2025 Year In Review

As 2025 comes to a close, we are taking a moment to reflect on a year shaped by steady growth, thoughtful improvements, and closer collaboration with our community. It was a year of listening more carefully and building with intention.

This year was not about shipping features for the sake of it. It was about strengthening the foundation of WP Travel Engine. So it feels dependable, clear, and ready to support real travel businesses running real operations every day.

More importantly, this growth was not just ours. It belongs to the thousands of tour operators and travel agencies who built trips, managed bookings, and grew their businesses with WP Travel Engine throughout the year.

A Message from our Co-Founder

2025 was a defining year for WP Travel Engine.

As the product grew, one thing became very clear to me: growth brings responsibility. Every change we ship, every feature we add, or choose not to add, has a real impact on someone’s bookings, revenue, and trust.

There were moments this year where we intentionally slowed down. We said no to features that looked exciting on the surface but didn’t solve real problems. We invested more time than planned in performance, pricing accuracy, and stability, because we know that for a travel business, reliability matters more than novelty.

Our guiding belief was simple:
If a feature doesn’t make running a travel business easier, clearer, or more reliable, it doesn’t ship.

That principle shaped everything you’ll read below.

– Nabin Jaiswal, Co-Founder

A Year of Growth and Trust

In 2025, more travel businesses than ever relied on WP Travel Engine to run their business, connect with their community, and deliver great experiences, from small operators to teams managing complex trips.

Here’s what that growth looks like this year:

• 20,000+ active customers worldwide using WP Travel Engine 
• 2,200+ members in the WP Travel Engine community, sharing feedback, asking questions, and influencing product decisions
• 500+ five-star reviews earned over time, demonstrating consistent satisfaction and long-term reliability
• 148 reviews received over the past 12 months, 98% of them 5-stars, reflecting outstanding customer satisfaction
• Used in 150+ countries worldwide, supporting travel businesses around the globe

New Features That Solve Real Problems

This year, we added new features based on the patterns we kept seeing across customer conversations, support tickets, and real booking setups. 

The same challenges showed up again and again: missed revenue opportunities, too much manual work, and booking experiences that needed to feel more professional.

To tackle these challenges, we built 13 new add-ons this year that capture demand, optimize payments, automate tasks, and improve the overall booking experience.

Upsell

Many travel businesses wanted to increase booking value without making the checkout experience feel complicated. We built add-ons to help businesses upsell in a way that adds genuine value for travelers while increasing revenue for tour operators.

• Travel Insurance add-on – This add-on allows tour operators to offer insurance plans directly with their tours. Tour operators earn additional revenue, and travelers feel more confident knowing they’re protected during their trip.
• Accommodation add-on – This add-on allows tour operators to offer different accommodation options along with their tours, increase average booking value, and save travelers the hassle of finding accommodation on their own. More than 30% of tour operators are already using this.

Payment Gateways

As we continue building new add-ons for payments, this year we added support for India with Razorpay Payment Gateway add-on. This payment gateway enables secure local payments for the Indian market while also working globally.

Marketing

Many travel businesses told us they had traffic and interest, but lacked clarity on what was actually working. Our marketing-focused add-ons were built to help tour operators understand, capture, and grow demand.

• Advanced Analytics add-on – This add-on gives a visual dashboard to track bookings, revenue, trip performance, and customer behavior for smarter, data-driven decisions.
• Booking Fee add-on –  This add-on allows tour operators to add flexible fees at checkout, such as payment processing surcharges. This helps cover transaction costs transparently, so travelers know exactly what they’re paying for and tour operators keep their pricing sustainable. More than 28% of our customers are already using this add-on.

• SliceWP Integration add-on – The SliceWP integration allows tour operators to run an affiliate program on their website, track referrals accurately, and reward partners who bring in confirmed bookings.
• Waitlist add-on – This add-on allows travelers to join a waitlist when a tour date is sold out, making it easy for tour operators to fill seats if cancellations happen. It also helps gauge interest for future dates, so tour operators can decide whether running a trip is worth it before opening bookings.

User Experience

As trips became more detailed and customizable, many tour operators struggled to keep the booking experience clear for both travelers and admins. Our user experience add-ons were built to simplify complex setups and make trips easier to book, manage, and understand.

• Conditional Price add-on –  This add-on allows tour operators to set different prices for specific dates, making it easy to manage seasonal pricing, peak demand, or off-season discounts. Tour operators can increase prices when demand is high and lower them during slower periods, without being locked into a single fixed price. Over 33% of tour operators currently use this add-on.
• Pickup Point add-on – This add-on allows tour operators to offer defined pickup locations, with both free and paid options. Tour operators can earn additional revenue from paid pickups, and give travelers a clear meeting point so they don’t have to worry about where to gather before the trip starts. More than 31% of tour operators have adopted this add-on.

• Activity Tour Booking add-on – This add-on lets tour operators switch from day-by-day itineraries to hour-by-hour schedules.It makes managing events, activities, and short trips much easier. More than 38% of tour operators are using this add-on to sell activity tours on their website.

