segments -:
Air segment
The air segment means it uses air travel as a mode of transport. in this segment departure city or airport is termed as the “boarding point” or departure point. the city of arrival or airport is termed an “off point” or arrival point.
Surface segment
Surface segment means the use of land travel such as railway or road for its mode of transportation.
Outbound segment and inbound segment
For an outbound travel such as Colombo-Delhi-Colombo, we can identify Colombo-Delhi as the outbound segment and Delhi-Colombo as inbound segment (return segment).
One way itinerary and Circle trip
A one-way itinerary is one where the passenger does not return to the origin (boarding point).
i.e. Colombo-Dubai
A circle trip is one which the passenger return to the point of origin (boarding point).
i.e. Colombo-Dubai-Colombo
Non-stop, direct and connecting flight
A non-stop flight is a flight that does not leave any stops between origin point and the passenger intended destination.
In a direct flight the passenger is not required to change any aircraft. but it can be have any number of stops.
In connecting flight two or more air crafts are used between the origin point and destination point.
Origin, connecting, and stopover point
A connecting point is one which is a point where there is a change of aircraft.
A stopover point is one which is not a connecting point. the destination point is the point of stopover.
The origin point is the first departure point or boarding point.
image credit goes to http://www.roystoncartoons.com/
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