Groups & Group Travel

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.

What Groups Are For

Groups are best suited for:

• Group cruises — multiple clients booked on the same sailing under your group contract
• Hosted tours — a guided group trip where you manage all individual bookings
• Family reunions, destination weddings, incentive trips, youth/church trips — any travel where several households go together with a shared itinerary

Three Ways to Start a Group

Go to Group Trips in the sidebar and click New Group. The dropdown offers three paths:

• Create with Booking Page — creates a group, a trip, and a self-service booking page in one step, so travelers independently pick packages, fill forms, and book themselves. You'll land in the proposal editor to set up packages, pricing, and forms. This is the right choice when you'd otherwise collect everyone's details by hand. See Group Bookings for the full walkthrough.
• Link to Proposal — attaches a group to a proposal you already built. Paste the proposal's URL or ID (open the proposal and copy the URL from your browser — JourneyFuse pulls the ID out for you). The name is optional and defaults to the proposal's name.
• Create Standalone — creates a group for linking existing bookings together. Use this when you already have trips and bookings and want to coordinate them (shared itinerary, group messaging, one roster, consolidated view). Takes a name and an optional description. Covered below.

Whichever path you pick, the dialog's submit button reads Create Group. On a brand-new workspace with no groups yet, the page shows two starter cards instead — Link Existing Bookings (its button is Create Group, the same as Create Standalone) and Create a Group Booking Page (its button is Get Started, the same as Create with Booking Page).

The Two Shapes of a Group Cruise

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.

Cabins are already booked

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.

1. Create the group with New Group → Create Standalone.
2. On the group's Bookings tab, either AI Import Group PDF the supplier's group confirmation (choose Individual trip bookings on the preview step — one trip per cabin, tracked for commission) or use Link existing to attach bookings that are already on client trips. Use Create new for anyone who booked by phone and isn't in JourneyFuse yet.
3. Build the shared itinerary from the Itinerary tab, and use Message all and the Messages tab to communicate with the party.

You never need a booking page for this shape. Nothing is being sold from a link.

Cabins are still to sell

You have a group contract or a block of space and you need travelers to claim cabins themselves.

1. Create the group with New Group → Create with Booking Page. You'll land in the proposal editor.
2. In the editor's group settings, answer What kind of group booking is this? with Cruise group.
3. Set Cruise for this group once — the sailing (line, ship, dates, embarkation port). It shows in a banner at the top of the booking page, and every package below it is then just a cabin category, so you don't repeat the sailing details on each option.
4. Add one package per cabin category — Interior, Ocean View, Balcony, Suite — with its price and how many are available. Group pages work best with at least two categories, so travelers have a real choice.
5. Share the link. Each traveler picks a category, fills your forms, and books; they appear on the group's roster automatically.

If you already have the supplier's cabin sheet, AI 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.

Grid and List Views

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.

Groups with an active booking page show a status badge:

• Booking Page Live — the booking page is published and accepting travelers
• X/Y Booked — shows how many spots are filled out of the total
• Booking Page Draft — the proposal exists but hasn't been sent yet

Adding Bookings to a Group

Open the group and go to the Bookings tab. The Linked Bookings section has four ways to add to the group:

• AI Import Group PDF — upload the supplier's group confirmation and let JourneyFuse read the cabins or rooms out of it. On the preview step you choose how they land: Bookable cabin options (travelers pick a category on the self-service booking page) or Individual trip bookings (each cabin is already reserved — track them as bookings for commission).
• Link existing — attach a booking that already lives on one of your client trips.
• Add flight to group — enter one flight itinerary once and apply it across the group, instead of retyping it on every member's booking.
• Create new — type in a booking that isn't in JourneyFuse yet (the phone-call case).

Each booking entry shows:

• Type — cruise, hotel, tour, etc.
• Supplier — the cruise line or operator
• Confirmation number — the booking reference
• Client — the traveler associated with this booking
• Trip — the JourneyFuse trip the booking belongs to

This gives you a single view of everyone in the group, their confirmation numbers, and which trips they're linked to. Once a group grows past five bookings, a search box appears so you can filter by client, supplier, confirmation, or trip.

