Bad routing eats a tour's margin in fuel, hotels and lost days. Good routing keeps most drives under four hours and the run moving in one direction.
What gets weighed
- Real drive times between cities, not map estimates
- Which venues are free on which nights
- Holds and confirmations that arrive weeks apart
- Festival dates that anchor a summer run
- Ferries, tunnels and border paperwork
How it goes wrong
One date out of line adds a travel day, a hotel night and 600 kilometres. Agents drop otherwise good offers for that reason: the show behind the badly placed one costs more than it pays.
Who does it
The Booking agent builds the run and the tour manager checks it against the road. Load-out at 01:00 with a lobby call at 08:00 works on a spreadsheet and nowhere else, so push back while the routing is still a draft.