Automation

Automation has become an essential part of modern software as businesses scale. Our automation-focused add-ons were introduced to reduce manual work and free up time for what matters most.

• Advanced Email Automator add-on – This add-on allows tour operators to send automated emails triggered by bookings and trip events. Whether it’s a trip reminder or payment follow-up, tour operators can ensure timely communication, boost traveler engagement, and streamline their email workflow, while saving time and reducing manual effort.
• Webhooks & API add-on – This add-on allows tour operators to securely send booking, payment, and customer data in real time to their preferred third-party apps. This ensures seamless integration, faster updates, and smoother operations, so tour operators can focus on delivering great travel experiences while their tools stay perfectly in sync.

WhatsApp Notification  

To help tour operators stay on top of bookings and inquiries, this year we introduced the WhatsApp Notification add-on. It delivers instant booking and inquiry alerts directly to WhatsApp, so tour operators never miss important updates.

Add-On Adoption Tells a Real Story

How customers use a product often says more than what the product claims to do. 

Add-on adoption reveals clear patterns in what truly helps travel businesses grow:

• Trip Fixed Starting Dates – 78% of growing sites rely on this to manage trip schedules.
• Extra Services – 64% use it to offer upsells and structured pricing.
• Form Editor – 62% use it to customize booking and enquiry forms to collect only the information they need.
• Group Discount – 55% use it to apply automatic discounts based on group size.
• Advanced Itinerary Builder – 50% use it to structure hourly or multi-day itineraries in a clear format.

Tour operators use these add-ons to streamline operations, cut manual tasks, and drive more revenue – while delivering an exceptional customer experience.

Feature Enhancements

We regularly improve our add-ons to better support travel businesses. This year, our focus was on updates that give more control, simplify workflows, and improve travelers’ experience.

Here are some of the addons with major updates:

Trip Fixed Starting Dates

Trip Fixed Starting Dates is one of our most popular add-ons. This year, we added several new features to make managing departure dates easier, while making browsing and booking trips simpler for travelers.

These are some of the new features added:

• Trip Departure Calendar – Displays all upcoming departures in a single calendar view, allowing travelers to browse available dates by month and plan their trips more easily.

• Availability labels – Beyond the default availability options, tour operators can now create custom labels for departure dates. This makes it easier to clearly communicate status with travelers such as “Early Bird” or “Sold Out Soon”.
• Trip expiry date – This feature allows setting an expiry date for a trip, which prevents new bookings while keeping the trip page accessible, which is useful for limited-time or seasonal trips.
• Skip date selection in booking modal – A new option that lets travelers move straight to booking without selecting a date first, reducing friction and speeding up the booking flow.

Stripe Payment Gateway

Stripe continues to be one of the most widely used payment gateways among WP Travel Engine users, and its popularity extends well beyond the travel industry. This year, we focused on strengthening the Stripe integration to give travel businesses more flexibility, reliability, and control over how payments are handled.

These are some of the major improvements to the Stripe Payment Gateway add-on:

• Complete rebuild of the Stripe add-on – We reworked and refactored the Stripe add-on code from scratch, resulting in a cleaner and more stable foundation that is easier to maintain and extend.
• Webhook implementation – We added Stripe webhook support to ensure payments are processed and confirmed correctly, especially for 3D Secure transactions. This helps prevent incomplete or unconfirmed bookings after checkout and makes payment handling more reliable.
• Pre-approved payments – We added support for pre-approved payments, allowing payments to be authorized first and confirmed later when required. This is useful when tour operators want to review or approve a booking before charging the traveler, or when the payment requires additional verification.
• Multiple payment methods – We expanded support for multiple Stripe payment methods, including Google Pay and Apple Pay, giving travelers more ways to pay while helping businesses cater to different regions and preferences. 

Extra Services

Extra Services is one of our widely used add-ons that lets tour operators offer additional services and upsells. This year, we added improvements that give greater control over pricing and presentation.

These are the two key improvements:

• Change unit option – Tour operators can now adjust the unit for each extra service. This  makes it easier to set pricing by person, group, or any custom unit.
• Override price and description per tour – Tour operators can now customize the price and description of an extra service for each tour individually. This gives full control over how services are presented and charged for each trip.

Itinerary Downloader

We reworked the Itinerary Downloader add-on to give more flexibility and control over itineraries. 

These are the key improvements:

• SEO improvements – We fixed previous indexing issues that affected SEO.  This has streamlined the download process and improved the overall experience.
• Flexible button placement – We introduced new settings that let tour operators display the download button in two different positions on a trip page, giving full control over its placement.
• Enhanced PDF content – We reworked the PDF content to make it clearer and more organized for better presentation and usability.

Some other improvements in our add-ons include:

• Advanced Itinerary Builder add-on – A new feature, Itinerary Info fields was added to the add-on that lets tour operators highlight key itinerary details at a glance. This helps to present day-by-day information in a more structured way, making it easier for travelers to scan and understand itineraries.
• Currency Converter add-on – We improved the add-on to make currency display more accurate and easier to manage. Tour operators can now control decimal and rounding settings for precise converted currency display, and geo-located currencies follow the Decimal Digits setting for consistent formatting. The settings interface has also been enhanced with clearer guidance and helpful tooltips.

