Discount codes can be a good tool to drive sales and to incentivize your customers to buy early, for example, by providing early bird discounts. Here is how:
1. Open the trip builder
When editing your trip, go to the last tab, "Settings." In the lower half, choose "Yes" for the question "Are you offering discount codes?"
2. Set the Discount Code details
Click "Add Discount Code" and enter the details in the pop-up.
Choose a code and whether the discount is a percentage of the price or a fixed amount.
Next, choose the limit on how many times the discount code can be used overall.
Discount codes will be applied to every participant within the booking, e.g., if you set up a code of $100 and it's a 3-person booking, the total discount will be $300.
Finally, choose when your code is valid. You can make it always available, limit it to specific start and end dates, or tie it to trip dates—starting and expiring a set number of days before the trip start date (for one-time trips) or before each departure date (for recurring trips).
Note: Discount code start and end dates are based on UTC time.
3. Click "Publish"
When editing your WeTravel trip, you need to click "Publish" to make any changes go live. After adding your code, press "Publish," and the code will be available to your customers.
What it looks like to your customers:
When a customer books a trip that has discount codes, there will be an additional field on the checkout pop-up labeled "Discount code". Please note that the discount will only be applied towards the balance due for the trip; the deposit amount will not be discounted.
If you have a payment plan set up, the discount code will reduce the installments one by one, starting from the final payment.
Pro Tip: Use discount codes with caution
Discount codes can be a great way to get participants to book early, but they should be used with caution. Studies have shown that a discount code field in the checkout process can lead to lower conversions (i.e., fewer sales). This happens because clients leave your booking page and start googling in the hopes of finding a discount code. When they don't find any codes, they become frustrated and won't return to complete their booking.
How to ensure that discount codes DO NOT have a negative effect:
If you have discount codes that are available to all customers at some point in your sales process (such as EARLY BIRD), make sure that they are prominently mentioned in the description of your trip. In doing so, no customer will feel left out or start to search the Internet for discount codes. On the contrary, they will feel like they got a special deal and are likely to book right away because they are afraid that the deal might not last.
Disabling a discount code / Setting an end date
WeTravel discount codes can be set to always be valid, limited to specific dates, or automatically start and expire based on trip dates. When your promotion is over, you can still manually go to Edit Trip → Settings to delete the code and click Publish—this will not affect discounts already applied to clients who booked before the code was removed.
Applying a discount after the initial booking
A discount code can only be applied when making the initial booking. Discount codes cannot be applied when paying for an installment or add-on at a later point. If a discount needs to be applied after the initial booking has been made, then please use the Custom Price function to lower the trip price.
Note: Each customer can apply only one discount code per booking, and it must be entered during the initial booking process. Discount codes cannot be combined at checkout, as only one code can be entered manually.