What does it mean?
This article explains the necessary steps and configurations within your TourCMS and Palisis accounts to enable the redemption of Online Travel Agency (OTA) vouchers, such as GetYourGuide vouchers, using their unique QR codes via your Palisis devices. This guide is specifically designed for operators utilising our Palisis 360 solution and connected to OTAs.
Being able to redeem OTA vouchers directly through your Palisis devices streamlines your operations, improves efficiency, and enhances the customer experience by simplifying the check-in process.
What should I do?
To successfully implement OTA QR code redemption, a few key configurations and considerations are required across your TourCMS and Palisis platforms.
- TourCMS setup and connectivity
The OTAs are connected via API with TourCMS, which acts as the central hub for receiving their booking information, including their unique reference codes.
- Proper tour setup in TourCMS: Ensure your tours are accurately configured in TourCMS, including all relevant details such as pricing, availability, and durations.
- API-enabled channel configuration: Verify that your TourCMS channel, through which you distribute your tours to OTAs, has its API enabled and is correctly configured.
- Tour distribution: Confirm that your tours are actively distributed through the designated TourCMS channel to your connected OTAs.
For more information on this, please, visit the following support articles:
2. Palisis setup and mapping
To ensure seamless integration and accurate redemption, your Palisis account needs to be configured to mirror your TourCMS setup and receive booking information.
- Tour/Product creation in Palisis: Your tours and products must also be created in Palisis, ensuring that departure start times align precisely with those in TourCMS. For more information, please visit our support article.
- Mapping between Palisis and TourCMS: Our Customer Success team will assist you in establishing the correct mapping between your products and tours in Palisis and their corresponding entries in TourCMS. This ensures that bookings received in TourCMS are correctly recognised in Palisis. Please, refer to this support article for more information.
- Contact your Customer Success Manager or our support team at support@palisis.com to confirm that the mapping and product creation are correct.
3. OTA connectivity
The connection with OTAs is a collaborative effort to ensure data flows smoothly from the OTA to TourCMS and then to Palisis.
- API Connectivity with OTAs: Our dedicated API Connectivity team will assist and guide you through the process of establishing the API connection with your chosen OTAs.
- Commit new booking endpoint: It is essential that OTAs inform TourCMS of their own unique reference every time they make a booking through TourCMS. This reference is passed as a node in the 'Commit new booking' endpoint, as detailed in the TourCMS API documentation: https://www.tourcms.com/support/api/mp/booking_commit_new.php.
- Action required: Verify Viator product settings
- For Viator bookings, you need to check a specific setting within their portal at the product level. This setting determines the reference displayed on the Viator voucher:
- If set to 'Yes', the voucher will use the TourCMS reference.
- If set to 'No', the voucher will show Viator's own QR code reference.
Good news: Palisis devices can redeem either type of voucher without any problems. For more information on how to configure these settings, please see our article on Viator mapping.
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IMPORTANT: Testing new agents & voucher verification When onboarding a new agent, always test their setup by having them generate an OTA voucher. Carefully verify that the voucher displays the TourCMS-generated code (your subsystem sent code or agent reference code). If the voucher shows the agent's own reference code, you must ensure that the agent sends their reference in the ‘Commit New Booking endpoint’. Then, confirm this agent reference is correctly recorded in both the TourCMS booking and the Palisis booking, as detailed below. |
How bookings appear
Understanding where to locate the OTA's reference within your systems is key to troubleshooting and verification.
- In TourCMS: You will find the agent reference under the "Marketing" tab within the TourCMS booking details.
- In Palisis: The booking reference, which includes the OTA's reference, will appear on the booking details screen within Palisis.
How your Palisis device recognises the voucher
Once the OTA's voucher, containing their unique QR code, is scanned by your Palisis device, the device will recognise the embedded information and perform the redemption accordingly, validating the booking against the details received from TourCMS.
For more information, please visit this support article.
Need assistance?
Our Customer Success team is readily available to provide comprehensive support with the webhook setup, the mapping between Palisis and TourCMS, and the internal settings required to receive bookings in Palisis. Our API Connectivity team will further assist with the direct connections to your OTAs. Please do not hesitate to contact us at support@palisis.com for any guidance or troubleshooting.