Quick Start

Welcome to Tours — a production-ready, white-label tours & experiences booking marketplace built with Next.js 16 (App Router), React 19, TypeScript, PostgreSQL, and Tailwind CSS. This page takes you from a fresh download to a running storefront in about 15 minutes.

New here? Read the Product Overview for the big picture first, then come back and install. Want every detail? The Installation Guide is the long-form version of this page.

What Tours Gives You

Tours is a single, self-contained Next.js application — no separate API server, no microservices, no mobile codebase to wire up. One project ships:

A public storefront — marketing pages, a tour catalogue, destination search, and booking checkout.
Four portals on their own URL spaces — customer (/customer), operator (/operator), admin (/admin), and influencer/affiliate (/influencer).
A REST API under /api/v1/**, with an admin-gated interactive reference at /api/docs/v1.
Over 60 built-in add-ons (payments, storage, email, analytics, maps, AI chatbot, and more), unlocked by license entitlement and an admin toggle.

Everything is white-label: branding, content, currency, and locale come from settings — nothing is hardcoded.

What You Need

Node.js 20+ (LTS recommended) and npm 10+
A PostgreSQL database — Neon is recommended, since Tours uses the @neondatabase/serverless driver (local PostgreSQL works for development)
About 15 minutes

Confirm your Node version first:

Terminal

node -v   # must report v20 or higher

Install in 4 Steps

Terminal

# 1. Install dependencies
npm install

# 2. Create your environment file
#    Create .env with at least DATABASE_URL. JWT_SECRET and CRON_SECRET are
#    auto-generated by the install wizard's database step if they are unset.

# 3. Initialise the database (schema + baseline data)
npm run db:init

# 4. Start the dev server
npm run dev

Open http://localhost:3000. On a fresh install the app redirects to the install wizard at /install, which walks you through the database check, license, admin account, and site settings. You can let the wizard create the schema for you and skip step 3 entirely.

Core Environment Variables

Tours reads a small, fixed set of environment variables. These four are the ones you care about on day one:

Variable	Purpose
`DATABASE_URL`	PostgreSQL connection string (Neon in production, local in dev).
`JWT_SECRET`	Signs admin and customer session tokens. Auto-generated if missing.
`SECRET_KEY`	AES-256-GCM key that encrypts stored integration secrets in the DB.
`LICENSE_SERVER_URL`	License server — defaults to `https://creative-cape.com`.

See the Installation Guide for the full environment-variable reference, and the License Guide for purchase-code activation.

Verify It Works

Once the dev server is up and you have finished the wizard:

Visit http://localhost:3000 — the storefront should render with seeded content.
Sign in to the admin at /admin/login with the account you created in the wizard.
Type-check the project any time you edit code:
Terminal
```
npm run type-check   # runs tsc --noEmit
```

On a local or LAN host (localhost, *.test, private 10.x / 192.168.x ranges) Tours runs in dev mode — the license check is bypassed and every add-on is unlocked, so you can explore the whole product before activating on your live domain.

Where to Go Next

Installation Guide — detailed setup, the install wizard, and the full env reference.
Deployment Guide — build, configure, and ship to production.
Hosting Guide — pick between Vercel, a Node VPS, and other hosts.
Admin Guide — run your Tours marketplace day-to-day.
Add-on Development Guide — extend Tours with your own add-ons.