Thomson Bike Tours

Thomson Bike Tours is the Premier Official Tour Operator to the Tour de France, providing unique experiences for avid cyclists.

Benchmark has been working with Thomson Bike Tours since 2023, developing, hosting and maintaining their websites and ecommerce platforms.

The company’s primary digital presence, thomsonbiketours.com, is a custom WordPress website where customers can explore cycling experiences across a range of destinations. Departure dates are synced from Thomson’s CRM system, keeping pricing and availablity up to date to ensure a seamless customer experience.

With Thomson’s move to Sugati – a travel CRM powered by Salesforce – in 2025 a new custom booking engine was required to replace their existing WooCommerce platform.  The nature of Thomson tours means there is a high degree of customisation between rooming preferences, bike rental options and other supplements.

The booking experience would need to guide customers through the process of personalising their trip. At the same time, it needed to integrate seamlessly with numerous CRM records from initially reserving the customer’s place on the trip, registering single supplements along with other add-ons before finally taking payment and confirming their place.

Post-booking, information including medical conditions and insurance details is required from each customer. With the new booking platform, all of this can be done through a single portal. For returning customers, submitted data from previous trips such as bike sizing and medical information is retrieved from Sugati, enabling them to complete the required information quickly and accurately. Once complete, the completed information is stored back in Sugati, from where the Thomson team can view a comprehensive overview of customer and booking data.

Services: Information Architecture, Website Design, Website Development, Website Maintenance
Industries: Travel & Events

Cyclists and Spectators 

Thomson caters to cyclists and spectators, with premium experiences for both types of travellers. For spectators, a separate website offers a unique set of tours to accompany some of the biggest events in the cycling calendar.

Reservation System

When customers start the booking process, a reservation is made which holds their place on the tour for 25 minutes. During this time, they can customise their rooming and add-on preferences before making a deposit payment to confirm their booking.

Booking Customisation

As the customer progresses through the booking journey, they are given the option to customise their trip with add-ons such as bike rental and insurance. Where a bike rental is included, additional information such as bike size and height are recorded and saved to the booking.