The tour costing sheet, rebuilt for 2026

Search "tour package costing sheet format in excel" and most of what comes back is a decade-old Scribd upload or a college tourism-management PDF. None of it accounts for the September 2025 GST rejig, which quietly changed what every hotel invoice looks like and, with it, what your packages actually cost to run.

If you're still working off a costing sheet built two or three years ago, it's probably wrong in two places: it treats transport as a per-head cost instead of a per-vehicle cost, and it's pricing hotel GST at rates that no longer apply. Both mistakes eat margin silently. You won't notice until the season's numbers don't add up.

This is a full rebuild: how to split fixed costs from variable costs, how to cost transport correctly, how to handle twin/triple sharing and child pricing, where GST sits today, and why pricing a bus at full capacity is the fastest way to lose money on a "successful" departure.

Fixed cost, variable cost: the split that makes the sheet work

Every line in a costing sheet is either fixed (it doesn't change whether 8 people travel or 20) or variable (it scales with headcount). The standard method: divide fixed costs by your expected pax count, add variable costs per person on top of that (source).

Fixed costs, per departure:

• Vehicle (contracted for the full trip, not per passenger)
• Driver bata, toll, parking, permits
• Guide or tour leader fee
• The tour leader's own room and meals, if they travel free (FOC)

Variable costs, per person:

• Hotel room share (a twin room's rate, divided by two, is the per-pax hotel cost)
• Meals not included in the room rate
• Entry tickets, activity fees, permits charged per head

The mistake most sheets make is mixing the two: putting the vehicle cost in a "per pax" row and letting it move with headcount, when it should stay fixed until the vehicle is full. Get this split right first; everything else in this post builds on it.

Transport: price the vehicle, not the head count

Transport is the line operators most often get wrong, because a vehicle is quoted to you as one number and it's tempting to just divide it by pax count and move on. Do that and you'll under-price a half-full departure and over-price a full one.

Cost the vehicle first, as a single fixed line, then divide. Market tempo traveller rates run roughly ₹20–36 per km depending on seater size and city, with driver allowance around ₹600–700 a day, and outstation contracts typically billed on a minimum of about 250 km a day even if you drive less (source).

That minimum-billing clause is the part most sheets miss. A 7-day Himachal circuit that actually covers 900 km on the road can still get billed for 1,750 km (250 km × 7 days) if that's the contracted minimum. Three lines people forget to add on top of the per-km rate:

• Driver bata for every day the vehicle is out, including days spent waiting at a hill station
• Toll and parking, which add up fast on mountain routes with multiple checkpoints
• Inter-state permit charges, if the vehicle crosses a state border

None of these move with pax count. A 12-seater running half-empty pays exactly the same toll as one running full.

Twin, triple sharing and the child-with-bed problem

Once the vehicle is a fixed line, hotel cost is where per-person pricing actually lives. It's also where child policy trips up a lot of operators.

The formula is simple once you separate room cost from head count: take the room rate, divide by the occupancy it's contracted for, and that's your per-pax cost for that room type.

Occupancy type	How it's priced
Twin sharing (2 adults)	Room rate ÷ 2 per adult
Triple sharing (3 adults, extra bed)	Room rate + extra-bed charge, ÷ 3
Child with bed	Room rate stays same base; child pays an extra-bed charge, usually less than an adult's share
Child without bed	No extra-bed charge. The child uses existing bedding, so cost is meals and entries only

Careful: if your sheet charges a "per child" rate without distinguishing with-bed from without-bed, you're either overcharging families with young kids or eating the extra-bed cost yourself without realising it. Ask the hotel for both rates on every quote request, not just the twin rate.

FOC (free-of-charge) berths, like the tour leader's room or a driver's bed the hotel throws in, don't disappear from your cost sheet just because nobody's invoiced for them. That cost has to be loaded onto the paying pax, which is why it belongs in your fixed-cost bucket, divided across the group, rather than left off the sheet entirely (source).

5% or 18%: where GST sits after the September 2025 rejig

This is the part that actually changed your input costs, and it changed twice over: once on what the hotel charges you, and once on what you charge your client.

From 22 September 2025 (Notification No. 15/2025-Central Tax (Rate), dated 17.09.2025), hotel rooms priced up to ₹7,500 a night attract 5% GST with no input tax credit, down from the earlier 12%. Rooms above ₹7,500 a night stay at 18%, with credit available (source).

Tour operator services (what you charge the client for putting the trip together) still sit at 5% without ITC as the default, with credit blocked except when you're buying services from another tour operator. An optional 18%-with-ITC route survived the September restructuring too, unchanged (source).

Line	Rate (as of July 2026)	ITC available
Hotel room, ≤ ₹7,500/night	5%	No
Hotel room, > ₹7,500/night	18%	Yes
Tour operator service, default	5%	No (except from another tour operator)
Tour operator service, optional route	18%	Yes

If you price under the 5%-no-ITC scheme, every GST rupee your suppliers charge you (5% or 18%, hotel or otherwise) becomes a cost you build into your base price rather than a credit you claim back (source). That's the single biggest reason an old costing sheet under-quotes: it was built when more of those inputs carried credit, or when hotel GST bands were different. If you're weighing whether the 18%-with-ITC route would actually save you money given your real supplier mix, work through the arithmetic here. It depends entirely on what you buy, not on a rule of thumb.

Rates and thresholds move; confirm the current position with your CA before you lock a season's pricing to any one scheme.

If the package is outbound, there's a second buffer to add before you lock the sell rate: currency movement between quote date and travel date. That's a separate line from GST and belongs in the sheet on its own; see forex buffers for outbound quotes for how much to build in.

