Hours returned per month
Today's hours on each workflow, multiplied by its reduction factor and added together. This is time back, not headcount removed. Most teams spend it on travelers and suppliers.
Resources · ROI calculator
How many hours could your team get back?
Enter a few monthly numbers about proposals, supplier confirmations and disruptions. The calculator applies conservative reductions drawn from our pilots and shows the hours returned, what they're worth and how many full-time equivalents that adds up to.
Interactive estimate
Estimate the hours returned
Use your own monthly averages; rough numbers are fine. The defaults describe a mid-sized tour operator: 60 proposals a month at 3.5 hours each, 40 bookings with six supplier confirmations apiece at 12 minutes per confirmation, eight disruptions at 2.5 hours each, and a loaded cost of $45 an hour.
Hours returned per year0
- Hours per month
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- Annual value
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- Full-time equivalent
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Assumptions behind the model
- Proposal work is reduced by 55%, which is deliberately lower than the median reductions we have measured in pilots, because not every proposal benefits equally.
- Supplier confirmation handling is reduced by 70%, reflecting the share of confirmations that can be requested, parsed and filed automatically, with the rest routed to your team as exceptions.
- Disruption handling is reduced by 40%, the smallest factor, because people stay in charge of every change and still talk to the travelers who need it.
- Hours are valued at your loaded hourly cost, and one full-time equivalent is counted as 1,800 working hours a year.
- Annual figures are monthly figures multiplied by 12, with no allowance for seasonality, ramp-up time or the cost of software and services.
- The result is an estimate for planning conversations, not a quote or a guarantee; a Discovery Sprint replaces these factors with measurements from your own operation.
How to read your result
Four numbers come back. Here is what each one means, and what it doesn't.
Hours returned per year
The monthly figure multiplied by 12. If your year is strongly seasonal, try your busiest month to see peak relief, and your quietest to see the floor.
Annual cost value
Annual hours multiplied by your loaded hourly cost. A planning figure for comparing options. It only becomes money saved when the hours are redeployed, or when growth no longer requires a new hire.
Full-time equivalents
Annual hours divided by 1,800, roughly 37.5 hours a week for 48 weeks. A useful way to ask what one more person's worth of time would do for your business.
A worked example with the defaults
Here is the arithmetic the calculator runs, using the default inputs.
| Workflow | Today, hours a month | Reduction | Returned, hours a month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Proposals: 60 × 3.5 hours | 210 | 55% | 115.5 |
| Supplier confirmations: 40 × 6 × 12 minutes | 48 | 70% | 33.6 |
| Disruptions: 8 × 2.5 hours | 20 | 40% | 8.0 |
| Total | 278 | 157.1 |
That is about 1,885 hours a year. At $45 an hour, it’s worth roughly $84,800 a year, or a little over one full-time equivalent (1.05 FTE).
Where the reduction factors come from
Each factor sits below what we have measured in pilots, on purpose.
Proposals, 55%. In our walking-tour pilot, median proposal time fell by about three-quarters. Not every business has that much repetitive assembly in its proposals, so the calculator assumes a little over half.
Confirmations, 70%. This reflects confirmations that Booking Flow can request, parse and file without a person. In our desert lodge pilot, 71% of package confirmations needed no staff touch. The rest land in an exceptions queue, which still takes time.
Disruptions, 40%. In our offsite pilot, time from trigger to an approved plan fell by about three-quarters. But a disruption is more than a re-plan. The conversations with travelers and suppliers don’t shrink much, and they shouldn’t, so this factor is the most conservative of the three.
What the estimate leaves out
The calculator counts hours on three workflows and nothing else. That keeps it honest, and it means several real effects sit outside the arithmetic.
- Revenue effects: higher proposal conversion, resold cancellations or new bookings from AI agents. They can matter a great deal, but they depend on your market, so we leave them out.
- Ramp-up: the first weeks of a pilot run old and new processes side by side and return little time.
- Our costs and yours: software, implementation and your team's time in discovery and training. These are scoped and quoted after a discovery call.
- Seasonality: one monthly average spreads peak-season pressure evenly across the year.
- Other work: invoicing, marketing, guest messaging and reporting are not counted.
- Quality: fewer errors, faster replies and calmer evenings for the duty planner. Real, but not in this sum.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
Why are the reduction factors fixed?
So results are comparable from one business to the next, and so the calculator can't be nudged into saying what anyone hopes to hear. In a Discovery Sprint we replace the fixed factors with ones measured in your own workflows.
What counts as a loaded hourly cost?
Wages plus benefits, payroll taxes and a fair share of overhead such as software and office space. If you don't have a figure, a common rule of thumb is about 1.25 to 1.4 times the base hourly wage.
We don't write proposals. Can we still use it?
Yes. Set proposals to zero. The three workflows are calculated independently and added together, so any combination works.
Does this mean we'd need fewer people?
Not necessarily, and it isn't how we frame pilots. Most of our clients put the time into conversations with travelers, supplier relationships and growth they would otherwise have to hire for.
How accurate is the estimate?
Directionally useful and deliberately conservative. Real results depend on how standardized your products are, how your suppliers confirm and how often things go wrong. A pilot measures it properly.
Related
Keep exploring
- ServicesAI Strategy & Discovery SprintA three-to-four-week sprint that maps where AI will pay off in your travel operation, audits your data and delivers a 12-month roadmap and a pilot spec.
- PlatformBooking FlowAutomate supplier requests, read confirmations in any format, issue vouchers and reconcile payments, with every exception lifted aside for a person to decide.
- Field Notes · Operations & AutomationWhere the Hours Go: An Anatomy of Booking OperationsA two-week time study of a booking desk: where 360 hours went, why touches per confirmed service matter, and how to sort tasks into automate, assist or keep.
- WorkSelected workFour anonymized case studies from tour operators, destinations, lodges and event planners, with pilot results measured against a real baseline.
Turn the estimate into a measured baseline
In a three-to-four-week Discovery Sprint, we time your real workflows, find where the hours actually go and tell you which changes are worth piloting.