Work(04) Tours To Go

Tours To Go

Australian tours, listed by season, state and region. It shows what is running now, and which months suit each part of the country.

Visit tourstogo.com.au (opens in a new tab) See what we built
The Tours To Go Conditions page, headed 'The year, region by region'. Climate regions such as Tropical North, Red Centre, Subtropical East and Temperate South-East run down the side, the twelve months run across the top, and each cell is coloured with that month's reading.
Fig. 1The Conditions board on tourstogo.com.au, captured from the live site
What it is
A tour finder for Australia
Our role
We built it and run it
Platform
Web
Status
Live
Visit
tourstogo.com.au ↗ (opens in a new tab)

(01)The problem

Half the country can be out of reach while the other half is at its best.

Most people fix the dates first, because that's when the leave is, and choose the place second. In Australia the order matters. A region that's at its best in one month can be closed in another, and the tour you had in mind may not be running at all.

A long list of tours can't tell you that on its own. So Tours To Go starts with the calendar and shows the tours after.

“Australia is a country you book by season.”

From the Tours To Go home page
(02)What we built

A tour finder that asks which month you're going.

Tours To Go lists Australian tour operators by season, state and region. You can start from a month, a place or a kind of trip, and narrow it down from there.

The search bar on the Tours To Go home page, over an aerial photo of the Kimberley: a keyword box with the hint 'reef, wine, 4wd, sunset', a place menu set to 'Anywhere in Australia', a month menu set to 'Any month' and a Search button.
Fig. 2The search on the Tours To Go home page takes a keyword, a place and a month
  1. Search

    By keyword, place and month

    There's one box for what you're after, one for where and one for when, and any of them can be left open.

  2. Browse

    By region, destination and interest

    Someone who knows the kind of trip they want can start there and pick the place afterwards.

  3. Shortlist

    Save the operators worth a second look

    A visitor can keep the operators they like on a shortlist and come back to them.

(03) The Conditions board

Every climate region gets a reading for every month.

The board rates each climate region month by month on a scale of five. Read along a row for one region's year, or down a column for the whole country in one month.

  1. Closed
  2. Marginal
  3. Shoulder
  4. Good
  5. Peak

The five readings, drawn here by us. The board itself is below.

The Conditions board in full: a row each for Tropical North, Red Centre, Subtropical East, Temperate South-East, Australian Alps, Mediterranean South, Tasmania and Arid West and Coral Coast, each with a short note on its climate and twelve cells, January to December. The current month's column is highlighted, and a key underneath names the readings Closed, Marginal, Shoulder, Good and Peak.
Fig. 3The board on desktop, cropped to the regions and months
The same board on a phone. The region names and their notes stay in the first column, the months January to April are in view, and a line above the table says to scroll it sideways for the rest of the year.
Fig. 4On a phone, the months scroll sideways

The readings are built from published dates.

  1. Bureau of Meteorology seasonal definitions
  2. Declared park closure periods
  3. Long-established migration and flowering dates

It's regional guidance and not a weather forecast. The board knows which months suit a region, and has no idea whether it will rain on your Thursday, so the site tells people to confirm with the operator.

The Activity windows panel on the Conditions page: cards for the humpback migration, whale sharks at Ningaloo, the marine stinger season, the snow season, wet season road closures, Western Australian wildflowers, vintage and the Overland Track booking season. Each card has a twelve-month bar, a sentence on its dates and links to the places it applies to.
Fig. 5Activity windows on the same page, each with the months it runs

(04)Booking

The booking stays with the operator.

Tours To Go helps someone find the tour and the month. When they're ready to book, it sends them to the people who run the tour.

Availability
Read live from each operator's booking system.
Booking
Handed off to the operator's own reservation system.
Prices
The operator's own.
Commission
Tours To Go may earn a commission on booking links, and it marks the links where it does.
Ratings and reviews
There aren't any, because it doesn't collect them.

(05)How it runs

We built Tours To Go, and we still run it.

It's the second of our products for travelling in Australia, beside Camping Australia. When a reading looks wrong or a page stops loading, that email comes to us.

  1. The board

    Keeping the readings right

    A reading is only worth having while it matches the published dates behind it, and checking that is our job.

  2. The listings

    Watching the live availability

    Availability is read from operators' booking systems. When one of those stops answering, we're the ones who go and look.

  3. The site

    Search, pages and the shortlist

    They all have to work on the evening someone sits down to plan a trip, and that's on us.

(06)For your business

Some of this would carry over to yours.

Got something people need to find by date or place?

Tell us what you list and how people look for it. A few lines is plenty to start.

Email us See the other work

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