Oberammergau Tours
Oberammergau is a village in Bavaria where the residents perform a Passion Play once every ten years. It is a tradition going back to 1634, performed by villagers rather than professional actors, and people travel from all over the world to see it.
Tailored Travel sells tours built around it. What makes them unusual is that the event is the fixed point, and each tour pairs it with a different surrounding holiday. As pages in the backoffice, though, they are ordinary tours.
Six example tours are on the site now
Section titled “Six example tours are on the site now”The last cycle was 2020, though the play was postponed by COVID and many tours actually travelled in 2022. The next cycle is 2030.
Even so, six example group tours are already published, under Tours for Groups:
| Tour | Length | From |
|---|---|---|
| Beautiful Austrian Tyrol with Oberammergau | 7 days | £1,239 |
| Lake Garda Venice and Verona with Oberammergau | 8 days | £1,449 |
| Austrian Lake District with Oberammergau | 7 days | £1,239 |
| Castles and Lakes of Bavaria with Oberammergau | 5 days | £979 |
| Rhine and Moselle Valleys with Oberammergau | 7 days | £1,369 |
| Hidden Italy and Verona Opera Festival with Oberammergau | 8 days | £1,469 |
They were built early on purpose. A once-a-decade event starts from nothing in Google each cycle, so the pages need to exist and be found long before anyone is selling the tours.
What they carry, and what they don’t
Section titled “What they carry, and what they don’t”Each of the six has its own itinerary, features, accommodation, sights and extras, plus the “Tailor your…” sections that mark it as an example rather than a fixed product.
They have no departure dates, which is correct: a group tour is a suggestion, and the group picks its own date.
They do not yet show Oberammergau itself. The picture strip on each page shows the places the tour visits, but the village and the Passion Play theatre are missing, because there are no photographs of them in the picture library yet. Those have been requested from the designer.
The tours are ordinary tours. The section around them is not.
Section titled “The tours are ordinary tours. The section around them is not.”This is the thing to understand, and it makes the rest simple.
Oberammergau tours use the same three page types you already use. There is no special Oberammergau tour type. What marks a tour as an Oberammergau tour is its destination, set to Oberammergau, exactly like setting a tour’s destination to Italy or Austria.
The section they sit in is a different matter, and there is one page type of its own — see The Oberammergau section below.
| When you are creating | Use | Just like |
|---|---|---|
| One of the six example tours | A group tour | Any other group tour |
| A tour a society has bought | A tailored tour | Any other tailored tour |
| A tour someone can book a place on | An individual tour | Any other individual tour |
So if you know how to create a group tour, you know how to create an Oberammergau group tour. Create it in Group Tours, tick Oberammergau as a destination, and it appears on the Oberammergau pages automatically.
Tick two destinations, Oberammergau first
Section titled “Tick two destinations, Oberammergau first”Each of the six carries Oberammergau and its country. Beautiful Austrian Tyrol is tagged Oberammergau and Austria, so it appears on both pages: alongside the other Passion Play tours, and alongside the other Austrian tours.
Put Oberammergau first in the list. The page takes its colour from whichever destination is first, and Oberammergau has its own mauve. Listing the country first would turn that page the country’s colour instead, and the six would no longer look like a set.
The Oberammergau landing page
Section titled “The Oberammergau landing page”There is also a page at /oberammergau/, reached from the main menu. At the moment it
is little more than a heading; the two blocks below are still to be built.
When finished it welcomes visitors and sends them one of two ways:
- Tours for individuals and small groups — for someone who wants to book a place
- Tailor make your group’s exclusive tour — for a society organiser
Each side makes clear that the tours shown are examples. On the old website everybody landed in the same place and saw booking buttons that may not have applied to them, which caused confusion. Asking once, at the top, is the fix.
The Oberammergau section
Section titled “The Oberammergau section”The bookable Oberammergau tours will get their own section, rather than sitting in Tours for Individuals with the rest.
That is the one place Oberammergau gets a page type of its own. Everything else — the group tours, the tailored tours, the bookable tours themselves — uses the page types you already know.
