Travel North is a young day tour operator, but it is growing quickly. Established in 2024 and completing its first full operating season in 2025, the Bergen-based company takes international travellers into some of Western Norway’s most spectacular landscapes. Its tours and activities combine buses, boats and trains to showcase the fjords, waterfalls, mountains and cultural highlights the region is famous for.
Before Travel North had even completed its first season, General Manager Dan Christensen realised the company’s original sales strategy needed to change. Online travel agents (OTAs) were going to play a much bigger role than expected, and managing those connections manually was not sustainable.
That led Travel North to TourCMS by Palisis.
Realising OTA distribution was key to scaling
Travel North originally expected more bookings to come through its own website and local tourism partners. Once the business began operating, the team soon saw the importance of larger OTAs in reaching international travellers.
For Dan, OTAs quickly became much more than a sales channel. They also provided visibility, customer trust, market insights and access to audiences that would have been difficult for a growing operator to reach independently.
For two and a half months, the team handled some distribution work manually. Volumes were still relatively low, but problems were already appearing. Bookings had to be updated in different places, changes required extra steps, and mistakes could happen.
Travel North chose TourCMS specifically for channel management and the ability to connect its existing booking system, Screen, with OTAs and distribution partners.
Why Travel North chose TourCMS
When Travel North started searching for travel tech, the team did not have a long list of technical requirements; they just knew they needed a better way to connect their existing booking system with external sales channels.
One of the first things TourCMS delivered was responsiveness. While Travel North was speaking with other providers, the TourCMS team responded to Dan’s initial enquiry the same day. That led to further discussions and gave him confidence in what the relationship could look like long term.
“If they’re attentive when we’re asking if we can buy from them, you automatically think about the longer perspective, about the support and the following up,” Dan explained.
That responsiveness was followed by technical flexibility. The TourCMS developers worked directly with Travel North’s booking system to create the custom connection they needed. The teams shared requirements and completed the integration in less than four weeks.
“For us, it’s important to know that there are people on the other end,” Dan said. “And the people at Palisis are great.”
That experience continued after implementation. Dan describes the support team as professional, constructive and willing to help even when an issue comes down to Travel North’s own setup or unfamiliarity with the system.
Automation without tour booking errors
Once the connection was running, the biggest improvement was automation. Updates that previously required manual work now flow between systems automatically, reducing admin and improving accuracy across pricing, availability and bookings.
“When we had this up and running, we didn’t have those errors anymore. Everything was correct the first time,” Dan shared.
The channel manager system also gave Travel North better access to sales data. Instead of relying on emails and manual updates, Dan can see what has sold overnight, where guests are coming from and which markets are growing. That reporting now helps the team make decisions about distribution, markets and even which languages become more important as the business expands. He describes this as “better data for better decisions”.
Travel technology for 139% growth
The timing proved important. After implementing TourCMS, Travel North grew its guest numbers by 139%. At peak season, the business can operate six to seven buses carrying approximately 250 to 300 guests across its different tours in a single day.
Travel North credits the increase to making tours bookable further in advance, strong guest reviews, its team, growing demand for Norwegian experiences and, most importantly, travel technology in place to make the increasing volumes much easier to manage accurately.
Dan added: “The onboarding process was straightforward and well-structured, allowing us to get up and running quickly. As a newly established company, we were developing many operational processes at the same time, so having a system that could be implemented rapidly was important.”
Choosing a channel manager with tomorrow in mind
Dan’s advice to other travel companies is simple: choose a channel management system based on where the business might go next, not just the channels it needs today. Travel North initially worked with only a couple of major OTAs. As the business expanded, TourCMS helped the team add more distribution partners and reach new audiences.
A tour operator might only need one, two or three OTA connections at the beginning, Dan explained, but being able to add more later is what matters. For Travel North, that flexibility has helped turn an early technology decision into a foundation for continued growth.
About Travel North’s Norwegian tours
Travel North is a Bergen-based tour operator offering guided day trips across Western Norway. Its experiences combine buses, boats and trains to introduce travellers to destinations including Nærøyfjord, Flåm, Stegastein, Hardangerfjord and some of Norway’s most spectacular waterfalls. Its guests mainly come from international markets, including North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.
To see what else TourCMS can help growing tour operators achieve, read about how City Eyes scaled its private tours.