Adding a Self-Service Booking Page Later

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 spins up a booking page already linked to this group and drops you straight into the proposal editor to add 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.

Roster, Rooms & Waitlist

Every group has a Participants tab — the consolidated roster of everyone traveling, whether they self-booked through a booking page, were linked from an existing trip, or were added by hand. (A row is a cabin, so one traveler can hold two.) From there you can:

• See each traveler's payment status and logistics readiness (passport info, transfers, flights, forms)
• Open Reports to download the group's operational reports as CSV — rooming list / manifest, payment & balance, payment deadlines, doc & insurance readiness, flight list / air manifest — plus a printable PDF report and the Full roster (CSV) for your own records or to hand to a supplier
• Add Member to manually add someone who didn't book through a self-service link
• Assign travelers to specific cabins or rooms in the Rooms tab, which maps each room to its members and headcount

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? The booking page shows the payment schedule but does not capture cards itself. Use per-traveler invoices or secure card authorization links to collect, then update each traveler's status on the roster.

Shared Itineraries

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.

Starting from scratch — one click

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.

Reusing an itinerary you already built

If one of the group's trips already holds the plan you want:

1. Open the group and go to the Itinerary tab.
2. Select the itinerary from the list — it shows all itineraries from trips in the group.
3. Click Use This to link it.

Be aware of what this does: picking a trip's itinerary hands it to the whole group. It stops belonging to that one trip, and that traveler gets a fresh personal itinerary of their own. 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.

Either way, once the group has a shared itinerary every traveler sees it, merged with whatever their own trip itinerary holds.

The shared itinerary layers on top of each traveler's own

A traveler's itinerary is built from two layers:

• The group layer — the shared itinerary you linked to the group. Group dinners, sea-day events, the welcome reception: everything that applies to the whole party.
• The personal layer — the traveler's own trip itinerary. Their flights, their hotel, the excursion only they booked.

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.

Which layer am I editing?

The itinerary builder always edits one layer, and it tells you which:

• Editing the shared master — an amber banner names the group and how many travelers the change reaches. Everything you add here goes to everyone.
• Editing one traveler's own itinerary while the group also has a shared one — a note tells you the group's shared items exist on another layer, so you won't see them in the builder even though the traveler will see them in their portal.

To change what the whole group sees, edit the shared itinerary — open the group's Itinerary tab and use the link there.

Key things to know

• One itinerary, one source of truth — edits to the shared itinerary are instantly visible to every traveler in the group. No syncing or duplicating needed.
• Each trip keeps its own bookings, payments, and invoices — only the itinerary layer is shared.
• Personal items are never overwritten — a traveler's own flights and hotel live on their trip and are unaffected by group edits.
• A shared itinerary belongs to the group, not to a trip. One built with Build shared itinerary is the group's from the start, so every traveler keeps a personal layer of their own. One promoted from a member's trip becomes the group's too — that trip hands it over and gets a fresh personal itinerary back.
• Each layer publishes separately — a traveler only sees a layer once that itinerary is published.
• You can unlink anytime — click "Unlink" on the group page to disconnect the shared itinerary and leave each trip with only its own.

Group Messaging

Each group has a Messages tab that shows all portal communications associated with the group's clients. This makes it easy to see all group-related conversations in one place rather than hunting through individual client records.

Viewing the Group

The group detail page shows:

• Bookings count — total number of bookings in the group
• Total value — combined booking value across all clients
• Departure date — when the group travels
• Client names — everyone in the group at a glance
• Messages — recent conversations with group members

Tips

• Name your groups consistently — include the sailing date or event date so they're easy to find (e.g. "Caribbean Cruise Nov 2026").
• Link all individual trips to the group as you create them, so the group record is always up to date.
• Use the Messages tab to spot clients who haven't been contacted recently before departure.
• Set up the shared itinerary early — build it on the primary trip, link it to the group, and all clients benefit from updates automatically.
• For group Disney trips, build the park-day itinerary once and share it across all families. Each family still has their own trip for individual dining reservations and payments.