Last updated October 20, 2026
Groups let you manage trips where multiple travelers are going together — a group cruise, a hosted tour, a destination wedding, a youth or church trip. Instead of tracking each person's booking on a separate trip, you tie everyone to one group record with a shared roster, shared communication, and a consolidated view.
Looking to let travelers book themselves from one shareable link? That's the self-service booking page, covered in depth in Group Bookings. This article is the overview of the Groups feature as a whole.
Groups are best suited for:
Go to Group Trips in the sidebar and click New group. One dialog asks three things, in order:
The dialog also supplies editable Setup notes for the type. If you already wrote your own notes, changing the type keeps them.
The banner at the top of every group shows its type, its dates and its facts, such as Departs Nov 15, 2026 · 7 nights, Ship Symphony of the Seas or Couple Priya & Marcus. Anything missing shows as Add trip details. Click it, or the type chip, or Trip details in the ⋯ menu, to change the type, dates, destination and facts. Wedding, celebration and corporate groups can also list an event schedule (welcome drinks, ceremony, farewell brunch). It appears near the top of the booking page.
Until bookings exist, the banner uses the dates you entered. Once bookings are linked, it uses the dates most of them share.
Under the banner, one capacity line says how full the group is, for example 7 of 16 cabins booked · 9 still held · 12 travelers. It counts the room block when the group has one, otherwise the booking page's capacity.
The Overview tab opens with a Next steps checklist built for the group's type. Late items come first, such as a room-block cut-off that has passed or bookings past a payment deadline. Then come the steps in the order you usually work a group. Each step has a button that takes you straight to the fix. Finished steps fold into Done.
When creating a booking page, you can opt into suggested planning questions (unchecked by default). This adds an optional, editable form: cruise dining/bedding requests, wedding events and arrival/departure dates, school traveler roles and guardian contacts, or general roommate/transport requests. Review and edit the form in Forms before sharing. School permission questions are organizer notes, not consent or a signed permission form.
Form answers do not automatically assign planner roles or rooms, and the group type does not change prices or payment terms.
Most group cruises arrive in one of two states, and they use different halves of the feature. Decide which one you're in before you create anything — picking the wrong path is the usual reason a new group sits empty.
You've held or booked the cabins and you know who's in them. There's nothing left to sell; you want one place to see the party, share an itinerary, and message everyone.
You never need a booking page for this shape. Nothing is being sold from a link.
You have a group contract or a block of space and you need travelers to claim cabins themselves.
If you already have the supplier's cabin sheet, Import group PDF can create these categories for you — pick Bookable cabin options on the preview step instead of Individual trip bookings.
Mixed? Some cabins sold, some still open is common. Start with whichever half is bigger and add the other later — a standalone group can gain a booking page at any time (see below), and a booking-page group can still take Link existing bookings on its Bookings tab.
The groups page supports both a grid view (cards) and a list view (table). Toggle between them using the view switcher below the page description. The list view is especially useful when you have many groups, showing name, status, clients, bookings, revenue, and departure date in a scannable table.
Each group shows its type icon and a status that describes the group, not its booking page:
A second line adds detail such as 9/18 booked or Booking page in draft. Filter the list by status or by type.
Open the group and go to the Bookings tab. When the group has a booking page, a switch at the top picks the source: All bookings (every booking on the group: the ones you made, imported or linked, plus a booking for each sign-up from the booking page) or Booked online (sign-ups from the booking page, with their approve, payment and form actions). Each row in All bookings shows the room type that booking holds, under the client's name. All bookings has four ways to add to the group:
Each booking row shows its confirmation number, the client with their trip underneath, the travelers, the dates, value, balance and commission. A cruise group adds a Cabin column (cabin number and category). Type and Supplier columns only appear when the group mixes booking types or suppliers. When everything is with one cruise line, the line is named once above the table.
Once a group grows past five bookings, a search box appears so you can filter by client, supplier, confirmation, or trip.
You don't have to decide up front. Any group can get a self-service booking page after the fact — even one you originally created just to link existing bookings.
At the top of the group detail page, the Create booking page button opens a setup dialog with an optional suggested-questions checkbox. Confirm Create booking page to create a page linked to this group and open the proposal editor for packages, pricing and forms. Once a page exists, that same button changes to Edit booking page so you can jump back into the editor anytime. There's no need to recreate the group or re-enter its details.
When you open the editor, if the page has only one package you'll see a reminder that group booking pages work best with at least two packages — so travelers have a real room or cabin choice. Add a second package, or open the existing one and turn on occupancy tiers to price it by party size. See Group Bookings for the full booking-page walkthrough.
