A CRM for a DMC sales team
selling to the overseas trade
Revenue, gross margin, passengers and room nights by agent — and the meetings, promises and follow-ups behind those numbers, in the same place. Your reservations system holds the bookings; this holds the relationships that produced them.
Free tier with no card · Connect your reservations system or import a file · GBP, USD, EUR and ZAR
What does a DMC sales team need from a CRM?
A destination management company sells its ground product to overseas tour operators and agents, and its sales team works those buyers the way a representative works a market: meetings, product training, fam trips, trade shows, and the steady business of staying in the itinerary. What that team needs is the trade relationship and the production figure in the same view, because the two questions it is asked are always the same — which agents are worth the next trip, and what did we agree with them last time.
A generic CRM holds the conversations and knows nothing about room nights. A reservations system holds the bookings and knows nothing about the conversation in Frankfurt that produced them. Most DMC sales teams end up bridging the two by hand, in a spreadsheet, once a month.
RepBud reads the production data out of your reservations system, or a file, and holds the relationship alongside it — so revenue, gross margin, passengers and room nights sit next to who was seen and what was promised.
The DMC home screen
Margin, not just revenue
A DMC signing in gets a different home screen from a representative. It opens on total revenue and gross margin, passengers and room nights, over a service-date range you set — broken down by agent, by property, by country and region, and by service line.
Margin sitting beside revenue is the part that changes conversations. The agent sending the most passengers is not reliably the one worth the next trip, and a sales plan built on revenue alone tends to reward volume that costs you to service. Seeing both, per agent, makes the trip list a decision rather than a habit.
The property breakdown does something similar in the other direction. An agent producing well on one lodge and never touching another is a specific conversation with a reason attached, which lands better than a general request to send more business.
Getting your data in
Connect a system, or import a file
TourPlan, Tourwriter, Wetu and ResRequest can be connected directly, bringing agents, bookings and service lines across. Setting one up is a one-time job of about ten minutes with credentials you already hold.
A good many DMCs run systems with no API to connect to. For those, a file import is the route rather than a compromise — it feeds the same pipeline and produces the same analysis, and for a monthly reporting rhythm it is often the less fiddly option anyway.
A connected system re-syncs nightly without anybody pressing anything, and you can also run a sync yourself over a date range you choose. The second is the one that gets used at month end, when what you want is the position as at a particular date rather than as at last night.
How RepBud helps
Built around the agent, not the booking
Revenue and margin by agent
Total revenue and gross margin per overseas agent over a service-date range. Margin matters here in a way revenue alone does not: the agent sending the most passengers is not always the one worth the next trip.
Passengers and room nights
Passenger and room-night counts by agent, property, country, region and service line — the units a DMC and its suppliers actually negotiate in.
Which properties an agent books
See the product each agent uses and, more usefully, the product they have never touched. That gap is a specific sales conversation rather than a general request for more business.
From your reservations system, or a file
Connect TourPlan, Tourwriter, Wetu or ResRequest, or import a file. Connected systems re-sync nightly, and you can run one yourself over a date range whenever you want the figures as at a particular date.
The relationship behind the number
Log meetings by typing, speaking or photographing a notebook page, and forward an email or WhatsApp thread to file it against the right contact. The numbers say what an agent did; this says what was agreed and by when.
Trade shows and the fortnight after
Plan which shows the team covers from a directory of upcoming trade events, then capture the meetings and consolidate the follow-up — the part that decides whether a stand paid for itself.
What this is not
It is not a reservations or itinerary system. It does not hold your bookings, build an itinerary or price a quote — your existing system does that, and RepBud reads from it.
It is not an accounting ledger for your operation either, though a separate accounting workspace is included on paid plans for invoicing and year-end. The DMC figures here are a sales view of production, not your books.
Looking to appoint a rep instead?
This page is for a DMC selling with its own people. If you want representation in a market you have no staff in, that is a different arrangement — and plenty of DMCs do both.
Find a sales rep for your DMC →Frequently asked questions
What DMC sales teams ask
What is a CRM for a DMC sales team?+
A destination management company sells its ground product to overseas tour operators and travel agents. Its sales team works those buyers the way a representative works a market — meetings, product training, fam trips, trade shows and the constant business of staying in the itinerary. A CRM for a DMC sales team holds those relationships alongside what each agent actually produced, so a conversation about next season starts from what last season did.
How is this different from the page about finding a rep for my DMC?+
They are two different jobs. If you are looking to appoint a representative in a source market you do not have staff in, that is RepBud Ready and the page for it is /for/dmcs-seeking-representation. This page is for a DMC selling to the trade with its own people. Plenty of DMCs do both — staff in one market, an appointed rep in another.
What does the DMC home screen show?+
Total revenue, gross margin, passengers and room nights, broken down by agent, by property, by country and region, and by service line, over a service-date range you choose. The point of putting them together is that a sales team can see which agents are worth the next trip and which properties an agent actually books, rather than a revenue total with no shape to it.
Where does the booking data come from?+
Either from a connected reservations system — TourPlan, Tourwriter, Wetu or ResRequest — or from a file import. A good many DMCs run systems with no API at all, and for those the import is the route rather than a workaround: it is the same pipeline, and the resulting analysis is identical.
Does the data sync automatically?+
Yes. A connected integration re-syncs nightly, with the stalest one going first so nothing is left behind. You can also run a sync yourself at any time over a date range you choose, which is what most teams do at month end when they want the figures as at a particular date rather than as at last night.
Can we see which properties an agent is actually using?+
Yes. Bookings carry the property, the country, the region and the category, so you can see that an agent producing well on one product has never touched another — which is usually a more useful sales conversation than asking them to send more business generally.
Can the sales team work from one account?+
Yes. Team plans put several people on one account with shared contacts, so two of your team do not approach the same operator in the same week, and a colleague’s history is there when somebody is at a show or on leave. Individual plans suit a DMC with one or two people on trade sales.
Is this a reservations or itinerary system?+
No. It does not hold your bookings, build itineraries or price a quote — your reservations system does that, and RepBud reads from it. What it holds is the sales relationship: who was seen, what was agreed, what was promised, and what each agent produced.
What does it cost, and can we try it first?+
There is a free tier with no card and no expiry, and paid plans begin with a 14-day complimentary stay, also without a card. Prices are shown in pounds, US dollars, euros and rand. See repbud.app/pricing for current figures.
Related reading
For inbound operators and DMCs
Start with one season of bookings
The free tier takes no card and does not expire. Import a season and see which agents produced the margin, not just the volume.
Start free →