Hi! I’m wondering if it’s possible to offer 20% (or 5% or 10% or 50%) discount vouchers. I’m offering my tours to the nearby hotels, and it’d be great to offer some percentage discount as an incentive.
Is there a way? Is that a good idea? Thoughts?
Thank you very much!
-Iren (New York City)
Hi @irengurarye, thanks for posting your question here.
We don’t currently have the option to offer a direct discount, but there are two effective workarounds you can use to offer incentives to hotels:
Using dedicated voucher codes (recommended)
The first option is to create voucher codes that you use to sell your tours directly to hotels. The hotels then provide these codes to their guests to redeem the tours in the app. Are you thinking of distributing the codes to hotel guests yourself, or letting the hotels handle distribution to their guests?
You can create dedicated voucher codes through the Manage Vouchers tab in your publisher dashboard. Then you’ll need to add credits to these voucher codes - each credit covers one download of your tour. Since you’re currently on the Priority publishing plan, you can purchase voucher credits at $0.89 each through the Credit Purchases tab.
Let’s say you want to offer 20% off your tours priced at $9.99 and sell to the hotel at $7.99. Your only cost will be the $0.89 per voucher credit. We don’t take a royalty split on tours purchased using vouchers, but you do need to distribute and monitor the vouchers yourself.
You can monitor redemptions through your dashboard and add more credits to the same voucher code as needed. The process works exactly like the free voucher credits you’re already using for promotion.
You can find detailed instructions on setting this up in our voucher documentation.
Create a discounted tour copy
The other option is to create an identical, unpublished copy of your tour at a reduced price. Since it’s unpublished, it’s only accessible via direct URL or QR code - perfect for hotel partnerships. We’ve done this successfully previously with Amanda Whitehead and City Sightseeing in Conwy, where they created a $4.99 version of a $6.99 tour specifically for bus passengers. This only works for web-based purchases, not through the mobile app since they will need to access the tour through a private link. You’ll also need to adjust your tour description a bit. If you want to go this route, please reach out to your editor.
You can read more about what publishers have done previously here. I’m also tagging @michele and @jerry3061 who’ve asked about this before and might have some more insights on what worked for them.
Thank you, Helen! Let me try.
Hi @helenebotha23, still have questions.
Say, I created the vouchers and got a voucher link which takes to the landing page of my tour priced at $9.99. Where and how do I assign a value of $7.99? All I can see is that using a voucher, my tour can be downloaded for free.
What am I doing wrong?
Thanks,
-Iren
Hi @irengurarye
Once you’ve created a voucher, you’ll send the listener the voucher code that they’ll then enter in the app and download the tour directly from there. This means they’ll purchase the tour from you directly and not through VoiceMap. Most publishers who sell tours directly use third-party booking platforms like Fareharbor or Peek or a website plugin like WooCommerce for WordPress.
You can read more about selling through your own platform (and more on using Fareharbor) here and how other publishers have approached this process here.
If you don’t have your own payment method set up or you’re not keen to set one up, I’d recommend going for the second option I mentioned above: creating a discounted copy of your tour.
Thank you, @helenebotha23, I see.
If I create a discounted copy of my tour, what happens to rating/reviews? Is the copy rated/reviewed separately?