The tabs use the words your group type uses, and tuck away the ones it rarely needs:
| Group type | What changes |
|---|---|
| Cruise | Rooms is called Cabins. The board can group cabins By deck. |
| Wedding, celebration | Participants is called Guests. Waitlist and Funds move under More until they hold something. Room numbers are expected at check-in, so a blank number isn't flagged. |
| Resort | Participants is called Guests. Funds moves under More until you use it. |
| School, sports | Participants is called Travelers and Rooms is called Rooming. A room holds several seats, so four students in "Quad 1" show as one room. |
| Corporate | Participants is called Attendees. Waitlist and Funds move under More. |
A tab that holds anything always shows. The tab bar also carries counts: Cabins 7/16 is the block's pickup and turns amber inside 30 days of cut-off, Funds 45% is how much of the fund target is in, and a dot on Itinerary means there's no group itinerary yet with departure under 60 days away.
The Payments tab is where a group's money lives, room by room. It answers three questions on one screen: who is paying for which room, what is due now, and how to collect it.
Who's paying. One card per person who pays for more than their own room, or whom you picked to pay. Each card shows how many rooms they cover and what is due now (the open deposits on those rooms), with one button: Request card · $800. That opens a single card request on the payer's trip with every covered room listed as its own line ("9248 · Family Suite · deposit $1,600"), so the payer authorizes the whole family's deposit once. + Add a payer picks a person and ticks the rooms they cover in one step.
Rooms. One row per room: the travelers, a Paid by chip, Due now and Balance. Click the chip to change who pays. The menu lists everyone in the group with what each already pays for ("pays for 3 cabins"), plus This room pays its own and Split between people…. Someone who can't pay for that room (their own room is already covered by someone else, or the room pays for others) is greyed out with the reason.
Split between people… is for rooms several people share, like a bachelorette party: pick the people, choose Split evenly or Custom, add each person's email, and click Send 3 deposit links. Each person gets their own card link for their share of that room's deposit, and nothing else.
The footer shows the group total, what has been paid and the earliest balance due date.
Privacy. Each family only ever sees their own room. A covered family gets no payment emails and no card links; their portal says who is taking care of payments. A split link shows only that person's share of their own room. The payer's card page lists the rooms they pay for, because they are paying for them.
One payer, everywhere. The Paid by chip, the Participants payer chip, a trip's Paid by another trip? control and "Responsible payer" automation emails all read and write the same answer. Set it in any of them and the others follow. See One Trip Paying for Another in a Group.
Money that already arrived outside JourneyFuse, like a school's check, is recorded from Participants › More › Record a check or wire.
Every group has a Participants tab (called Guests, Travelers or Attendees for some group types): the roster of everyone traveling, whether they booked through a booking page, were linked from an existing trip, or were added by hand. A row is a cabin, room or party, so it can hold several people.
When your booking page offers each room type as its own option (a wedding block with a King, a Double and a Suite, say), every guest who books is filed under the room type they picked. You see it in three places: on the group's Rooms tab, where the board groups guests by room type; on each row of Bookings → All bookings; and on the guest's own trip.
For a running count, the group Overview has a Rooms by type card in the right-hand column. Each room type shows how many are booked out of the rooms your booking page holds, how many are left, and Sold out when none are. It counts the bookings themselves, so it always matches the list. Click Rooms on the card to open the Rooms tab.
To track the block against your supplier, open the Rooms tab. Before any categories are set up, the Room block card lists the room types your booking page sells with a Track all button. One click adds each type with the number of rooms the booking page holds, and the bars then fill in as guests book.
The Room block card shows the block as bars: Booked by you, Booked online and Still held for each category. Click Edit block to change the numbers, add categories, pull them from the proposal, or set the supplier, dates and locator. Inside 30 days of cut-off, a countdown above the block says how many held rooms go back to the supplier, with Remind the group to email everyone.
Below it, three views:
{{stateroom_number}} email tag all show the same value, so there is only one place to get it right. Participants added by hand or through the booking page, who have no booking of their own, keep their room on the roster.If a group has a self-service booking page and fills up, a Waitlist form appears automatically on the public page so interested travelers can add themselves; you can promote them to a booking if a spot opens — the Waitlist tab lists them. Participants, rooms, and waitlist are covered in detail in Group Bookings.
Collecting payment from group travelers? When card authorization is required and an amount is due today, checkout creates a secure card authorization link for the traveler. Submitting that form records encrypted card details and permission to charge; it does not itself run the charge or mark the invoice paid. Run the payment through your supplier or processor, then use Mark Charged for the amount actually collected. Company billing and pages with card authorization turned off do not require this checkout step.
Open Rooms → Room planner → Create room plan. Enter a property or ship and arrival/departure dates, then add rooms with a label, category and capacity. Place linked travelers individually using Choose a room; use the selector beside a placed traveler to move or unassign them. A person linked to multiple bookings appears once. Names-only companions need linked traveler details before they can be placed individually.
Use New stay for another hotel or ship. Room labels belong to that stay, so room 204 at two hotels is separate. For a resort, you can use a planning label and select Property assigns the room number at check-in. A planning assignment is not a supplier confirmation.
Traveler roles and rooming notes lets you record each linked person as Traveler, Student, Adult or Chaperone, add a Guardian or payer note, and record Bedding, arrival or event preferences. Use Organizer’s rooming rules for agreed rules you will check manually. These notes belong to the stay’s plan; they do not change billing responsibility or automatically enforce placement rules.
