What EMS is

Page summary: Understand the product before learning its rules.

Use this when: Use this when you need the mental model: who uses EMS, where work happens, and how a booking moves through it.

• EMS connects vendor setup, guest booking, partner selling, and the vendor dashboard.
• A booking is operationally simple until approval, payment, refunds, or partner routes differ.
• Use Follow one booking next if you want the fastest practical understanding.

Read this first. Ten minutes, no background needed.

Checked in dev, 5 August 2026.

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In one paragraph

EMS is how a company that runs activities — tours, classes, experiences — sells them and keeps track of who is coming. The company sets up what it offers, what it costs and when it is available. Guests book and pay. Hotels can sell the same activities to their own guests. Everything lands in one place so the operator knows what is happening tomorrow morning.

Who uses it

Who	What they do
Vendor	The company running the activity. Sets it up, prices it, decides when it runs, handles the bookings.
Guest	The person coming. Books, pays, turns up.
Hotel partner	Sells the vendor's activities to hotel guests.
Marketplace	An outside site, such as Get Your Guide, that also sells them.
Delta	Us. Support, setup help, and the people who build it.

The three places it happens

1. The dashboard — where vendors work. Experiences, categories, add-ons, prices, promotions, availability, bookings, guest forms, payments, invoices, staff accounts, policies, integrations, and how their booking page looks. This is the biggest part of EMS by far.

2. The booking page — where guests buy. A vendor's own public page. Guests browse, pick a date and a number of people, add extras, fill in their details and pay. Each vendor gets their own, with their own branding.

3. Partner selling — where hotels sell. A hotel sells a vendor's activities to its guests, either through the hotel's own system or its guest-facing site. The booking still lands in EMS.

How a booking actually happens

Vendor sets up an experience
        ↓
Sets a price and when it runs
        ↓
Publishes it
        ↓
Guest finds it — on the vendor's page, or through a hotel, or a marketplace
        ↓
Guest picks a date, a number of people, any extras
        ↓
Guest pays, or is billed later
        ↓
Booking lands in the vendor's dashboard
        ↓
Vendor runs the activity and marks it done

Where it gets complicated is the middle. A booking may need the vendor's approval or may confirm instantly. Money may arrive now, later, or in instalments. Some of it may be refunded. The booking carries five separate statuses that all move on their own — that catches people out constantly, and it has its own page: Booking status.

What EMS is not responsible for

• What a hotel's own system does internally. EMS documents what it sends, receives, stores, shows and owns, and stops at the boundary.
• Card processing. That goes through a payment provider.
• The property side of the business — rooms, housekeeping, owners. That is a different product.

Where to go next

You want to	Read
Learn the vocabulary	Words we use
Get an account and see it for yourself	Getting access
Understand a whole workflow	How things work
Know the exact rules	Rules
Fix a customer's problem	Symptoms index
Answer "can EMS do this for our client"	What can be configured

One warning

The name is confusing and always will be. The product is EMS. The code repository for the screens is called VMS-Frontend, and the hosting projects are named vms-. Those are leftovers from an older name. Same product. See Words we use.