Picster for tour operators & OTAs
An ancillary with a margin worth carrying
Offer private photography alongside your trips. Explore destinations, commercial models and integration options with our team.
Why you haven't done this already
Photography has been on your ancillary list for years
It never got built. These are usually the reasons.
“Every supplier wants us to take their retail price and a thin commission.”
You get a net rate across the whole catalogue and you price all of it. Sell our Ultimate package at €249 against a €149 net and the margin is yours entirely — we neither see it nor care. Commission is available if you prefer, but net rate is the model the rate card is built around.
Net rate · you own retail“Integrating a supplier takes two sprints and a certification programme.”
Nine REST endpoints. Catalogue, availability, create, amend, cancel, retrieve, gallery, statements, and a test-mode advance. Signed webhooks, idempotency keys, a full simulated lifecycle so you can build and demo without a real photographer leaving the house. No certification, no partner portal course, no account manager gate.
Most teams integrate in a day“Their cancellation terms never match ours and support eats the margin.”
Free cancellation up to forty-eight hours as standard, and weather or itinerary changes are always free regardless of notice. We'll align terms to yours rather than the reverse. And if we cannot staff a booking, it is cancelled free and escalated to a human before your customer notices.
Terms aligned to yours“One supplier can't give consistent quality across nine destinations.”
500 photographers in 128 cities, over 60,000 shoots delivered, all allocated by a score built from delivery record, reviews and reshoot rate. The same vetting, the same promise and the same escalation route in Phuket as in Paris — precisely the thing a marketplace of individuals cannot give you.
128 cities, one standard“Attach rates on experiences are too low to justify the build.”
Attach rate is a function of placement and range. Operators who show the whole catalogue at checkout — a short session alongside a full production — rather than one price in a post-booking email see several times the attachment, and a materially higher average value.
Range at checkout beats one price in an emailWhat it's worth
Your margin, not our commission
Set your own retail and see what the line contributes. The net rate moves with volume — this uses our standard.
What could this look like for you?
Adjust the assumptions to explore an illustrative estimate.
An illustration, not a quote or a revenue guarantee. Attach rate is the share of eligible guests or bookings buying photography. Average booking value is an assumption, not a package price. Availability, commercial terms and delivery options are agreed with each partner.
How it sits in your flow
Four places operators put it, in order of how well they work
The build is the same in all four. The attach rate is not remotely the same.
At checkout, beside seat selection and transfers
The customer has already decided to spend and is in a yes frame of mind. Against the cost of the trip it reads as a small addition rather than a separate decision. This is where the numbers above come from.
Inside the package, as a signature inclusion
Honeymoons and milestone trips. Costs you the net rate and buys a differentiator competitors cannot match on price. Attach rate is one hundred per cent by definition; the question is what it does to conversion on the package.
In the pre-departure email, two weeks out
The trip is close enough to feel real and there is still time to arrange it. Works noticeably better than a post-booking confirmation, and better again if the email names the city rather than offering “a photoshoot”.
In the manage-my-booking area
Almost nobody goes there voluntarily, and the ones who do are changing a flight and are not in the mood. Worth having for completeness. Not worth building for.
For your engineering team
What the integration actually involves
Short version: it is a normal REST API written by people who have integrated a few themselves. Full specification is a click away.
Catalogue & availability
Pull packages, extras and your net prices per city. Check real photographer capacity inside a window before you promise anything at checkout.
Bookings
Create, amend, cancel, retrieve — by our id or your own reference. Idempotency keys on every write, because your retry logic will fire and a duplicate shoot is a real cost.
Signed webhooks
Assigned, confirmed, completed, gallery ready, cancelled. HMAC signed, retried with backoff, replayable for thirty days from the dashboard.
Local time, always
Every timestamp is local to the destination with an IANA zone alongside. Offsets in requests are rejected rather than guessed, because a guest missing a shoot over a timezone bug is unforgivable.
Test mode
A full simulated lifecycle you can step through on demand, plus fixtures for a city that always fails to staff and one that always cancels — so you can build error handling without waiting for a bad day.
Versioned, and we mean it
Breaking changes ship as a new version, never into the one you're on. Twelve months' deprecation notice, public changelog, status page.
Start a conversation
Ask for a net rate card
Tell us your destinations and rough volume and we'll send a net rate card plus a test key. You can be calling the sandbox the same week.
- Rate card and test key usually within two working days
- We'll flag thin destinations rather than let you launch into them
- No certification programme, no partner portal course
- Prefer to talk? +44 7478 999815
Published catalogue
Current photoshoot packages
From prices across published destinations. Inclusions and prices vary by location. Partner net rates and commissions are agreed separately.
| Package | From | Duration | Edited photos |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | €59 | 30 minutes | 20 |
| Premium | €99 | 60 minutes | 50 |
| Super Premium | €149 | 90 minutes | 75 |
| Ultimate | €199 | 90 minutes | 50 |