The peak season operations checklist

Peak season does not break operations. It reveals what was already broken at lower volume. Here is the six-week checklist that prevents the predictable failures.

Six weeks out: capacity and catalog

• Generate availability through the end of the season. Running out of bookable dates mid-July is the most common and most avoidable revenue loss.
• Audit capacity per departure. The number that was right in April may not match the vehicle you will actually have in August.
• Set blackout dates. Local holidays, maintenance days, and private buyouts, entered now rather than discovered as a double-booking.
• Review pricing. Peak pricing, group rates, and returning-guest rates decided before demand arrives, not during.
• Check add-on capacity. Equipment and hotel pickup have their own limits. Selling twenty pickups when the van seats eight is a peak-season classic.

Five weeks out: staffing

• Confirm guide availability for the whole season. Not "probably around" — actual dates in the system.
• Check certification expiry. First aid, licences, permits. An expiry mid-season removes a guide from the roster on a day you cannot afford it.
• Enter approved time off. Time off that only exists in someone's memory becomes a conflict in week three.
• Confirm driver assignments separately from guides. They are different constraints; treating them as one puts the same person in two places.
• Identify your backup for each role. Who covers a guide who calls in sick at 06:00 on a Saturday? Decide now.

Four weeks out: fleet and vendors

• Vehicle inspections and insurance dates checked. An expired inspection grounds a vehicle regardless of what is booked on it.
• Maintenance scheduled outside peak. Do it in the quiet week, not the busy one.
• Vendor rates confirmed in writing. A verbal rate from March will be disputed in August.
• Backup vendors identified for the suppliers you cannot operate without.

Three weeks out: payments and policy

• Review the pending-payment expiry window. Too long and abandoned checkouts hold peak inventory. Too short and legitimate travellers lose seats. Day tours: 30–60 minutes. Multi-day: 24–72 hours.
• Test the full payment flow end to end, including a failed card and a retry.
• Confirm the Stripe webhook is delivering. Check the log. A webhook that silently stopped after an environment change confirms nothing.
• Publish your cancellation policy clearly on the booking page, before payment.
• Decide your peak-season refund posture and brief the team, so decisions are consistent.

Two weeks out: communication

• Test every automated message. Confirmation, reminder, delay notice, payment reminder, review request. Send each to yourself and read it on a phone.
• Check reminder lead times per tour type. A 48-hour reminder is right for a day tour and too late for a trip requiring travel.
• Verify time zone handling for travellers booking from other regions.
• Prepare templates for the bad days — weather cancellation, vehicle failure, guide illness. Writing these calmly in June beats writing them at 07:00 in August.

One week out: readiness

• Run the nightly staffing audit. Every departure with bookings should have a guide, a driver where needed, and a vehicle where needed.
• Brief every guide on incident reporting. What to record, when, and to whom.
• Confirm emergency contacts are captured for every participant.
• Check waiver completion rates. Chase the gaps now, not at the meeting point.
• Download offline manifests for areas with poor connectivity.

During: the daily rhythm

Three checks, ten minutes total:

Morning — today's departures: staffing complete, waivers signed, payments settled, capacity accurate.

Midday — operational status: anything delayed, any incident, anything needing a traveller notification.

Evening — tomorrow: the same morning check, run a day early, while there is still time to fix it.

After: the review that makes next season easier

Within two weeks of the season ending, while it is still fresh:

Write down three things to change before next season. Operators who do this compound; operators who go straight into recovery mode repeat the same season indefinitely.

---

Related: Operations · Guides · Vehicles