--- title: "Free vans: letting a booking open an extra van" url: https://tourcockpit.com/help/free-vans lang: en description: "On a day the office has a van with nothing to do, a tour that is full can still be sold. The office says once which vans it is happy to leave free and which tours may run in one; the first tour operator who books such a tour on such a day opens a new departure with the van, and the desks after them fill it." --- # Free vans: letting a booking open an extra van On a day the office has a van with nothing to do, a tour that is full can still be sold. The office says once which vans it is happy to leave free and which tours may run in one; the first tour operator who books such a tour on such a day opens a new departure with the van, and the desks after them fill it. ## What is a free van for? Without it, a full tour is full, even on a day two vans stand in the yard, and the guests go elsewhere. With it, the office does not decide in advance which tour those vans run: the bookings do. The first desk to book a full tour on that day takes a van for it, and from then on the tour simply has more seats. This page tells the whole feature in the order it happens. What each box does on its own screen is also said on the help for Reference Data, the Tour Catalog and the tour operator's portal. ## What does the office turn on? 1. On Reference Data, on the vehicles, tick Free van on each van you are happy to leave to the tour operators. The column then reads Yes. A van is free on a day when it is on no departure that day; a retired van never is. 2. On the Tour Catalog, open a tour and tick Can run in a free van. Only the tours you tick can ever be opened in an extra van, so this is where you choose full days only, or half days as well. A private tour, sold by the vehicle, does not offer the box. That is all. There is no number of vans per day to type and no booking to approve: the vans you ticked and left off the board are the ones on offer, day by day, and they stop being on offer the moment you put them on a departure yourself. ## What does a tour operator see? On a day with a free van, a tour you ticked that cannot take the desk's guests, because it has no seats left or because of the languages already on it, offers a quiet Open an extra van in place of + Add booking. Its line under Full today offers the same. Under the day's tours, Extra van, other tour sits beside the number of extra vans left. It lists the other tours you ticked, grouped Full day, Half day, Trekking and Other, and leaves out any that still have seats on their card, saying so in a line underneath. Either way opens the usual booking form, which says above Book: This opens an extra van for this day. Other tour operators can join it. Once booked, the page says You opened an extra van. Other desks can join it. If another desk opened a van for the same tour a moment before, the guests join that one instead, and the page says Joined the extra van opened a moment ago. From then on the tour shows as one card at that time, with the seats of both vans added up, and the next desk books on it as on any other card. ## What does the office see afterwards? Whoever receives new bookings is told at once, as for any new booking, with the tour reading for example 01. NORTE desde norte (opened an extra van, van 12). On the board, the new departure takes the van's seats and, when the tour already runs that day, sits under that departure at the same start time. Its header says who opened it, for example Opened by a Sol Marina booking, van 12. It has no guide or driver yet: assign them, change the van, or call the departure off, exactly as for any other. While a ticked van is still on no departure, the day's totals count it, for example 2 extra vans. ## What does an extra van never do? - It never finds a driver. The van is opened with nobody on it, and staffing it is the office's job. - It takes the smallest free van the party fits in, and that van is then taken for the whole day, a half day tour included. - It never skips a rule: the booking cutoff, an adults only tour, a tour with no child fare and a pickup the tour never makes all apply. Past the cutoff the day offers no extra van at all. - A party larger than the largest free van, or a booking that arrives after the last van has gone, is asked to call the office. - It is offered only on the portal of one tour company, never on the board of a desk that sells for several. - When the booking that opened it is cancelled, the departure stays on the board for the office to keep or call off.