Why active-travel distribution is different — and why Backroads matters
Most OTA integrations are about volume: lots of day-trip bookings from travellers browsing a marketplace. Backroads is a different kind of partner. It designs and runs premium multi-day active trips, and the guests it brings are high-value, well-prepared, and booked far in advance. For local operators — bike hire, guided walks, paddling trips, cultural experiences — being part of that world means supplying components to some of the best-organised itineraries in travel. TicketingHub makes the operational side of that relationship effortless.
What is Backroads?
Since 1979, Backroads has been one of the world's premier active travel companies. It offers more than 500 all-inclusive trips worldwide — biking, walking, hiking, paddling and multi-sport adventures for all levels of experience. The company is known for its expert Trip Leaders, thoughtful meals and inspiring itineraries, with award-winning solo and family trips around the globe, and a level of flexibility and support that lets guests travel at their own pace.
That polish is the point. Backroads guests expect every element of a trip to run smoothly — which means the local partners who supply experiences into those itineraries need bookings, capacity and communication to be flawless too.
It's also a durable audience. Active travel has grown steadily as travellers trade sightseeing for participation, and companies like Backroads sit at the premium end of that shift — the guests who choose a guided cycling week over a beach resort are exactly the ones who book add-on experiences enthusiastically along the way.
How TicketingHub fits in
TicketingHub is the booking layer underneath the partnership. Working with a partner like Backroads through TicketingHub's channel and reseller tooling means:
- Live availability — partner bookings draw from the same real-time capacity as your direct sales, so a group booking can never collide with a sold-out departure.
- One dashboard — partner bookings, payments and guest counts sit alongside every other channel in TicketingHub, tagged by source.
- Audience insight — reporting shows what each channel contributes, so you can see the value of the relationship in numbers, not gut feel.
As always, commercial terms — rates, commission, group policies — are agreed between you and the partner. TicketingHub's job is to make sure the operational handshake never drops a booking.
Operator scenarios
Bike and gear operators on touring routes
Cycling is Backroads' heartland. If you rent bikes, run supported rides or operate along a classic touring route, group itineraries can fill mid-week capacity that individual travellers rarely touch. TicketingHub keeps the group blocks and your public availability in one calendar, so neither side oversells the fleet.
Walking and hiking guides
Multi-day walking trips are built from daily guided segments. A local guiding outfit supplying those segments needs precise headcounts and clean manifests every morning — exactly what TicketingHub produces when partner bookings flow into the same manifest as everything else.
Experience providers along the itinerary
Wine tastings, cooking sessions, cultural visits and paddling excursions all appear inside active itineraries as scheduled stops. Being bookable through a synced channel — rather than by email ping-pong — is often what turns a one-off group visit into a recurring slot in next season's departures.
Getting started
Partner channels are set up with TicketingHub's reseller tooling: add a wholesale rate to the relevant products, create a reseller record for the partner and assign the rate, then build a channel with the products they can book and share its credentials. If you're pursuing a relationship with Backroads or a similar active-travel company, contact your TicketingHub account manager or support — we'll enable the channel and help you verify the first test booking lands correctly as a pending order with the reseller name shown.