Price for realistic occupancy, not a full bus

Here's where most group costing goes wrong even when every line above is correct: the sheet is built assuming the vehicle fills up, and the moment it doesn't, the "margin" on paper turns into a loss in the bank account.

Budget your fixed costs against 70–80% of vehicle capacity, not 100%. If you must quote a headline per-pax price before you know final numbers, quote it at that realistic fill, and know exactly how the math moves if fewer people book.

Example: A 6N/7D Himachal group departure, 24-seat tempo traveller, budgeted at 24 pax.

Fixed costs: vehicle (7 days, 250 km/day minimum billing = 1,750 km at ₹30/km) ₹52,500, driver bata (7 × ₹700) ₹4,900, toll/parking/permits ₹3,320, tour leader fee ₹15,000, tour leader's FOC room and meals ₹15,000. Total fixed: ₹90,720.

Variable cost per pax: hotel, twin sharing, 6 nights at ₹2,400/night per person ₹14,400, dinner 6 nights at ₹300 ₹1,800, entries ₹1,200, incidentals ₹1,200. Total per pax: ₹18,600.

At the budgeted 24 pax, cost per pax = ₹90,720 ÷ 24 + ₹18,600 = ₹22,380. Price the brochure at ₹24,180 base (a margin of ₹1,800 per pax) and add 5% GST without ITC: ₹25,389 quoted per pax.

Now say only 14 travellers actually book. Fixed costs don't shrink. They're still ₹90,720. Cost per pax becomes ₹90,720 ÷ 14 + ₹18,600 = ₹25,080, which is ₹900 more than the ₹24,180 you already printed in the brochure and sold at. The same departure that earns ₹1,800 profit per pax at 24 travellers loses ₹900 per pax at 14, a swing of ₹2,700 per pax on fixed costs alone, before you've changed a single hotel rate or vehicle line.

This is why a costing sheet needs a minimum-pax clause, not just a per-pax price. For the full break-even math behind that decision (where the cancel line sits, how FOC seats change it, when to merge two under-filled departures instead of running both), see fixed departure maths: break-even, FOC seats, cancel-or-merge.

Worked example: Manali FIT, 5N6D, quoted to the last rupee

A family of four: 2 adults, one child (8) with an extra bed, and one child (4) sharing existing bedding, booking a self-drive-style FIT package, Chandigarh to Chandigarh.

Fixed costs:

Line	Amount
Vehicle (Innova, 6 days, fuel included)	₹15,000
Driver bata (6 × ₹700)	₹4,200
Toll, parking, permits	₹1,300
Local guide (2 sightseeing days)	₹2,400
Total fixed	₹22,900

Variable costs (whole family, 5 nights):

Line	Amount
Hotel, twin room CP (₹6,500 × 5)	₹32,500
Extra bed, child with bed (₹1,200 × 5)	₹6,000
Dinner, 2 adults + 1 child with bed (5 nights combined)	₹6,000
Sightseeing entries, whole family	₹1,250
Total variable	₹45,750

Total cost: ₹22,900 + ₹45,750 = ₹68,650. Add a 20% margin: ₹68,650 × 1.20 = ₹82,380. Add 5% GST without ITC: ₹82,380 × 1.05 = ₹86,499, rounded to ₹86,500 for the family.

That's ₹21,625 averaged per person across four travellers, but on the actual invoice, the two adults and the two children shouldn't be charged the same rate. Split it by occupancy: the twin-share adults carry the base room cost between them, the child with bed carries only the extra-bed and meal charge, and the child without bed carries close to nothing beyond entries. Show that breakdown on the client-facing quote, not just a flat per-head number. Families notice, and it's the honest version of the price anyway.

Common questions

Package me kitna margin rakhe?

There's no universal number, and anyone who gives you one flat percentage is guessing. It depends on destination, season, and how much risk you're carrying on minimum pax. For honest ranges by package type, see margin benchmarks for tour operators rather than picking a number out of habit.

Do I add GST on top of the cost, or is it already inside?

Both, in different places. Supplier GST (what the hotel or vehicle vendor charges you) is a cost you absorb into your base price if you're on the 5%-no-ITC scheme. Your own GST, on the service you're selling, gets added on top of your final sell price before you invoice the client.

What if fewer people book than I budgeted for?

Your fixed costs don't fall just because fewer seats sell. They're fixed. Either build a minimum-pax clause into the offer from day one, or accept that a "successful" but under-filled departure can still lose money, as the Himachal example above shows.

Should transport be quoted per person or per vehicle?

Per vehicle, always, in your internal sheet. Convert it to a per-person figure only at the very end, once you know how many pax you're dividing it by, and use your realistic occupancy estimate, not the vehicle's maximum capacity.

The short version

• Split every cost line into fixed (vehicle, guide, leader) or variable (hotel, meals, entries) before you price anything.
• Cost transport per vehicle, including driver bata, toll, parking and minimum-km billing, then divide by pax, never the other way round.
• Twin-share rate ÷ 2 gives the per-adult hotel cost; price child-with-bed and child-without-bed separately, not as one "child rate."
• Load FOC seats (tour leader, driver's bed) into fixed costs so they're still paid for by someone.
• Hotel rooms ≤ ₹7,500/night carry 5% GST with no ITC as of July 2026; above that, 18% with ITC. Confirm current rates with your CA.
• Budget fixed costs against 70–80% realistic occupancy, not a full vehicle. The swing between budgeted and actual fill can turn profit into loss on fixed costs alone.
• Add a forex buffer as a separate line for outbound packages, on top of GST, before you lock the sell rate.