A booking system for an Italian tour operator running destination events.
A full booking pipeline now handles quote requests, contracts, payment tracking, and booking changes in one system. Before, there was no central record of customers or bookings.
Client
An Italian tour operator that organizes destination running events across Europe.
Scope
Quote requests, contracts, payment tracking, supplier payment tracking, booking modifications, and daily operational follow-up.
Stack
n8n, Airtable, Carbone.io, SMTP, Google Drive, Vercel.
Role
Solo builder. Discovery, architecture, build, testing, hands-on support during go-live.
A day before. A day after.
Before (manual)
- 01. A request comes in. Read through what they're asking for.
- 02. Work out the quote by hand. No pricing system: just experience, the event programme, and a calculator.
- 03. Draft a Word doc with the quote. Export to PDF. Email it back.
- 04. If the client accepts, repeat for the contract. Track payments by hand, hope nobody falls through.
After (automated)
- 01. The client fills out a web form. The request lands in Airtable, pre-priced and ready to review.
- 02. The operator checks the draft, edits if needed, and clicks send. The quote email goes out.
- 03. When the client confirms, the contract PDF and DOCX generate from the booking data and land in a Drive folder, ready for the operator to review and send.
- 04. Every booking has a clear payment status. The system flags who's due, who's late, and who needs a follow-up. The operator still confirms each payment when the bank transfer arrives, but nobody falls through the cracks.
- 05. Every morning, an automated email arrives with the day's priorities: upcoming customer payment deadlines, supplier deadlines approaching, and anything that needs action today. The operator starts the day already oriented.
One pipeline. One dashboard.
Airtable holds every quote, booking, contract, and payment status, on both the customer side and the supplier side: hotels, transport, race registrations. n8n handles the logic between them.
The operator's day is built around a single Airtable interface: new requests appear at the top, draft emails are pre-written, contract PDFs are one click away, and a daily dashboard shows the status of every open quote and which deadlines are coming up. The system handles the repetitive parts. The operator still decides what's right for the client.
01
Quote Request
Client fills the form.
Web form → Airtable
02
Quote Review
Operator reviews and sends.
03
Booking Confirmed
Client accepts the quote.
04
Contract PDF
Generated from booking data.
05
Payment Tracking
Due, late, follow-up status.
Airtable status
CENTRAL DATABASE
Every quote, booking, contract, and payment in one place.
The operator's single source of truth — no more chasing through Excel, Outlook, and Word.
Booking changes and error alerts run through the same system.
What's changed so far.
The system went live in April 2026. Below: what changed in shape, with a rough estimate of the manual workload the system replaces. Real measurements will follow once the season generates its own data.
1
Source of truth
Quotes, bookings, contracts, and payment status now live in one place. The same information no longer has to be retyped across separate tools.
0
Forgotten payments
The operator still confirms each payment by hand when the bank transfer arrives. The system makes clear who's due, who's late, and who needs a follow-up.
8 → 2
Manual steps per booking
Before: receive the request, price it, send the proposal, send two booking forms,
gather the returned data, draft the contract in Word, convert it to PDF, and email
it back.
Now: review and send, twice.
~130-200
Hours of manual admin per year
Now replaced by dashboard checks and one-click actions. This estimate is based on the volume of requests, bookings, documents, and follow-up steps the old process required.
Daily
Operations digest, every morning
A scheduled email arrives each morning with that day's priorities: customer payment deadlines, supplier deadlines approaching, and anything flagged as urgent in the Airtable dashboard. The operator doesn't need to remember to check, or worry about missing something. The system keeps the overview, and surfaces what needs action.
The system doesn't collect payments through the bank or replace the operator's
judgment.
It removes the repetitive admin around those decisions.
Sound familiar?
If quote requests, contracts, booking changes, and payment follow-up still live across inboxes, spreadsheets, and attachments, this is the kind of operational mess I help turn into one working system. No pitch, just an honest look at whether it's the right fit for your situation.