Where do your bookings come from? Tracking booking sources

You spend money to get bookings: adverts, a website, leaflets, a sign on every car, a cut for the hotel porter. You probably know roughly which of those work. Showing it, job by job, is harder. This guide explains how to tag each booking with its source, which sources to track, how to do it for phone calls as well as web bookings, and what to do with the numbers at the end of the month.

What is booking source tracking?

Booking source tracking means saving, on every booking, the answer to one question: how did this customer find us? The answer goes in a field on the booking record, from a short list you choose, such as "Google Ads", "website", "hotel: The Grand" or "regular".

The booking record is the right place for it. Your website analytics can tell you who visited the site, but only the booking tells you who actually booked, what the job was worth and whether the customer came back. Put the source next to the price and you can count both together.

Why does the source of a booking matter?

Because it shows you where your money works. Without it, every marketing decision is a guess, and the loudest salesperson wins.

With it, you can answer the questions that matter at the end of the month:

• Which source brought the most jobs, and the most money?
• What did each source cost you to run?
• Which sources bring regulars, and which bring one-off fares?
• Which sources book at night, when your office is thinnest?

The sum is simple. Divide what you spent on a source by the jobs it brought, and you get a cost per job. For example: £300 a month on adverts that brought 60 jobs is £300 ÷ 60 = £5 a job. Set that against the average fare from the same source and you know whether to spend more, less or nothing.

The market is crowded enough to make this worth doing. The Department for Transport counted 19,000 licensed private hire operators in England on 1 April 2026, up from 16,300 in 2024. More operators means more competition for the same passengers.

Which booking sources should you tag?

Tag every route a booking can arrive by, and keep the list short enough that the office uses it. A starting set:

Don't let the list grow past what a controller can choose from in two seconds. Ten or so sources is plenty. Anything rarer goes under "other", with a note.

How do UTM links work on a taxi website?

UTM parameters are tags added to the end of a web link so your analytics can tell which campaign sent a visitor. Google Analytics' own help says that when you add parameters to a URL, you should always use utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign. It lists others too, including utm_id, utm_term and utm_content.

A link from your Google Business Profile might look like this:

https://yourfirm.co.uk/book/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=business_profile&utm_campaign=gbp

A leaflet's QR code might point to the same page with utm_source=leaflet and utm_campaign=autumn. Each link you put anywhere gets its own tags, written down in one list so the names stay the same.

Then make sure the tags reach the booking, not only the analytics. If your online booking form saves the source from the link into the booking record, you can count jobs and money by source. If it doesn't, you can only count visits. Our guide to online booking for a taxi website covers what the form should capture.

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How do you track phone bookings by source?

Phone bookings need their own method, because a phone call carries no link to tag. There are three ways, and a firm of any size can use all three.

First, ask. Train the office to ask every new caller how they heard of you, and pick the answer from the list. Regulars don't need asking: the booking system can recognise their number.

Second, use a separate number. A number that only appears on one advert, one leaflet run or the car signs tells you where the calls to it came from.

Third, use the tools the platforms give you. Google Ads call reporting assigns a Google forwarding number to your ad and records details such as the call start time and duration, and the caller's number for calls over 15 seconds. Google lists the UK among the countries with forwarding numbers. A Google Business Profile shows how many times people tapped its call button, once your phone number is on the profile.

Calls that ring out matter here too. A source that sends you calls nobody answers looks weaker than it is. Our guide to missed calls in a taxi office shows how to count them from your phone provider's reports.

How do you track bookings from hotels and partners?

Give each partner its own way in, then count jobs per partner every month. A hotel can have its own booking link, its own code the porter quotes on the phone, or its own business account.

The monthly count does two jobs. It tells you which partners are worth looking after, and it gives you the number to pay any agreed commission on, without arguments. Our guide to hotel and venue partnerships for taxi firms covers setting the deals up.

What should you do with the numbers each month?

Run the same short report on the first working day of each month:

1. List each source with its jobs and takings for the month.
2. Add what you spent on each source: ad spend, print, commission.
3. Work out the cost per job for each paid source.
4. Compare it with the average fare from that source.
5. Move money from the weakest source to the strongest, and note what you changed.

Give a new source at least a full month before you judge it, and compare like with like: December against December, not December against February. Our guide to the taxi business numbers to track puts booking sources alongside the other figures worth watching, and Google Ads for taxi firms goes into the paid side.

Where does Dispatch AI fit?

Dispatch AI is booking and dispatch software for taxi and private hire firms. It answers your phone, WhatsApp, texts and emails, books the jobs at your prices and sends them to your drivers on your own app. With Dispatch AI you can see where every booking came from: which website, campaign or advert. You can ring the demo line to hear a booking taken.