Two decisions, not one
Assigning referees to a tour has two layers. First: which referees go to which stop. Second: on the day, which referee works which game. Most federations put all their effort into the second and treat the first as a list of whoever said yes.
That is backwards. The stop assignment decides the level of refereeing at each event, the travel burden on your officials, and whether developing referees get the experience they need. Once a referee is on the list for a stop, the day schedule can only work with what it has been given.
Collect availability for the whole season
Ask referees for their availability for every stop at once, at the start of the season, rather than stop by stop. A referee who is asked three weeks before each event will say yes to the convenient ones and no to the rest, and you will find out which stops are short too late to fix it.
With the full season in view, you can see the problem stops early: the one in the far corner of the country, the one on a holiday weekend, the one that clashes with a 5x5 cup final. Those are the stops to fill first.
Match the stop to the level
Not every stop needs the same referees. A stop with top-level categories needs enough top-level referees to cover those games with rest, and the arithmetic is simple: count the slots at that level and divide by what one referee can work in a day under your rest rule. A stop with mostly youth and recreational categories is the place for developing referees.
Plan the top-level coverage per stop first, because that is the scarce resource. Then fill the rest of each stop with a mix of levels, so that higher-level referees can step down where needed and lower-level referees are not left without games.
Spread the season, not just the day
Fairness on a tournament day is about games per referee. Fairness on a tour is about stops per referee. If the same eight referees work every stop, they burn out by the final and the rest of your pool learns nothing.
Set a target number of stops per referee for the season, based on their availability and level, and track it as you assign. Rotate the attractive stops, including the tour final, so that they reward a season's work rather than going to the same names every year.
Conflicts of interest
Decide your conflict rules before the season and apply them the same way at every stop. Common ones: a referee does not work games of a team from their own club, and a referee who is closely involved with the host organisation is not the only senior referee at that stop.
These rules matter more in 3x3 than in 5x5, because the pool of teams at a stop is small and the same teams meet repeatedly. A conflict that would affect one game in a 5x5 season can affect a whole day of 3x3.
Travel is part of the plan
Travel decides who actually turns up. A referee who drives three hours each way for one stop will do it once. Keep travel in view when assigning: prefer referees from the region for regular stops, and ask referees to travel for the stops where their level is genuinely needed.
Whatever your federation's arrangement for travel costs is, make it clear before the season. Uncertainty about expenses is one of the quietest reasons referees decline a stop.
Use every stop for development
A tour is the best development tool a federation has: many short games, at different levels, spread over a season. Use it deliberately. Send developing referees to stops where a mentor is present, and plan evaluations per stop so that each developing referee is observed several times over the season, not just once.
In RefManager 3x3, each stop is its own tournament with its own referee pool and schedule, while evaluations build into one referee profile. By the end of the tour, the decision about who works the final, and who moves up a level, is based on a season of observations rather than on who happened to be remembered.
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