GMC Tours – Documentation (Joomla & WordPress)
GMC Tours — Documentation
Everything you need to install, license and populate GMC Tours, the excursions and guided-tours booking system for Joomla 5/6 and WordPress. This page is the practical companion to the product overview.
What GMC Tours is
GMC Tours is a self-hosted booking engine for excursions, day trips and guided tours. Its unit of inventory is a scheduled departure with a seat capacity, priced per person by ticket type — a boat trip, a hike, a diving session, a quad tour. It is not an accommodation product; it is purpose-built for activities.
The same engine ships for two platforms:
- Joomla 5/6 — the native component
com_gmctours, plus a scheduler task plugin and a web-services plugin. - WordPress — the plugin
wp-gmctours, which mirrors the same data model and features.
You keep your own data, you take direct bookings, and there are no per-booking commissions.
Installation & activation
Joomla 5/6
- Download the single package file
pkg_gmctours-x.y.z.zip. - In the Joomla administrator, go to System → Install → Extensions.
- Upload the package zip. Joomla installs the component and its companion plugins, and creates all database tables in one step.
- Open Components → GMC Tours and you are ready to add hosts, excursions and departures.
WordPress
- Download the plugin file
wp-gmctours-x.y.z.zip. - In wp-admin, go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin.
- Choose the zip and click Install Now.
- Click Activate. Activation creates the tables and registers the admin screens and shortcodes.
Licensing & tiers
GMC Tours runs on a published-listing cap enforced from the GMC Licenses gateway. There are two tiers:
Personal
Up to 3 published listings. Ideal for a single operator running a handful of signature excursions.
Portal
Unlimited published listings. For multi-operator portals and marketplaces.
What the cap does — and does not — affect:
- The cap only blocks the transition to published. If you are on Personal and already have three published excursions, publishing a fourth is refused with a clear message.
- Drafts are always allowed. You can create, save and keep as many draft listings as you like.
- Importing is always allowed — imported listings arrive as drafts, so an import never hits the cap.
- Editing an already-published listing is never blocked. Re-saving a live excursion always succeeds.
- The check is fail-open: if the licensing server is unreachable, saving and publishing are never blocked. A network blip can never lock you out, and the last known entitlement is cached.
To switch tiers, paste your Portal licence key into the component / plugin configuration. Leaving the key empty keeps you on the free Personal tier.
Import & export (vokira JSON)
You can bulk-load excursions from vokira JSON seeds instead of typing each one by hand. In Joomla this is the component's Import view; in WordPress it is the plugin's Import / Export admin screen.
Supported inputs
- A single excursion seed.
- An
experiences[]catalog (many excursions in one file). - A suppliers-only catalog (hosts / operators only, no listings).
- A bare JSON array of items.
- A server folder, or an uploaded
.zip, containing several.jsonfiles.
How import behaves
- Imports are created as drafts (not published) and carry no departures, so nothing is sellable until an admin reviews, completes and publishes it. This is also why an import never touches the listing cap.
- Re-importing the same seed is idempotent. Records are matched by their
alias, so a second import updates the existing listing in place rather than creating duplicates. - Export is a lossless round-trip. The export re-emits the exact vokira shape, so an export followed by an import reproduces your data faithfully.
Imported listings are drafts on purpose. Review the price tiers, add the departures and meeting points, then publish — that is the moment the Personal cap is checked.
In short
Install in one step on Joomla or WordPress, start on the free Personal tier with up to three published excursions, build your catalog as drafts (by hand or by vokira import), and publish when ready. Upgrade to Portal whenever you outgrow three live listings.
