Slate vs FareHarbor: booking fees and who pays them

Slate and FareHarbor are both booking systems for tour and activity operators. This page compares what each company publishes about its fees, with the date we read it. Where a figure isn’t in the documents we cite, we say so rather than guess.

At a glance

	Slate	FareHarbor
Monthly fee	$0	None, per FareHarbor’s blog
Booking fee paid by	The business chooses: its payout, or the guest’s total	The guest, at checkout
Booking fee refunded?	Never	Non-refundable, unless FareHarbor chooses to refund it
Booking fee rate	3%, on card bookings Slate processes	Not stated in the documents cited here
Cash, pay-on-arrival and gift-card bookings	No booking fee	Not stated in the documents cited here

Who pays the booking fee

FareHarbor adds its booking fee for the guest at checkout, and describes its software as having no monthly payment plans or upfront costs. Its customer terms say the guest pays FareHarbor that fee for using its service.

On Slate, the business decides. The same 3% booking fee can come out of the business’s payout, or be added to the guest’s total. Either way, bookings paid on arrival, in cash, with a gift card, or anywhere outside Slate carry no booking fee at all.

Refunds

FareHarbor’s customer terms say its booking fee is non-refundable unless FareHarbor chooses to refund it. Slate’s booking fee is never refunded. On both, refund the booking and the fee stays with the software company, so plan cancellations with that in mind.

Showing the full price

FareHarbor tells operators to include its booking fee in the total price customers see from the start. If a Slate business adds the fee to the guest’s total, the booking page shows it as its own line, with a link to how it works, before the guest pays.

What we couldn’t verify

FareHarbor’s booking-fee percentage isn’t stated in the FareHarbor documents cited on this page. If you are comparing costs, ask FareHarbor for the rate that would apply to your business, and whether it changes by country or volume.

Slate in one paragraph

Slate is $0 a month with a 3% booking fee on card bookings it processes. Payments go through the business’s own Stripe account, and the database refuses to sell the same slot twice.