Supplier guide: Optimising your TourCMS connectivity with OTAs

Overview

This article serves as a comprehensive guide outlining the fundamental setup and maintenance best practices for suppliers utilising TourCMS to connect their products with Online Travel Agents (OTAs) and manage promotions. Adherence to these guidelines will ensure product information is accurately and consistently displayed across all connected OTA platforms, minimising booking failures and administrative inquiries.

Who should use this feature?

This guide is primarily intended for new suppliers onboarding with TourCMS and connecting their product inventory to OTAs. It is also a valuable resource for existing suppliers requiring a refresher on essential TourCMS setup and data management procedures to ensure optimal product performance on third-party channels.

Expert tips for success

To ensure seamless operation and maximum availability of your tours through connected OTAs, please observe the following essential best practices:

1. Correctly configure setup Times and Cutoffs

Avoid selecting "not applicable" for setup times and cutoffs. You must select either a fixed start and end time or configure multiple specific start and end times to enable bookings.

2. Manage departure loading and availability

Load a minimum of six months' worth of departures in TourCMS. Ideally, load up to a year to ensure sufficient availability, as most OTAs do not pull availability data beyond the next 365 days.

3. Ensure consistency of Supplier Notes

For any given product option, the supplier note must remain consistent across all departures for a minimum of one year. Any necessary change must be applied to all future departures simultaneously. Failure to communicate logic changes to OTAs could lead to products going off sale.

4. Manual mapping updates for departure logic changes

   1. Be aware that any change to a tour's departure logic (e.g., switching from a single daily departure to multiple start times) requires a manual update of the product mapping on connected OTA platforms (including GetYourGuide, Viator, and Expedia). The changes are not automatically synchronised.

   2. It is considered good practice to proactively notify all connected OTAs about any significant changes to departure logic or supplier notes in TourCMS.

5. Simultaneous pricing updates (non-subsystem users)

For suppliers not connected via a fully integrated subsystem, when amending multiple departure dates or prices, you must update both the "offer price" and the "selling price" fields simultaneously. Failure to update the offer price is a common oversight.

Creating Special Offers (article)

6. Adhere to subsystem data management

If you are using a fully automated subsystem for managing product data, you must make all updates (price, availability, etc.) within the subsystem itself. Manual changes made directly in TourCMS will be overwritten by the subsystem's automatic sync.

7. New tour creation and connection

When creating a new tour intended for OTA connection, ensure you connect the tour to the appropriate channel. Share both the channel ID and the tour ID with the relevant OTAs to facilitate mapping. You should also follow the specific product creation instructions provided by each OTA on their platform.

8. Complete all relevant fields for connection

   1. When connecting to a new OTA, confirm their TourCMS agent ID and connect them on the marketplace using the appropriate permissions, typically as a "trusted travel agent”.

How to configure the ticket/voucher delivery format for tours

c. If your product requires specific customer information, ensure "Named tickets" is set to "yes" in conjunction with the required fields configuration. All about "Named tickets"