Tour Programs
A tour operator does not invent a new trip for every group that lands at the airport. The same "10-day Cairo – Luxor – Aswan classic" runs in March, in April and again in October, for a Spanish group of 40 and an Italian group of 22. What stays the same is the shape of the trip: how many days it lasts, which hotels for how many nights, which excursions happen on which day, which domestic flights connect the cities.
A Tour Program is exactly that shape, written down once and reused for every departure. You find it under Travel → Master Files → Tour Program (in Arabic السفر والرحلات ← الملفات ← برنامج سياحي). It is a master file, not a document: nothing is committed, nothing is processed, and nothing about it touches money.
A program has no dates and no money
Two things you will never find on a tour program: a calendar date and a price. It says "day 4", not "12 April"; it says "Sheraton Luxor, 2 nights", not "2 nights at 85 per room". Dates arrive when you build a real Tour from it; prices arrive later still, on the purchase and sales documents.
Why day numbers instead of dates
This is the single idea the whole screen is built on, so it is worth stating plainly.
If a program carried real dates, it would be usable exactly once — for the group arriving on those dates. By numbering the days instead ("day 1: arrive and transfer to hotel", "days 1–3: 5-star hotel in Cairo", "day 4: fly to Luxor"), the itinerary becomes a template that fits any arrival date. When you later create a tour for a group landing on 12 April, Nama counts forward from that arrival: day 1 becomes 12 April, day 4 becomes 15 April, and the hotel stays chain themselves off each other's nights.
So the rule to remember while filling the program in is: day 1 is the arrival day, not the day after. A three-night Cairo stay that starts on day 1 covers days 1, 2 and 3, and the next stay begins on day 4.
Building a program: the header
Basic Information (المعلومات الأساسية)
| Field | What to put in it |
|---|---|
| Code (الكود) | The short reference your staff will type — CLASSIC10, NILE7 |
| Group (المجموعة) | The master group, if you classify programs into families |
| Name1 / Name2 (الاسم العربي / الاسم الإنجليزي) | The Arabic and English names of the program |
| Status (الحالة) | Initial, In Progress, Finished or Canceled — see the note below |
| Tour Guide (المرشد السياحي) | The guide you normally run this itinerary with |
| Tour Leader (قائد الرحلة) | The employee who normally leads it |
| Tour Operator (منظم الرحلة) | The employee who owns the file. A new program starts with the employee linked to the user creating it, and you can change it |
| Tour Days (عدد أيام الرحلة) | How many days the whole itinerary runs — the number that decides a tour's departure date |
Tour Days is the most consequential field on the screen. It is what turns an arrival date into a departure date on every tour built from this program, and Nama checks it against the accommodation grid: the nights on all your hotel stays must add up to exactly this number before the program will save.
Status is a label you keep for yourself
The status pick-list — Initial, In Progress, Finished, Canceled — is informational. The system never acts on it: nothing is blocked, hidden or triggered by it, and it is copied onto tours built from the program. Use it to mark which of your templates are live and which are retired, and to filter the list screen when you have fifty of them.
Guest Details (تفاصيل الضيف)
Group Name (اسم المجموعة) and Nationality (الجنسية) — the defaults for the kind of group this program is written for. A program aimed at Spanish incentive groups can carry Spain here and save the operator from typing it on every tour.
Pax Details
PAX, SGL, DBL, TPL — the standard group size and its room split: how many single, double and triple rooms it normally takes. This is the typical shape of the group, not a booking.
Keep the arithmetic consistent, because a real tour insists on it: PAX = (TPL × 3) + (DBL × 2) + SGL. A 40-pax group carried as 16 triples is 16 × 3 = 48 — wrong. As 10 TPL + 4 DBL + 2 SGL it is 30 + 8 + 2 = 40 — right. Getting it right here means every tour copied from the program commits without a second thought.
Arrival Departure Details (تفاصيل القيام و الوصول)
One field: VISA (تأشيرة) — the number of visas the group normally needs.
Flight Details (تفاصيل الرحلات الجوية)
Arrival Flight (رحلة الوصول الجوية) and Departure Flight (رحلة القيام الجوية) — free text for the international legs that bracket the trip, such as MS 986 and MS 985. These are the flights the group arrives on and leaves on; the internal legs go in the Flights grid further down.
Dimensions (المحددات)
The usual five: Legal Entity (الشركة), Analysis Set (المجموعة التحليلية), Branch (الفرع), Sector (القطاع), Department (الإدارة) — so programs can be scoped to the office that sells them.
The three grids
Everything that actually happens on the trip lives in one of three grids. Read them as three parallel timelines over the same numbered days: where the group sleeps, what it does, and how it moves between cities.
Accommodation Details (تفاصيل الإقامة)
One line = one hotel stay. Not one night — one continuous stay in one hotel. Three nights at the Marriott Cairo is a single line with 3 in Nights.
