Why Building a Custom FIT Travel Itinerary Still Takes 45 Minutes
For many destination management companies (DMCs), creating a bespoke FIT itinerary is still one of the most time-consuming parts of the sales process. Despite sophisticated booking systems and years of operational experience, assembling a tailored travel program often requires significant manual effort across multiple tools and information sources.
Traditionally, building a bespoke FIT itinerary required 30–60 minutes of manual work by a travel consultant, involving supplier research, pricing validation, and itinerary assembly. That time adds up quickly when teams are responding to dozens of enquiries per day. A 2023 survey by Phocuswright found that travel advisors and tour operators still spend a large share of their working hours on itinerary design and trip planning tasks rather than higher-value client interaction.
Understanding why this process still takes so long is the first step toward reducing the time required to produce high-quality itineraries.
The Traditional DMC Itinerary Workflow
When a travel advisor or partner sends a booking request, the process usually follows a familiar pattern inside most DMC operations teams.
Reading and interpreting the enquiry
Requests often arrive via email and can vary widely in format. Some include detailed day-by-day briefs, while others contain only partial information about destinations, traveller preferences, or accommodation standards.
Checking existing products and supplier options
The consultant searches their booking system or supplier database to identify appropriate hotels, transfers, tours, and activities that match the request.
Validating pricing and availability
Rates may need to be checked against current contracts, seasonal pricing structures, or supplier updates to ensure the proposed itinerary is accurate.
Assembling the itinerary document
Once services are selected, the consultant manually constructs the itinerary. This involves copying product descriptions, arranging day-by-day activities, formatting text, and ensuring the proposal reads clearly for the travel advisor or client.
Reviewing and refining the proposal
Before sending the quote, consultants usually review the itinerary for errors, adjust sequencing, confirm inclusions, and ensure pricing is correct.
Each of these steps is individually manageable. Together they create a workflow that can take a significant amount of time for every enquiry received.
Where the Time Is Lost
Even experienced travel designers who know their destination and supplier network extremely well still encounter several operational bottlenecks during itinerary creation.
Fragmented information sources
Supplier details, pricing, and availability may be spread across booking systems, supplier portals, spreadsheets, or internal knowledge bases. Switching between these sources slows down the process.
Manual interpretation of requests
Enquiries are rarely standardised. Consultants must read and interpret each request carefully to understand the traveller’s expectations, preferences, and constraints.
Repeated formatting and editing
Even when product information already exists in the system, consultants often need to copy, adapt, and format descriptions so the itinerary reads well as a travel proposal.
Cross-checking pricing accuracy
Ensuring that rates, markups, and seasonal pricing are correct requires careful validation, especially for multi-day itineraries with several services.
Individually these tasks may take only a few minutes, but there is high variance from the mean as well as significant productivity loss resulting from human context-shifting. Combined these tasks explain why itinerary creation frequently becomes one of the most time-intensive activities in a DMC’s daily operations.
FIT Travellers enjoying a Seine River Cruise
Why This Matters for DMC Operations
For most DMCs, itinerary creation sits directly at the intersection of sales, operations, and client service. The faster a high-quality proposal can be prepared, the faster a travel advisor receives a response.
When teams spend 30–60 minutes building each itinerary, several operational constraints appear:
slower response times to partner agencies
limited capacity to handle higher enquiry volumes
increased pressure on experienced consultants
difficulty scaling operations without adding staff
Operations staff are regularly stressed due to manual workflow blocks
These challenges become more visible as DMCs grow and enquiry volumes increase.
The Emerging Shift Toward Automation
In recent years, new technologies have started to address the manual steps in the itinerary creation workflow. AI-powered tools can now interpret travel enquiries, identify relevant products, and assemble a structured itinerary draft automatically.
Instead of starting with a blank document, consultants receive a proposed itinerary that can be reviewed, edited, and refined before being sent to the client.
AI copilots like TourConnect AI’s Itinerary Assist are reducing this process to just a few minutes. By interpreting requests, identifying relevant services, and assembling draft itineraries automatically, these tools allow experienced travel designers to focus on refining the travel experience rather than constructing the initial document.
DMC CEO’s, Finance and Operations Director’s should also consider training costs and the hours involved in getting new Automated systems up to speed. Adding Itinerary Automation tools to your existing CRM or Booking Software (like Tourplan, Hero etc.) comes with far less risk to productivity than completely replacing, rebuilding and re-training your entire team on a new core booking system.
A New Role for Travel Designers
Automation does not replace the expertise of DMC teams. Designing memorable travel experiences still requires deep destination knowledge, supplier relationships, and an understanding of each traveller’s preferences.
The starting point changes. Consultants begin with a structured draft rather than an empty document. Travel designers can spend more time improving the itinerary itself. They can refine pacing, adjust experiences, and tailor details for the client.
For many DMCs, reducing itinerary creation time is also about freeing experienced consultants to concentrate on the work that creates the most value for travellers.
Looking Ahead
As enquiry volumes continue to rise and expectations for faster responses increase, reducing the time required to build itineraries will remain a key operational priority for DMCs.
Understanding where the time goes, and how new tools can remove manual steps from the workflow, is an important step toward scaling operations while maintaining the high level of personalisation that defines the DMC industry.
If you found this article informative, you may also like to read this Client case study.