Changes remain local until Save room plan. Save or discard edits before switching stays; capacity and stay dates are checked when saving. Discard edits returns to the saved plan, while Undo last save restores the preceding saved version when available. The planner does not automatically enforce school/chaperone rules or check conflicts between separate stays; review those with the organizer.
After saving, Rooming list opens a preview of that stay and the included columns: property, dates, room label, category, room-number status, capacity and traveler names. Confirm Download rooming CSV to download it. Passport, birthday, contact, guardian, payment and internal preference details are excluded. Review the preview and file for the intended recipient before sharing.
The traveler plan and the existing booking room numbers are independent. Moving a student or another traveler between planning rooms does not move their booking, change their payer, or alter invoices and prices.
When multiple clients are traveling together, they often share the same itinerary — same parks, same excursions, same dining schedule. Instead of building the itinerary separately on each trip, you can share one itinerary across the whole group.
Open the group, go to the Itinerary tab, and click Build shared itinerary.
That single click creates the group's itinerary and shares it with everyone — there is no second step to remember. You land straight in the builder with an amber banner confirming that every change reaches all travelers in the group, and the days are pre-created from the group's travel dates.
The button appears as soon as the group has something to take its dates from — a linked trip or a booking page. If it has neither yet, add one of those first.
If one of the group's trips already holds the plan you want:
Be aware of what this does: picking a trip's itinerary hands it to the whole group. It stops belonging to that one trip. That is deliberate — a master still parented to one participant would leave them with no personal layer and would rewrite their trip itinerary on every group edit. If you'd rather leave that trip's itinerary alone, use Build shared itinerary and start clean instead.
A trip's itinerary that already holds that traveler's own bookings (their flights, hotel, transfers or insurance) can't be picked. Handing it over would show those bookings to every traveler in the group, so JourneyFuse names the itinerary and asks you to build a shared itinerary instead. The group's cruise doesn't count, because the sailing is the thing everyone shares.
Either way, once the group has a shared itinerary every traveler sees it, merged with whatever their own trip itinerary holds.
A traveler's itinerary is built from two layers:
Clients see both, merged into one day-by-day plan by date. Add a group dinner to the shared itinerary and it appears on every traveler's itinerary — in their portal and in the mobile app — without touching their individual trips. Their own flights stay theirs.
The itinerary builder always edits one layer, and it tells you which:
To change what the whole group sees, edit the shared itinerary — open the group's Itinerary tab and use the link there.
Sometimes one family books with the group but flies a day early, stays longer, or uses its own transfers. Build their trip its own itinerary, then open that itinerary and turn off Include the group itinerary in the note at the top.
With it off, that family sees only the itinerary you built for them. The group's flights, shared transfers and guides stop appearing on their link, in their portal, in the app and in their PDF. Everyone else in the group is unaffected, and you can turn it back on at any time.
The switch only appears once the trip has its own itinerary. A trip without one keeps showing the group's, because it has nothing else to show.
The Documents tab has two columns.
Each column suggests the files a group of this type usually needs: a cruise gets the block contract, pickup report, boarding guide and packing list; a school trip gets the permission slip, medical form and code of conduct; a wedding gets the events schedule and dress code. Click Upload on a suggestion to fill it, or dismiss the ones you don't need.
Shared files appear in each traveler's portal under Travel Documents → Group documents, and in the mobile app. Make internal takes a file back at any time. A traveler only sees shared files once their booking is linked to the group.
The Messages tab has two columns. Sent to the group lists what the group has been sent, by you with Message all and by Group automations, with how many it went to and, where the mail service reports it, how many opened it. Team notes holds notes only your team sees, about the group or one traveler.
Message all emails everyone in the group (or just the people you pick). Each person gets their own copy, and each copy is filed like any other client email:
Opens are only counted for mail JourneyFuse sends itself. Mail sent through your connected Gmail or Outlook shows no open count.
Funds shows each fund as a bar (paid, awaiting, not assigned to anyone) with the contributors as cards. A contributor who isn't on the group's roster gets a small Not on roster tag, which is often fine (a parent paying for an adult child) but worth a check.
Waitlist explains its two lists side by side: the Interest list collects names before launch, and the Waitlist opens on the booking page once the group is full. The card that applies right now is highlighted, with how close the group is to full.
On a cruise group with the sailing's days on file, the Itinerary tab shows the ports day by day before you build the group itinerary, so you can see where group events fit.
The group detail page shows:
This is part of JourneyFuse’s travel proposal software: branded proposals clients can review, choose from and pay on.
The new-look Add-ons table and Travel protection card: the three offer words, the four protection modes, the not-offered reason, and the quote-later reminder.
Monitor cruise and hotel prices after booking — get alerted when prices drop so you can rebook and save your clients money.
Create stunning day-by-day itineraries your clients will love — with drag-and-drop blocks, image carousels, and a reusable template library.