Inside Fieldbook takes you behind the scenes of our product development journey, where initial assumptions often led to unexpected solutions. In most cases, what we thought would be a simple answer turned out to be something entirely different—like our 4-in-1 itinerary builder, which started as a straightforward idea but grew into a core feature that serves multiple roles.
An Obvious Place to Start: A Simple Itinerary Builder (Or So We Thought)
When you think of tours, the itinerary is usually the first thing that comes to mind. Originally, we thought an itinerary builder would be the best place to start with Fieldbook. It seemed like a natural fit—after all, itineraries are at the heart of every tour. But as we dug deeper, we realised there was a reason operators were still relying on spreadsheets, even with so many itinerary builders out there.
It became clear that creating an itinerary wasn’t the whole story. Operators are responsible not only for designing a great itinerary but also for delivering it, which means coordinating with suppliers, guides, and guests in real time. Most itinerary tools, however, are built for people designing an itinerary, like travel advisors, or using an itinerary, like travellers. But these hadn’t been built with the idea of someone designing, organising, and then guiding the trip.
Uncovering the Real Need: A Single Itinerary for Multiple Roles
Through conversations with tour operators, we found a common need that aligned closely with the core principles we introduced in our recent blog post: a single source of truth and team alignment. Operators didn’t just need a tool to organise a tour—they needed a shared itinerary that could be used by multiple people across different roles.
For a tour to go smoothly, organisers, guides, sales teams, and guests each need information from the itinerary, but tailored to their own needs. Guides need on-the-ground details, guests need an overview, sales teams need pricing and options, and organisers need it all. Most itinerary builders didn’t meet this need for shared, role-specific information.
The 4-in-1 Itinerary Builder: Built for Everyone, Tailored for Each Role
This insight led us to create one of Fieldbook’s core features: the 4-in-1 itinerary builder. With our tool, all the relevant details for organisers, guides, sales, and guests are organised within a single itinerary, accessible in one place but tailored to fit the needs of each role. This way, operators no longer have to duplicate itineraries in separate platforms like spreadsheets or design software just to adapt the same information for different audiences. Instead, they can maintain a single, dynamic itinerary that everyone can work from.
We designed our 4-in-1 itinerary builder to offer complete flexibility around what’s shown for each viewer. One thing we quickly learned was that while operators might want to show exact times for guides, they might prefer to skip those for guests, who could hold them to precise times even when things like traffic delays are out of their control!
This gives tour teams a cohesive, adaptable itinerary that supports every role, from planning through to guiding.
