• New tour booking app launched
• Commission rates a motivating factor
• Tourism body to benefit

A Port Douglas company is looking to tap into the 'i' revolution with a new product aimed at the millions of iPhones and iPads users.

iTours was launched at Rydges Sabaya on Wednesday night to around 30 tourism industry stakeholders including tour operators, accommodation providers, and tourism body representatives.

The brainchild of Adam Burckhardt, iTours is a booking application designed for tourists to book tours and activities, while reducing the often crippling commission rates operators pay wholesalers.

"Everyone talks about how ridiculous commission fees are these days and it's gradually gone up from 10 per cent, and we've heard of up to 32.5 (per cent)," Mr Burckhardt said.

"What we're trying to do is say let's use this technology to get direct bookings."  

The multi-language application is being rolled out in Port Douglas and Cairns, but Mr Burckhardt said the key to its success will be the expansion of the network to major centres around Australia including the Gold Coast and each state's capital city.

"iTours is a national application that we've put together over the last nine months.

"The idea was to develop one application that would be used all around Australia, and no matter where they (the user) went, based on the location of the phone, they'd get local content," he said.

iTours is taking delivery of 100 iPads next week which will be placed in hotels, resorts, and cafes around Port Douglas to enable guests and customers to access iTours, a restaurant guide, and a visitors guide.

Mr Burckhardt said iTours is donating a percentage of the commission earned from each tour sold to the local tourism body, Tourism Port Douglas Daintree, for use in marketing our region.

"The whole concept has been built around actually providing some of the booking revenue back to the local or regional tourism bodies, so that's our intention.

"Pretty much a third of our booking revenue is to go back to local tourism for destination marketing."

One of the challenges iTours faces is how hotels and resorts will respond to the concept, particularly with a number using the third party tour desk company DCM, but Mr Burckhardt is confident they will see the value in the new service.

"Their core business is selling beds really, and tour bookings should be a service that they do.

"It's (iTours) a service for them and a better service they're providing their customers. So there's no phone calls, there's less staff time."