Sell the empty seat without breaking your price
A seat on Saturday's departure is worth money today and nothing on Sunday. TourAuct is a marketplace that finds what that seat is worth this week, using an auction rather than a discount code you will never be able to take off again.
The problem is expiry, not price
Tour capacity is perishable in a way most products are not. A shop with unsold stock can sell it next month. A boat that leaves at eight on Saturday with four empty seats has destroyed those four seats permanently, and the cost of carrying them was already paid: the crew, the fuel, the permits, the guide.
Every operator knows this, which is why the last week before a departure produces the same behaviour everywhere. Someone messages the agents. Someone posts a code. Someone quietly takes a booking at a number they would not print. All three are attempts to answer one question — what is this seat worth this week — using an instrument that was not designed to answer it.
Not a way to sell more cheaply. A way to find out what expiring capacity is worth right now, without teaching every future buyer that your list price is a suggestion.
Why an auction, and not a discount code
A discount is a statement about your product. An auction is a question about this week. That difference sounds academic until you look at what each one does over a season.
A discount code has to be published as a number. Once buyers have seen twenty per cent off in September, they have learned something durable: waiting is rewarded. The people who take the code are disproportionately the people who were going to book anyway, so you have paid a fifth of your margin to move demand you already had. And the code does not come off cleanly, because removing it reads as a price rise to everybody who saw it. Agents remember it. Repeat guests remember it. It shows up in the next negotiation.
An auction publishes no price at all. It publishes an event with an end time. What clears is the number the market will pay for this departure, this week, with this many days left — and that number expires with the lot. Next month's departure starts from your list price again, because nothing about your list price was ever stated in public.
| Discount code | Auction | |
|---|---|---|
| What is made public | A permanent-looking number | An event with a deadline |
| What buyers learn | Wait and the price will fall | Turn up before the clock stops |
| Who takes it up | Often people already booking | People bidding against each other |
| Effect on next season | Anchors the price down | Ends when the lot ends |
| How you undo it | You cannot, cleanly | It undoes itself |
There is a second effect operators notice before they can name it. A discount is one-sided: you set a number and wait to see whether anyone comes. An auction puts your buyers in competition with each other, which is the only mechanism that tells you the seat was worth more than you thought. Sometimes the answer is unflattering. That is still information you did not have on Friday.
Two marketplaces, two different buyers
TourAuct runs on two domains because the two audiences behave nothing alike, and putting them in one room serves neither.
tourauction.com
The supplier-facing side, for operators and wholesalers with unsold capacity: seats, cabins, allotments and departures that have a cut-off date.
Buyers here are trade — agents and resellers who can move a block quickly and who understand what a last-minute allocation is worth.
daugiadulich.com
The Vietnamese-language consumer side, aimed at lower-priced products, with lots opening under fifty US dollars.
Low opening prices are deliberate. The behaviour being built here is the habit of buying travel through an auction at all, which does not exist yet.
Keeping them apart matters for the reason the whole product exists. A trade buyer taking a block at a trade number is normal commerce. The same number visible to your retail customers is a problem you will be explaining for a year.
Where TourAuct is today, stated plainly
TourAuct is at the beginning. It is not a mature marketplace with deep liquidity, and anyone telling you a new auction platform already has both sides of the market is describing something that has not happened yet. The plan runs in three phases and we would rather publish it than imply the later ones are finished.
- Phase one, now — standardise the platform, build the habit of buying through an auction, and reach the two audiences above. In this phase a listing is an experiment rather than a sales channel.
- Phase two — international consumer buyers, and an affiliate team putting listings in front of audiences the marketplace does not own itself.
- Phase three — automated selling, an AI assistant advising buyers through the purchase, a wider affiliate network, and MICE and packaged tours added to what can be put up as a lot.
Phase two and phase three are the direction, not commitments with dates. If you need something from a later phase for this to be worth your time, the answer today is that it is not there.
What you need to have decided before you list
The platform can run the auction. It cannot supply the discipline, and a supplier without these three answers is the one who ends up unhappy.
- The floor. The number below which the seat is genuinely worth more to you empty, including the cost of servicing a guest who paid very little. Decide it before the bidding starts, not while watching it.
- The cut-off. How many days before departure the lot has to close so you can still confirm, brief a guide and issue documents without a scramble.
- The wall between channels. What you are willing to have discovered by a retail customer who books at full price next week, because eventually one of them will find it.
If your capacity is already visible to the same people in three other places, the auction becomes a fourth place to see the same seat rather than a new source of demand. Worth checking before you spend a week on it.
Who should not use TourAuct
- Operators who sell out anyway. If your departures fill, an auction converts full-price demand into discounted demand, which is the opposite of the point.
- Premium and luxury products where the price is part of the promise. A visible auction on a high-end product does damage that outlasts the empty seat.
- Anyone who needs a predictable volume this quarter. Phase one cannot promise that, and a marketplace that promised it would be lying.
- Businesses whose real problem is that nobody knows they exist. An auction redistributes existing demand; it does not create awareness. That is a website and search problem, and a different piece of work.
See whether your capacity suits an auction
Tell us what goes unsold, how far ahead it dies, and what you currently do about it. If auctions are not your instrument we will say so — izBooking is the more common fit.
What travel operators ask us most
Does an auction damage my normal pricing?
Less than a discount code does, which is the central argument for it. An auction publishes an event with an end time rather than a price, so nothing durable is stated about what your product costs.
The risk that remains is channel visibility, which is why the trade and consumer sides are separate domains.
What stops a lot from clearing at an embarrassing price?
Your floor. You decide the number below which the seat is worth more to you empty, before the lot opens rather than during it.
The platform cannot make that decision for you, and a supplier who has not made it is the one most likely to regret a listing.
Is TourAuct only for Vietnamese products?
The consumer marketplace is Vietnamese-language and Vietnam-focused today. The supplier side is not restricted by geography.
In this phase the buyer demand is concentrated in Vietnam, so that is where a listing actually performs, whatever the platform technically allows.
How is this different from a last-minute deals site?
A deals site is still a published price, set by you, with the same anchoring problem as a code. An auction sets the number through competition between buyers and it ends when the lot ends.
The two can coexist, but they answer different questions.
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