Everything you need before you hit the trail.
Guided treks, hut-to-hut traverses, summit expeditions — big-ticket bookings made months ahead, paid over time, with a mountain of traveler detail to collect before anyone laces a boot.
The trek is the easy part — the spreadsheet is the expedition.
The October departure filled in March — and since then it has been seven months of chasing: the second installment, the passport scans for permits, the vegetarian count for the cook, the insurance details someone promised twice.
A season of departures, scheduled once
- Your calendar from one rule. Weekly or monthly departures generated for the whole season, each with capacity, cutoffs, and minimum group size.
- Small groups that protect themselves. A 12-spot trek sells out at 12, reopens if someone cancels, and never oversells.
- Private treks. Request-to-book lets a group propose dates. Accept, and Samba creates a private departure sized to them.
Deposits that book, balances that collect themselves
- Payment plans as standard. 30% now, the rest before departure — defined once and reused on every trek.
- No more chasing. Installments charge automatically with retries and a self-service portal. You find out when it is done, not when it is late.
- Your money from day one. Payments land in your own Stripe account — vital when permits, porters, and huts are paid months ahead. Cancellation tiers stay locked onto each booking.
Trip-ready without the spreadsheet
- Passports, diets, insurance, emergency contacts. Collected from each trekker automatically after booking, with due dates counting back from departure.
- A manifest that builds itself. Everything the guide, the cook, and the permit office need — printable the night before.
- Ask anything. Fitness level, boot size, medical notes — your questions, built once, reused across treks.
The operation behind the trail
- Guides on the roster. Assign lead and assistant guides per departure, with availability tracked and a schedule per guide.
- Vehicles and gear as capacity. The shuttle and the group kit are resources that cannot be double-allocated across overlapping treks.
- Sell the dream properly. Day-by-day itineraries with distance and elevation, route maps, galleries, and FAQs on pages that do a flagship trek justice.
You sell the trek. Samba takes the deposit, collects the balance, gathers the passports, and hands your guide the manifest — you handle the mountain.
Frequently asked questions
Does Samba track trekking capacity — guides, porters, permits, hut beds — not just headcount?
Yes. Guides, porters, permits, and hut or camp capacity can each be set as a limited resource on a departure, and Samba won't let a trek oversell beyond whichever one runs out first. Capacity is whatever actually caps your trek, not just a passenger count.
Can I take a deposit on a trek and collect the balance before departure?
Yes. Set a deposit and an installment schedule per trip, and Samba handles the rest — automatic reminders, retries on failed cards, and a self-service portal where trekkers can pay their balance without emailing you. Built for the long lead times treks usually book on.
Do my GetYourGuide bookings show up in the same manifest as direct bookings?
Yes. Channel bookings land in the same manifest as bookings from your own site — same departure, same passenger list, same permit and dietary details. No separate spreadsheet to reconcile before you print the manifest for your guide.
What does Samba cost for a trekking or hiking operator?
$0 a month, no setup fees, no contracts. The first $10,000 in bookings is free; after that it's a flat 2% per booking, which you can absorb or pass to travelers. Stripe processing is billed separately by Stripe.
How is this different from TrekkSoft for a trekking operator?
TrekkSoft is a mature tours-and-activities platform with strong OTA distribution across 30+ channels, but it isn't built specifically for multi-day trips — its own pricing and feature pages don't reference multi-day itineraries. The difference for a trekking operator is cost and payment plans: TrekkSoft charges a €49/mo entry fee (no free plan) plus a 2–3% tiered booking fee, with down payments but no structured installment-schedule system; Samba is free to start, a flat published 2% per booking (first $10,000 free), with native deposits and installment plans built for multi-day itineraries. If you lean heavily on OTA reach, TrekkSoft's channel network is the stronger case; if you sell direct and want transparent payment plans built for multi-day trips, that's where Samba fits.
The parts that do the work.
Get the season on the books.
Free to start. No setup fees. No contracts.