---
title: "TourCockpit compared with Distinctive Systems: price, operator portal, daily board and settlement"
url: https://tourcockpit.com/compare/distinctive-systems
lang: en
description: "Distinctive Systems (York, United Kingdom) and TourCockpit, side by side: what each one is, what each one costs at its published price, and where each is the better fit for a tour or excursion company that sells through tour operators, hotel desks and agencies."
---

# TourCockpit compared with Distinctive Systems: price, operator portal, daily board and settlement

Distinctive Systems (York, United Kingdom) and TourCockpit, side by side: what each one is, what each one costs at its published price, and where each is the better fit for a tour or excursion company that sells through tour operators, hotel desks and agencies.

## What is Distinctive Systems?

Distinctive Systems sells the Tour Booking System (TBS) and Coach Manager to coach and tour operators, mostly in the United Kingdom, and has done so for about forty years. TBS is the one product in this category that does the three jobs TourCockpit does: agents log in and book against an agent commission structure with credit accounts and agent invoicing, on top of a plate-level allocation board with work tickets, pick-up and set-down lists and seating plans.

## What does each one cost?

|  | TourCockpit | Distinctive Systems |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Platform fee | €300 per month | From £97.50 per month, in six annual passenger-capacity bands; at about 11,000 passengers a year the Unlimited band, €467 to €731 per month depending on edition |
| Per booking | 1% of the bookings taken through the platform | None; volume is charged through the capacity band |
| Setup | €0, onboarding with your real data included | 8 to 16 hours of bundled training |
| Minimum term | None, month to month | 12 months |
| Users and vehicles | Unlimited staff, operator logins and vehicles | Extra users are charged |

Prices are the vendors' published list prices as read on their own pages in August 2026; where a vendor publishes no figure, the table says so. Check the vendor's page for the current number.

## Where is Distinctive Systems the better fit?

- Decades of trust and a large installed base of UK coach operators.
- Bundled classroom training, which a company moving off a spreadsheet may want.
- A lower entry price for a small operator whose passenger count fits the first bands.
- UK trade specifics: group travel organisers, feeder pickups from villages, coach-holiday wholesalers.

## Where is TourCockpit the better fit?

- A multi-tenant web application with a phone view for guides and drivers, instead of a Microsoft SQL Server client-server product installed in the office.
- A price that does not climb with passenger bands: an excursion company at 11,000 passengers a year pays €300, not €467 to €731.
- No twelve-month term. Six languages, IGIC, and the hotel-desk reseller as a first-class user, which a UK-shaped product does not model.
- A published month-end settlement per tour operator, gross versus net, computed from the board.

## Questions

Is TBS a web application? TBS is a client-server product on Microsoft SQL Server, installed and maintained in the office. TourCockpit runs in the browser and on the phone with nothing to install.

Which one suits a company that sells mostly through tour operators? Both model the agent that books on commission. TourCockpit's whole design starts from that operator, with its own portal, its own commission percentage and a settlement run per operator at month end.