Tour Operator Virtual Receptionist and Answering Service
Out guiding? Calls still answered.
Frontly answers every call while you're on the water or the trail, and takes the booking.
The short answer
What is Frontly's tour operator virtual receptionist?
Frontly is an AI receptionist and answering service for Australian tour operators and attractions. It answers every call 24/7 while you guide, takes booking enquiries and group requests, answers meeting-point, what-to-bring and weather questions, and phones booked guests to confirm or tell them about a change. Every call lands in your Frontly dashboard, and standard inbound answering is live in about an hour.
THE PROBLEM
The Guide Can't Answer. The Guest Calls Someone Else.
21x
better odds of qualifying a lead when the first contact comes within 5 minutes rather than 30, in a US sales study. A guide on the water can't call back that fast, but Frontly answers every call.
Source: MIT / InsideSales Lead Response Study, 2007
23%
of 2,241 US companies audited never replied to a web enquiry at all. For an operator mid-tour, the answer has to come from someone other than the guide.
Source: Harvard Business Review, 2011 (US)
24/7
Overseas guests call at night Australian time, and last-minute bookers call after dinner. Frontly answers every call, every hour, public holidays included.
HEAR IT FOR YOURSELF
Your AI Receptionist Is Ready to Take a Tour Booking
Call our AI agent right now. It handles a tour availability question and a meeting-point question the way it would for your business. No signup required.
Test Call
Talk to the AI agent right now from your browser. Hear exactly how Frontly will sound for your business.
HOW IT WORKS
Live in About an Hour. No Disruption to Your Tours.
Connect Your Phone
Forward your existing business line or use a dedicated AI number. No hardware changes, and you keep answering when you can.
We Help Set Up Your First Workflow
Our team helps set up your first workflow around your tours, departure times, meeting points, group rules and weather policy.
Go Live
Frontly answers every call, takes booking enquiries, answers guest questions, passes urgent on-day calls to your duty guide, and phones booked guests when plans change.
WHAT FRONTLY HANDLES
Every Guest Call, Handled
From a family asking about Saturday to a coach company planning a group day, this tour operator virtual receptionist answers the calls you can't take while guiding. Flat monthly rate, every call captured in your Frontly dashboard.
Availability and bookings
Takes the tour, date, number of guests and contact details, and answers from the tour information you provide. Every booking enquiry lands in your dashboard with the full call transcript.
Meeting point and what to bring
Answers where to meet, what time to arrive, what to wear and bring, and accessibility and age questions, from the guest information you write once.
Weather questions
Answers "is it running today?" and "what if it's cancelled?" from the weather policy and daily status you set, and sends anything unclear to your team.
Group and private bookings
Captures the date, group size, budget and requirements for school, corporate and private groups, then emails your team the summary or transfers the call.
International guests
Hears the language a guest is speaking and answers in it, across more than 40 languages, so an overseas caller at night can still get an answer.
On-day and urgent calls
Puts calls from a guest who is lost or running late straight through to your duty guide, with a spoken briefing, and takes a message if nobody can answer.
OUTBOUND CAMPAIGNS
Outbound Campaigns Over Your Booking and Contact Lists
Load a list and Frontly works through it, retrying unanswered numbers and logging every outcome. Do Not Call Register screening and legal calling windows are built in, and promotional campaigns go only to your opted-in list.
Booking confirmation campaign
The day before, Frontly calls every booked guest on your list to confirm the date, meeting point and what to bring, and logs anyone who needs to change or cancel.
Weather and schedule-change campaign
When conditions or a departure time change, Frontly calls every booked guest on the affected tour, explains the change, and records whether they want a new time, another tour or a call from you.
Missed-call call-back campaign
After a day out guiding, Frontly works through the callers on your list who left a message or asked for a call-back, finds out what each wanted, and takes the booking.
Promotion campaign to your opted-in list
Ahead of the off-season or a new tour, Frontly phones your opted-in list, answers questions and passes interested guests to your team or takes their booking details.
Visual Workflow Builder
Script Your Booking Line Without Code
Your First Workflow, Built With You
Our team helps set up your first workflow around your tours, departure times and group rules: exactly what the AI asks before it takes a booking enquiry.
Rules for Every Kind of Call
Route a group enquiry to your bookings lead, a lost guest to the duty guide, and a simple availability question straight to a dashboard booking.
Guest Answers You Control
Write the answers for meeting point, what to bring, age limits and weather policy once. Decide which questions go to a person.
Change It Yourself
Update tonight's status, seasonal departure times and public holiday trading any time in the visual builder, without waiting on us.
Branch by Season and Time of Day
Handle peak school holidays, quiet midweek days and after-hours calls on different paths, so a busy week never follows the same script as a slow one.
Cross-Call Memory
Your AI Remembers Every Returning Guest
- Returning guests recognised the moment they call
- Past bookings and group details recalled automatically
- No asking a regular to repeat their party size or requirements
- Full call history on every caller before your team picks up
Frontly Dashboard
Every Booking Enquiry Captured While You Guide
Every Enquiry in One Place
Enquiries arrive with the tour, date, group size and contact details already captured, so your team actions them when you're back on shore.
Full Transcript on Every Call
Read exactly what the guest asked for, including accessibility needs and special occasions, before you call back.
Summaries Sent to Your Phone
Email or SMS the enquiry or message to the right person the moment the call ends.
Outcomes You Can Count
Every call ends with a labelled outcome, so you see bookings, questions and messages taken by phone, and when calls came in.
