Backroads Integration
Ticketinghub's world-class tour booking system now partners with Backroads, the top online travel agent for active travels. With Ticketinghub + Backroads, you'll have everything you need to make the most of your active travel experience.
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.
Frequently asked questions
Is Backroads an OTA?
Not in the marketplace sense — it's an active-travel company that designs and leads its own trips. For a local operator it functions as a distribution partner: its itineraries can include your experiences, and its guests become your guests.
What kind of guests does active travel bring?
Guests on all-inclusive active trips book months ahead, show up prepared, and skew toward higher spend. They're also repeat travellers — a good experience in one itinerary can put you in front of the same audience year after year.
How do group bookings coexist with my public availability?
Both draw from the same live capacity in TicketingHub. When a group block is booked, public channels see the reduced availability instantly — no spreadsheet reconciliation, no accidental double-sell of the same morning.
Do I need different pricing for partner bookings?
Usually yes — trade partners work from wholesale or net rates, which you configure per reseller in TicketingHub. The rate the partner pays is separate from your public price, and the terms are agreed between the two of you.
Can my team see which bookings came through the partnership?
Yes — every partner booking is tagged with its reseller name in Orders, on the manifest and in reporting, so the channel's contribution is always visible.
What if the partner books by phone or email instead of a live channel?
The reseller record still does the work: your team logs the booking against the partner in TicketingHub, it draws down the same live availability, and reporting attributes it to the channel. Moving the partner to portal or API booking later doesn't change anything about how the bookings appear.
If active-travel partnerships are on your roadmap, book a demo and we'll show you the reseller tooling behind them.