Enhanced Booking Flow

We heard consistent feedback from tour operators that creating and managing manual bookings was confusing and restrictive. Many of them requested the ability to create custom trips and had concerns around manual calculations, as they were time-consuming and prone to errors. Seeing this pattern in our support queries, we decided to improve the booking flow from the ground up, making the entire booking experience smooth and seamless.

These are some of the key improvements to manual bookings in the admin dashboard:

• Custom and Private Bookings Made Easy – Tour operators can now add custom or private tours for their travelers. This gives them full control over the trips they offer without the limitations of predefined options.

• Redesigned Interface – We have redesigned the Bookings page with an improved layout. This makes it easier to add traveler details and additional information, such as extra services or accommodations.
• Automatic Totals and Payments – Total prices and paid amounts are now calculated automatically and updated instantly in the Booking Summary. This reduces mistakes, saves time, and provides a clear view of each booking’s financials.

We also improved the checkout experience to match the clarity and control of the booking page:

• Flexible Fee and Tax Management – We introduced a new feature that lets tour operators decide to include or exclude booking fees when calculating taxes in the checkout page. This gives precise control over pricing and compliance.
• Simplified Pricing Overview – Totals, taxes, fees, and discounts are now displayed in a clear, logical order. Everything reflects the chosen settings, making checkout predictable and easy to manage.

Improving Core Performance and Stability

We know that every second of downtime, every checkout glitch, and every overbooking risk impacts travel business. This year, we focused on making WP Travel Engine safer, faster, and more reliable:

• Security: As part of our ongoing security efforts, we conducted a security audit that identified a few critical vulnerabilities. We have since resolved these issues to strengthen the protection of traveler data and maintain a secure business environment.
• Stability: About 100 bugs resolved, eliminating recurring checkout, booking sync, and pricing issues.
• Performance: 15 – 30% faster load times for checkout, trip listings, and admin pages.
• Developer Velocity: 100+ releases delivered over the year, showing our commitment to rapidly responding to customer feedback.

Everything we improved was designed to keep tour operators’ business smooth and their travelers happy.

Supporting Our Customers Every Step

As adoption grew, so did our support and guidance:

• Extended support availability to nearly 20 hours per day – We made it easier for businesses across different time zones to get assistance whenever they needed it.
• Responded to 9,200+ customer queries in 2025 – Our support team dedicated themselves to making sure every customer question was answered promptly and clearly. Across live chats and emails, we handled thousands of interactions, resolving issues within 24 hours and helping customers get the answers they needed quickly.
• Added a dedicated product team – This team focuses on understanding our customers needs, guiding them through setups, and gathering feedback to shape improvements in WP Travel Engine.
• Continuously improved documentation and setup guides – We kept guides and documentation up to date with every new feature and update, ensuring instructions were always accurate.

Our goal has always been clear: helping our customers’ business succeed faster and with less stress.

Connect WP Travel Engine with Other Tools

This year, WP Travel Engine became even more connected. We partnered with 5 powerful automation and integration platforms to help our customers streamline workflows, automate tasks, and sync bookings, payments, and customer data seamlessly:

• WP Fusion – Connects WP Travel Engine bookings and customer data to different CRM for smarter automation.
• FuseWP – Effortlessly sync WP Travel Engine customers and bookings with different CRM and email marketing tools.
• OttoKit – Automates travel business by linking WP Travel Engine with over 1,000 apps.
• Pabbly Connect – Streamline workflows by connecting WP Travel Engine to 1,000+ apps without any coding.
• Bit Integration – Integrates WP Travel Engine with 280+ popular apps to automate tasks and simplify workflows.

These partnerships make it easier than ever to connect travel businesses with the tools that our customers already use, save time, and focus on growing their business.

New Templates Released 

To help travel agencies launch professional-looking travel websites faster, we are continuously introducing new templates and improving existing ones in the Travel Monster theme.

Looking Ahead

In the coming year, we’ll be doubling down on initiatives that directly impact our customers growth and day-to-day operations, including:

• AI-powered features to simplify trip creation, automate repetitive tasks, and improve lead generation.
• Revenue-focused enhancements designed to help tour operators sell more, optimize conversions, and increase average booking value.
• Performance, stability, and security optimizations to ensure WP Travel Engine remains fast, reliable, and enterprise-ready as business scales.
• Customer-requested features and improvements that deliver real value and solve practical challenges faced by tour operators worldwide.

As we move forward, our focus remains clear: building a faster, smarter, and more powerful WP Travel Engine, together with our customers.

Thank You for Growing With Us

2025 was a year of meaningful progress, built together with our community. Every trip created, add-on installed, and piece of feedback shaped the platform to help travel businesses run better and grow faster.

We’re excited to continue this journey. Here’s to a stronger, smarter, and smoother 2026.