How City Tours Belfast improved conversions and sales after switching from Checkfront

Explore Belfast with City Tours Belfast—known for knowledgeable guides and tours that are easy to tailor. Since 2017, they’ve offered routes from the Giant’s Causeway to Game of Thrones locations, helping visitors see the city without a rigid, one-size-fits-all itinerary.

The problem: bookings lost to a clunky checkout

Chris, who looks after the web side of the business, is clear about what wasn’t working with their previous booking system, Checkfront.

“We were seeing concerningly low conversion rates,” Chris explains. “Our customers were abandoning bookings, and we suspected the clunky interface was to blame.”

Day-to-day work had become harder than it needed to be. Straightforward jobs—like getting someone booked onto a tour—took too long and frustrated both guests and staff. Integrations were another pain point: connecting Checkfront with other platforms, including tools partner hotels relied on, rarely felt smooth.

“We needed a better booking experience,” Chris says—“not just for our customers online, but for my team managing bookings internally.”

The switch to TicketingHub

That’s when City Tours Belfast went looking for a simpler setup and found TicketingHub.

“TicketingHub delivers the booking experience we craved for our online customers,” Chris says.

Moving over was easier than they expected. “It was very easy to get started with TicketingHub,” he notes—a sharp contrast with the friction they’d struggled with before.

The impact showed up where it mattered: on the website and in day-to-day sales. “It improved our website’s conversion rates, and my staff has noticed more sales,” Chris says. By smoothing out the booking path, TicketingHub reduced drop-off and made completed bookings the norm rather than the exception.

When asked what sets TicketingHub apart, his answer is direct: “It is easier to use.” That simplicity matters for staff and for customers, so the whole journey stays quick and clear.

For Chris, the standout theme is the booking experience itself—the flow from first click to confirmation. That lines up with City Tours Belfast’s aim: make planning a tour feel straightforward, not like admin.

He sums up why he’s comfortable recommending TicketingHub: “First-class customer service, ease of use, and reliable software—which is massively important. You will need to take my word for it.”

Beyond the website: selling on the street

Not every ticket in Belfast is sold from a web page. On cruise-ship mornings and busy weekends, plenty of guests decide on the spot — at the bus, at the kerb, mid-conversation with a driver. City Tours Belfast handles those sales on TicketingHub’s point-of-sale card machines, so street and on-board sales go through the same system as the website, with a printed ticket in the guest’s hand carrying the company logo and a QR code that opens the tour’s meeting instructions.

The machines are built around how front-line staff actually work. Drivers don’t juggle email logins — they pick their name from a screen and enter a PIN. High-volume days get short, quick-print tickets rather than a full page per sale. And end-of-day reporting splits cash from card takings, so cashing up doesn’t depend on anyone’s memory.

Much of that came out of a running conversation between Chris’s team and TicketingHub’s product team. Requests that started as notes from the street — shorter ink-saving tickets for cruise days, showing only the products a seller actually sells, refunds handled from the machine, the driver PIN screen, the logo on printed tickets — have shipped into the product. It’s the same responsiveness Chris credits on the support side, applied to the roadmap.

What their setup looks like

• TicketingHub’s booking widget on the website, carrying the majority of bookings
• OTA and reseller connections — including the hotel partners that were painful to serve before — for marketplace demand
• Point-of-sale card machines for street and on-board sales, with PIN login for drivers
• Branded printed tickets: logo plus a QR code linking guests to tour meeting instructions
• End-of-day sales reporting split by cash and card for reconciliation

The takeaway for tour operators

On broader growth, Chris is upbeat. “We have grown massively this year,” he says. “An aggressive SEO strategy combined with a top booking system like TicketingHub has all come together to push us to new heights of growth. We are now in new waters.” They currently see over 70% inbound visitors compared to pre-COVID levels—a major shift in where demand comes from.

The lesson generalises: fixing the booking path pays twice. Online, fewer abandoned checkouts turn existing traffic into bookings before any new marketing spend. Offline, putting street sales on the same system means every channel — website, marketplaces, kerb-side card machine — feeds one set of numbers.

For City Tours Belfast, the takeaway is practical: when the booking path is clear, marketing and operations can pull in the same direction—more completed bookings, less friction for the team, and a better first impression for every traveller who decides to explore Belfast with them.