What's really going on

You're solo, taking 200–500 inquiries a month across five channels. That's 10–25 a day, and WhatsApp is the loudest. Most of those are tyre-kickers asking "price for Bali?" who will never book. You're burning your best hours typing the same reply to people who were never going to pay, while real buyers wait and go cold.

What to do instead

1. AiSensy (₹ monthly tiers — check current pricing) — set up a WhatsApp greeting flow that asks destination, dates, budget range, and number of travellers before you ever see the chat. Half your "leads" will drop off right there, and that's the point.
2. Freshsales (free tier) — one pipeline, stages: New → Qualified → Quote sent → Booked → Lost. Every qualified WhatsApp chat, IG DM, call, and form becomes one card. You stop losing people in scrollback.
3. Habit — end each day by moving every card forward one stage or killing it. Ten minutes.

Do this first, today: open AiSensy, build a 4-question WhatsApp welcome flow (destination, dates, budget, pax), and set it live on your business number. One hour.

What you're being oversold

Someone will push you toward Wati or Respond.io because they're the famous WhatsApp names. At your volume, solo, Wati's mid-tier pricing is money you don't need to spend yet, and Respond.io is built for multi-agent teams you don't have. You also don't need Freshsales's paid tier — the free one holds a solo pipeline fine.

Doing nothing costs you the three or four serious bookings a month that slip because you replied to them on day two instead of hour one. On travel margins, you feel every one.

When to revisit this

When you hire a second person to handle inquiries, or when qualified leads (post-filter) cross ~150 a month.

The part worth getting right

Here's the fork. If most of your real revenue comes from repeat clients and referrals sending you destination requests, a WhatsApp qualifier plus Freshsales free is the whole answer for a year. But if most of your bookings come from cold Instagram and web-form strangers, then the qualifier matters more than the CRM — a weak filter there and you'll drown again in a month, CRM or not. Which half of your bookings came from which source last month? Because the honest fix for a referral business and a cold-traffic business are not the same tool, and picking wrong costs you a season.