Tour Availability for AI Assistants
What this is
English Lakes Tours offers a live connection that lets an AI assistant, such as Claude, check which of our tours your party can book, on which dates, and what they cost. The assistant gets its answers straight from our booking system, so the dates and prices it gives you are the ones you will find when you book.
The connection is read-only. An assistant cannot make a booking, hold seats or take a payment through it, and it never asks for your name, your email address or your card details. When you have chosen a date, the assistant gives you a link that opens the tour page on this website with the date, the number of guests and the pickup point already chosen. You then book and pay here in the usual way.
How to connect
The address of the service is https://englishlakestours.com/api/mcp.php. There is no account to create and no sign-in.
- Claude: open Customize, then Connectors. If English Lakes Tours is listed in the directory, choose it and connect. If it is not, choose Add custom connector, give it the name English Lakes Tours, paste in the address above and choose No sign in.
- Other assistants: any assistant that can connect to a remote MCP (Model Context Protocol) server can use the same address.
Once it is connected, ask your question in plain words. The first time, the assistant will ask your permission to use the connection.
What you can ask
- “What tours does English Lakes Tours offer, and what do they cost?”
- “Is the Beatrix Potter morning tour available for 2 people next Saturday from Ambleside, and how much is it?”
- “Can we take the Beatrix Potter morning tour and the Eight Lakes afternoon tour on the same day next week? There are 2 of us, staying in Ambleside.”
- “We are a family of 5 staying at a hotel in Windermere. Which private tours could we take, and when?”
What the assistant can do
The service gives an assistant three tools. All three only read information.
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
| list_tours | Lists every tour that can be booked now: its name, whether it is a shared small-group tour or a private tour, how long it lasts, the largest party it takes, who it suits, the price from, the first and last dates it runs, and its pickup points. |
| check_availability | For one tour and one party size, gives the dates that party can book, with the pickup points on offer, the pickup and return times, the price and the total. It looks 60 days ahead unless you name other dates, and up to 92 days at a time. |
| get_booking_link | For one tour, date, party size and pickup point, checks that the party can still book it and gives the link that opens the tour page with all of those already chosen. |
What it will not do
- It does not book or hold anything. Nothing is reserved until you have paid on the tour page, so a date can still be taken by someone else in the meantime.
- It does not take payment or handle card details. Payment is made on this website.
- It does not say how many seats are left. It lists the dates your party can book. A date that is not listed is not available for a party of that size.
- It cannot change or cancel a booking. For that, please contact us.
Prices are in British pounds. On a shared tour the price is per person; on a private tour it is for the whole group. Times are local UK times and are approximate.
Your privacy
The connection needs no personal information and none is sent to us: not your name, not your email address, and nothing else from your conversation with the assistant. Each request tells us only which tour, how many guests, which dates and which pickup point are being asked about.
We keep a record of each request: the time, what was asked, whether it was answered, the name of the program that asked, the country it connected from and a short code worked out from its internet address, which lets us tell one caller from another. We do not keep the internet address itself. Because the request comes from the assistant's own servers, this tells us about the assistant, not about you. We use the record to see how the service is used and to stop misuse, we do not share it, and we delete entries after 12 months.
If you follow a booking link and book a tour, our usual security, privacy and cookies policy applies, as it does for every booking.
If something does not work
- The assistant says a date is not available. That date cannot be booked for a party of that size. Ask it for other dates, or contact us: we can sometimes help, particularly with private tours.
- The link opens the tour page but says there is no availability. The date was taken after the assistant checked. Choose another date on the page.
- The assistant says it has made too many requests. The service answers up to 60 requests a minute from one caller. Wait a minute and ask again.
- The assistant cannot connect. Check that the address is exactly as shown above and that no sign-in has been chosen.
Help and contact
For help with the connection, or with anything about our tours, email contact@englishlakestours.com or use the contact page.
For developers
The service is an MCP server using the Streamable HTTP transport: one POST, one JSON reply, no session and no authentication. The same information is also available as plain JSON, for programs that do not use MCP:
- https://englishlakestours.com/api/tours.php lists the tours that can be booked now.
- https://englishlakestours.com/api/availability.php?tour=1020&guests=2 lists the dates a party can book on one tour.
A summary of the whole website for AI systems is at https://englishlakestours.com/llms.txt.