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Country (الدولة) / City (المدينة) | Where the hotel is. Pick the country first — the city list narrows to that country, and Nama refuses a city that does not belong to the country on the line |
| Hotel (فندق) | The hotel master file. The search is filtered by the line's country and city, so you only see hotels that are actually there |
| Nights (عدد الليالي) | How many nights this stay runs. The sum across all lines must equal Tour Days |
| TPL / DBL / SGL / PAX | The room split for this stay |
| Hotel Voucher (قسيمة الفندق) | A link to a hotel voucher |
| Meals (وجبات) | Free text for the meal basis — BB, HB, FB, AI — written the way your contracts write it |
| Situation (الموقف) | OK, RQ or WL — the booking's standing. Informational only |
The order of the lines is the order of the trip. The first line is where the group sleeps on arrival night, the second line follows it, and so on — which is exactly how a real tour turns them into check-in and check-out dates.
The header's pax figures win
Every time you save the program, the header's PAX, TPL, DBL and SGL are written down onto every accommodation line, and the header's PAX onto every service line. The header is the single place to state group size on a program; per-line variations belong on the real tour, where you set them line by line.
Services (الخدمات)
One line = one service delivered on one numbered day — a transfer, a museum entrance, a Nile dinner cruise, a guided day in the Valley of the Kings.
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Country / City | Where the service happens, with the same country/city consistency check |
| Service (الخدمة) | The tour service master file |
| Day No (رقم اليوم) | Which day of the itinerary it falls on. 1 is the arrival day |
| PAX | How many people take it |
| Description (الوصف) | Long free text — the wording your operations staff and the supplier need |
| Representative (المندوب) | The employee meeting the group |
| Tour Guide (المرشد السياحي) / Tour Leader (قائد الرحلة) | Who accompanies this particular service, when it differs from the header |
| Supplier (مورد) | The party who provides it, when it is bought in |
| Restaurant (المطعم) | The restaurant, for a meal service. Its search is filtered by the line's country and city too |
| Restaurant Voucher (قسيمة المطعم) | A link to a restaurant voucher |
The Supplier, Tour Guide and Restaurant columns are worth filling in carefully even though nothing on the program screen uses them: they are the parties a real tour will later group its purchase orders by. A service line that names who provides it becomes a purchase order line without anybody re-typing anything.
Flights (الرحلات الجوية)
One line = one internal flight leg — Cairo to Luxor on day 4, Aswan back to Cairo on day 8.
| Column | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Flight (الرحلة الجوية) | The flight number or description |
| Route (الطريق) | CAI-LXR, ASW-CAI — written the way your staff read it |
| Day No (رقم اليوم) | Which day of the itinerary it falls on |
| PAX | Seats needed |
| Reference (مرجع) | The airline's booking reference |
| Supplier (مورد) | Who you buy the seats from |
| Situation (الموقف) | OK / RQ / WL |
| Time Limit (المهلة) | The ticketing deadline |
| Remarks (ملاحظات) | Long free text |
What Nama checks before it saves
Four rules, all of them the kind that catch a genuine mistake:
- Tour Days cannot be negative.
- The nights add up. The total of the Nights column across all accommodation lines must equal Tour Days. A 10-day program has to account for 10 nights of accommodation.
- A city must be in its country. On accommodation and service lines alike, if you name both, the city has to belong to the country.
- Day numbers cannot be negative on service or flight lines.
A worked example: the 10-day classic
Here is the whole screen filled in for a real itinerary — Cairo, Luxor, Aswan, back to Cairo, ten days.
Header: Code CLASSIC10, Name 10-Day Classic Egypt, Tour Days 10, PAX 40, TPL 10, DBL 4, SGL 2 (which checks out: 30 + 8 + 2 = 40), VISA 40, Arrival Flight MS 986, Departure Flight MS 985.
Accommodation — four lines, 3 + 2 + 2 + 3 = 10 nights, matching Tour Days:
| # | Country | City | Hotel | Nights | Meals |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Egypt | Cairo | Marriott Cairo | 3 | BB |
| 2 | Egypt | Luxor | Sheraton Luxor | 2 | HB |
| 3 | Egypt | Aswan | Movenpick Aswan | 2 | HB |
| 4 | Egypt | Cairo | Marriott Cairo | 3 | BB |
Services — a handful of lines carrying day numbers:
| Day No | City | Service | PAX | Supplier / Restaurant |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cairo | Airport transfer in | 40 | Nile Transport |
| 2 | Cairo | Pyramids & Sphinx tour | 40 | — |
| 2 | Cairo | Lunch | 40 | Restaurant: Andrea |
| 5 | Luxor | Valley of the Kings | 40 | — |
| 10 | Cairo | Airport transfer out | 40 | Nile Transport |
Flights — two internal legs:
| Day No | Flight | Route | PAX | Supplier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 | MS 063 | CAI-LXR | 40 | Egyptair |
| 8 | MS 082 | ASW-CAI | 40 | Egyptair |
That program is now reusable forever. Nothing in it says when.
From program to tour
The program earns its keep the moment a real group is confirmed. On a new Tour you enter the arrival date, pick this program in Tour Program, and Nama fills the entire tour in: the header defaults, the departure date counted from Tour Days, the four hotel stays with their check-in and check-out dates chained one after another, and every service and flight line dated by counting its day number forward from arrival.
For a group arriving 12 April, day 1 is 12 April, the Cairo stay runs 12 → 15 April, the Luxor flight on day 4 lands on 15 April, and the departure date comes out at 22 April.
That copy is a one-time snapshot — the tour is yours to edit afterwards and never looks back at the program again. The Tours page walks through it in detail.