By Rezdy — 15 Jun 2015

Meeting your legal requirements is inseparable from the success of your tour or activity business.

Rezdy helps you cover your legal bases in the following ways.

Legal Requirements in Manifest fields

Not only is your manifest the key to being totally organised and ready to run your tour or activity, but it’s essential to have certain things on your manifest for certain industries. For example, the maritime sector in Australia requires all cruise operators to list height and weight of participants.

So ask your customers any question at the time of  booking, and display it on your manifest for easy reference!

In Rezdy

Any field – including questions you ask your customers at the time of booking – can be shown on your manifest.

Add or remove information based on your preference and need, by updating the Booking Info of the Product.

legal requirements

You have several options for setting up your Custom Fields:

  • Text – allow your customer to provide their own answer
  • List – have your customers choose an answer that you’ve provided
  • Checkbox – have your customers check a box as an answer to your question
  • Multi-line text – allow your customer to provide an extended answer

You can also choose to make your questions mandatory or optional, asked once per booking or for each participant.

We strongly recommend not asking too many questions in your Booking Form as customers tend to like a quick check-out process; especially if their booking on a mobile device.

Once you’re done, simply check “show on manifest” for all fields you’d like to be able to see on your manifest.

Click here for the full tutorial.

Legal Requirements in Terms and conditions

This is an obvious one – set terms and conditions around your product – especially around bad weather no-shows. Create a cancellation policy and enforce it! If there’s a penalty for cancellation, they will probably show up.

For example, you can allow them to cancel or change their booking up until a certain time period before the day of the tour. Any changes or cancellations after that (including no-shows) are subject to a cancellation fee. If it’s a day before the booking, they forfeit the entire value of the booking.

In Rezdy

Of course it’s not enough to create the policy – you need to keep reminding them to actively enforce it. Using Rezdy’s Direct SMS and Advanced Emails apps, you can automate this process. Each reminder email will re-state your terms and conditions for the tour.

In terms of enforcing no-shows, if you’re not using Rezdy Vault, you have to then figure out how to enforce your cancellation fee (usually a messy credit card chargeback).

Legal Requirements in a Liability Release Form

No matter what type of action and adventure your company provides its customers with, it’s important to cover your ground legally. There is a certain amount of risk and liability associated with each type of tour and activity, and all tour operators should have their patrons sign liability release forms for protection.

A liability release form protects your business from being held liable in the event of an accident, injury or damage as a result of the tour or activity. It is common for travel-related businesses and tour operators to have their customers sign liability release waivers in order to reduce their business liability and protect their assets.




Rezdy liability waiver legal requirements




In Rezdy

Make sure you get customers to sign the liability form before going on tour with you, and that you state in your T&Cs that they must sign it, otherwise they cannot participate. Don’t allow staff to check customers in on the manifest unless the liability release has been signed.

We are currently working on developing an electronic waiver system (stay tuned).

What’s Next?