Live Status Across Your Tours
See what came in while you were out on one screen, and which calls were put through to your duty guide.
Outbound Campaign Manager
Confirm Guests and Handle Changes With Campaigns
Confirmation Campaigns at Scale
Frontly calls tomorrow's whole guest list, so confirming meeting points is no longer a job for your guide.
Weather and Schedule Calls
Run one campaign over the booked guests on an affected tour to tell them about a change, and record what each one wants to do next.
Same Builder, No New Tool
Script each campaign in the same visual builder you used for inbound calls.
See What Landed
Track which campaigns confirmed guests, handled changes and found new bookings, so you know which to run again.
INTEGRATIONS
Works with the software tour operators already runs on
Connect your AI receptionist to the software your team already uses, so Frontly can check availability, manage bookings and capture caller details as part of your reception workflow.
Tours and activities
Team messaging
Integrations support Frontly's reception and caller follow-up workflows. Available actions depend on the connected software and your setup.
Integration allowances vary by plan. See Pricing for what's included.
Not on the list, or need a specific workflow? Tell us what you use and what you'd like Frontly to handle. We'll check what's possible.
ANSWERING SERVICE OR AI
Should a tour operator use an answering service or an AI receptionist?
An answering service takes a message while your guide is out on the tour, and the traveller books elsewhere. An AI receptionist answers at once, takes the booking enquiry or group request, and answers meeting-point, what-to-bring and weather questions. It also phones booked guests when plans change.
Where a staffed answering service still wins
A local with a story. Travellers planning a once-in-a-lifetime trip often want a person who knows the region and can talk them through the options, and an experienced reservations officer closes that sale with enthusiasm. If your product is high-touch and bespoke, that conversation is worth keeping with your own team.
Where Frontly wins
Most calls are repeat questions: where do we meet, what should we bring, is the tour running in this weather. Frontly answers those at any hour, takes bookings, and calls guests when a departure changes, so your guides keep guiding instead of checking their phones.
Most businesses end up running one or the other rather than both. If you are weighing it up properly, the full cost and capability breakdown is in Frontly against a virtual receptionist.
Bigger organisation?
Attraction groups and multi-tour operators
Enterprise builds voice booking experiences to measure, connected to your group's own booking and ticketing systems during the call. Own-cloud or on-premise deployment, SLA-backed uptime and a dedicated account manager.
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. Frontly takes the tour, date, number of guests and contact details on the call, and answers availability questions from the departure and tour information you give it. Every enquiry lands in your Frontly dashboard with the full call transcript, and your team can be notified by email or SMS straight away.
They get answered. With a group on the reef or the trail you cannot pick up, so Frontly takes the booking enquiry or answers the meeting-point question on the call, even when several guests ring at once. A lost or late guest on the day goes straight to your duty guide by warm transfer, or becomes a message if nobody can answer.
Yes. Frontly answers "is it running today?" from the weather policy and daily status you set, and a weather and schedule-change campaign calls every booked guest on the affected tour. It explains the change and records whether each guest wants a new time, another tour or a call from your team.
A booking platform's add-on sells seats inside its own system. Your phone also has to tell a full tour that the 7am departure has moved, or confirm tomorrow's meeting point. Frontly runs those campaigns over the lists you load, warm-transfers to your guides, reports outcomes across every call, speaks more than 40 languages, and comes with a first workflow set up with you.
Rezdy is Available: you connect it with your permission and we set it up with you during onboarding. FareHarbor and Checkfront are Requires vendor approval, so the software company approves the connection first. Either way, booking enquiries land in your Frontly dashboard from the first call, so you can start in about an hour.
Yes. Frontly captures the date, group size, budget and requirements for a school, corporate or private group, then emails your team the summary or transfers the call while the guest is still on the line. A booking confirmation campaign can then confirm numbers and details before the day.
Yes. A family planning from Shanghai or Mumbai can ask about the tour in their own language, and Frontly replies in it, across more than 40 languages with coverage varying by language. Meeting points and what to bring are explained the same way, and your team reads the transcript in the dashboard.
Yes. Run a booking confirmation campaign and Frontly calls each guest on tomorrow's list, confirms the date, meeting point and what to bring, and logs anyone who needs to change or cancel. You learn who is not coming while there is still time to fill the spot.
Yes. A weather or schedule-change call goes to guests who booked that tour, about their booking. An off-season promotion goes only to people on your opted-in list. Every number is screened against the Do Not Call Register and called inside legal calling windows, on every plan.
Yes. You update the daily status and weather policy yourself in the visual builder, any time, and Frontly answers "is it running today?" from the new wording on the next call. Our team helps set up your first workflow with you; after launch, changes like this are yours to make.
KEEP EXPLORING
Keep exploring Frontly for Tour Operators
Go deeper on the capabilities, comparisons, and guides that matter most.
24/7 inbound answering
How Frontly answers every call, qualifies the caller, and books the job in your dashboard.
How inbound worksOutbound campaigns
Recalls, follow-ups, arrears, and lead reactivation dialled automatically at scale.
Run outboundAfter-hours answering
Travellers in other time zones ring while you sleep. See how overnight booking enquiries are taken.
See after-hoursVirtual receptionist cost in 2026
What human and AI receptionists actually cost in Australia, and where each wins.
Read the guideReady to Answer Every Guest Call, Even Mid-Tour?
Set up your AI tour receptionist in about an hour. No commitment beyond the plan you pick. Flat monthly rate.