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Shared availability (article)

Susana Moleón
Susana Moleón
  • Updated

This is quite an advanced concept and probably not setup when you just get started with TourCMS

Background

TourCMS has two styles of tour date - departures & freesale. Departures are best for most purposes as they enable you to control individual slot prices, availability & special offers. Freesale are ideal when you are using TourCMS for tailor-made tours - or if you have an attraction with unlimited availability and constant pricing

However, with departures, there are situations where you need availability to be shared between two tours (or two departures). E.g. If you have two tours using the same bus - and the bus capacity is 20 when you sell tour A, tour B also needs to reduce, instantly & automatically. This functionality does that.

The rules are set in Shared Availability section, of Configuration > System & Setup, in TourCMS. You just have to create the Availability rule according to your requirements.

Current scenarios

The following scenarios are covered by the functionality:

1 A: Shared bus

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Ideal where you have a single bus that takes people to a central location and where you run multiple tours

TourCMS supports where you have multiple busses per day - so that e.g. a sale of departure A at 9:30 reduces departure B at 9:30

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1 B: Language tour guides, on the same bus

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Ideal where you want to market as having 2 departures a day, each set to its own language, but its just one availability:

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2: Shared ticket allocation

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Ideal where you have a single allocation of ticket stock and you share that between tours or experiences:

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3: Shared bus with airport transfer zones

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Ideal where you have a single allocation of ticket stock and you share that between tours or experiences

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4: Single tour guide doing private groups

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Ideal where you have a single tour guide but are advertising multiple tours. As the guide can't run multiple tours (in the same timeframe) as soon as one receives bookings, the other goes off sale. Set on the tour setup that the first booking closes the departure (on both tours), and then setup shared availability rule.

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Future scenarios

The following scenarios may be covered by the functionality in the future:

5: Equipment hire

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Ideal for boat hire

6: Multi-city bus tour

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Ideal for overland expeditions & for multi-stop bus transit operators where you have a maximum capacity of a certain size and you have people getting on and off at different points.

7: Combo tour - Style 1

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Combo tours where you want to advertise a 3rd price (for tour C) but control availability (and produce operational reports) for A & B

8: Combo tour - Style 2

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An alternative way of doing a combo tour. Doesn't create a combo tour that can be marketed though, so will need separate promotion so the customer knows that they will get a discount if they book both together. This approach IS easier though if you have flexible pricing on tour A and tour B (i.e. not the same prices every day) as you don't have to pre-calculate the combo price up front (as you do for style 1)

9: Single supplement limit

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Maybe just what you need!

Notes

  • Currently only counts quotation, provisional & confirmed bookings (not temporary bookings) so there is a (minor) possibility of overbookings. TourCMS to address via a future development
  • This functionality does not work if you are checking availability against a 3rd party reservation system.