Tours

Overview

A Tour is a set of Stops which is assigned to a driver in order for them to execute it. Tours can consist of stops from Bookings as well as custom stops that are only part of the tour. Tours typically are being route optimized to increase efficiency of the driver.

MotionTools differentiates between incoming requests from customers (Bookings) and outgoing tasks assigned to drivers (Tours). By clearly separating what comes in and what goes out, operators have a higher flexibility when it comes to both operational as well as commercial aspects.

The key benefit of Tours is to increase the efficiency of operations with huge positive implications on costs. All incoming requests can be optimized before they go out to the driver workforce.

Tours are highly configurable in their behaviour using the concept of Services. Operators can configure almost all aspects of Tours through creating specific Tour-Services. It empowers them to reflect the uniqueness of their business and to unlock excellent performance leading to happy customers. 

We will now look closer into some of the fundamentals of Tours, such as creating, updating and configuring Tours: 

• Creating Tours
• Updating Tours
• Configuring Tours

Details

Creating Tours

Tours can be created in multiple ways

• Convert a single booking directly into a tour (available via API and dashboard)
• Merge multiple bookings into one tour (available via API and dashboard)
• Split a multi-stop bookings into multiple tours (only via API at the moment)
• Use the auto planner to plan all tours for a a whole day of operations at once (available for packages)
• Start with an empty Tour and fill it gradually with bookings as well as packages 

You can also find more information about tour building in the following articles:

• Getting started with tour building
• Automatic merging of bookings into optimized tours
• Dispatching Packages — a Handbook
• Automatic planning for Package tours

Updating Tours

Additionally to creating tours, it is possible to update tours on the fly

• Add more bookings or individual stops from bookings to existing tours
• Add or remove custom stops to and from tours
• Remove whole bookings or individual stops from tours
• Add or remove individual packages from a tour
• Update the route of tours
• Update individual aspects of the tour such as stop details
• Update tours in various states, such as to_be_dispatched or en_route

Please note that besides building tours from and with bookings, it is possible to build tours with packages and also combine these tours with stops from bookings.

Configuring Tours

Similar to Bookings, Tours always belong to a certain type of service. Services in itself are configurable and help to implement multiple standard services at the same time and customize them to the need of the individual business.

This includes but is not limited to the number of minimum and maximum allowed stops, required capabilities for a driver to be eligible for the tour, how the dispatching workflow looks like as well as multiple details of the execution such as proof of completion requirements, checklists and much more. It is even possible to price tours to form the basis for corresponding earnings for partner organizations and individual drivers (coming soon).