Why it is separate
Section titled “Why it is separate”Nothing to do with the fields on the page. It is about how much of the business each thing represents:
- Group tours are around 90% of what Tailored Travel sells
- Individual tours are a handful at any one time
- Oberammergau comes round once every ten years
Individual tours and Oberammergau are each unusual enough on their own. Putting one inside the other makes both harder to find, and drops a once-a-decade event into a section that has to work every week.
There is also the word “individual”, which on this site means a tour led by a named person such as Peter Medhurst. An Oberammergau tour is not that, so it does not belong in a list of them.
It is named for the cycle
Section titled “It is named for the cycle”The section page is called Oberammergau Passion Play 2030. The short name, which is what the menu shows, stays Oberammergau.
In 2040 there will be a second one called Oberammergau Passion Play 2040, and the 2030 one will be put away.
Which pages carry a year, and which don’t
Section titled “Which pages carry a year, and which don’t”This is the part worth understanding, because it is not obvious.
| Carries the year? | |
|---|---|
| The section page | Yes — Oberammergau Passion Play 2030 |
| Group tours | No |
| Tailored tours | No |
| Bookable individual tours | No, but they live in the dated section |
Group tours don’t date because you edit them in place. A group tour is a suggestion. The hotel named on it is an example, and the group can pick a different one, so when the details change you update the page. Beautiful Austrian Tyrol with Oberammergau for Groups is one page that gets revised, cycle after cycle, exactly like the other group tours get revised when details change.
Bookable tours are the opposite. The hotel is chosen, the date is set and the price is fixed. Change the cycle and it is a different holiday, not an edited one. That is why they sit in a section with a year on it.
Naming: group tours say “for Groups”
Section titled “Naming: group tours say “for Groups””The six are named “… with Oberammergau for Groups”. A bookable individual tour of the same holiday would be named “… with Oberammergau”, with no qualifier.
That looks lopsided but it is deliberate. A group tour is an example, something to be tailored rather than bought, and that is the thing a reader needs telling. A bookable tour is what people already expect a tour page to be, so it needs no label.
It also stops two pages carrying exactly the same name once both exist.
How they were sold last time
Section titled “How they were sold last time”Each of the six was sold two ways:
- To a society wanting its own exclusive tour, for 25 people or more. That works like a tailored tour: an organiser, one departure, their own page.
- To individuals and small groups booking a fixed departure date, choosing from a published list.
What makes them different to edit
Section titled “What makes them different to edit”Three things you will not find on any other kind of tour.
The same content appears on every tour. Every Oberammergau brochure repeats the same explanation of the play: its history, the stage, the performance and the music. Plus the details of what is included in the Oberammergau part of the trip. That will be a shared block rather than something you retype on each tour.
The package details. Each tour records how many nights are spent in Oberammergau (none, one or two), the accommodation category, and the Passion Play ticket category. Seats and rooms are graded, and the grade is part of what the customer is buying.
Two ways to travel. Some tours offer both a flight and a coach option, with different durations and different prices for the same holiday. For example Austrian Tyrol was offered as 8 days by air or 10 days by coach.
Booking is changing
Section titled “Booking is changing”Last cycle you could not book an Oberammergau tour on the website. The customer filled in a printed booking form and posted it to their group organiser. What you could do online was pay: the deposit, the final balance once confirmed, and travel insurance.
That is still how tours work today. Look at any individual tour on the live site and it says “you cannot book this holiday online”, then asks the customer to download a PDF, fill it in by hand and post it.
For 2030 the intention is to book and pay online properly. That is a change to the website rather than anything you do differently as an editor, but it is worth knowing it is coming, because a tour page will eventually carry a real booking form instead of a link to a PDF.
A word about “individual”
Section titled “A word about “individual””On the old website, “Individual Tours” meant a society booking a fixed departure rather than a tour led by a named person.
On this site, an Individual Tour means something different: a tour led by a named individual, such as Peter Medhurst or Clive Hooper.
Same word, two meanings. Worth knowing if you are ever comparing the old site with this one.
Related
Section titled “Related”- Kinds of Tour — how the tour types differ
- Group Tours — the six examples
- Tailored Tours — what a society gets
- Individual Tours — the bookable departures