In the following videos, we will explain to you how to create tours.
Part 1:
Transcript part 1:
Hello. In this video we are going to explain how to create a tool in a very basic setup.
So for that we need to go to Products, Tools. Scroll down and here we can create the tool from scratch or we can copy existing information from another tour to duplicate it. So in our case we will do it from scratch.
New Tours Skip the Line, Museo del Prado. Product type, it's a tour in our case and then Create Tool.
Now we can go to our tour clicking on the Edit button. Here we can see seven different sections we need to fill in all of them and we have to start from the bottom to the top because we need the setup information before filling the rest of tabs. So we start with the setup.
In the General tab here we have a Tour ID, that's an identifier of the tool. Status could be Private if it's only for your staff, Public if you want to publish your tour on your website, and Distributed if you want to distribute your tour through API or through their Tour CMS marketplace. In our case we will select Distributed to distribute our tour. Then the Tour Name could be changed in the future. Online Booking Engine URL, those are automatically generated by Tour CMS, and we have another video explaining how to configure the online booking engine, so let's keep this at the moment. Display Order is the order you can see your tour in the tour list. By default it is one, and normally the order is chronicle, but the lower you put here, the higher is the position of the tour in the tour list. And then Free Sale and Alternative Tours are advanced settings and they are not integrated via API with any OTA. So we'll leave it by default and click on Save Changes.
Then we go to the Times and Cutoffs. Here we can configure the start and end times. Could be not applicable in case of a hop-on hop-off tour, or it could be at a Fixed Start and End Time, for instance in our case which is the museum could be fixed the start and end time, or could also be Multiple Start and End Times in case of multiple departures per day, one departure in the morning, another in the afternoon for instance.
Now I guess we will fix a start and end time so let's say the museum opens 9 o'clock and closes at 6 PM. Fixed Start and End Time. Then Time Zone Settings are given by the default settings account default settings so nothing to change here. In the Cutoff here we define when we want to stop bookings for every departure. So it could be a number of days before the departure, or number of hours before the departure, or at a Fixed Time the same day, or at a Fixed Time the day before, or at a Fixed Time the same day of the departure. So let's say in our case we don't want to configure any cutoff because we want to be able to accept bookings until the very last minute before the departure. So let's configure here 0 minutes and nothing for Ask First, that's a special setting not integrated with OTAs. So just click on Save Changes.
Now we go to the Money Sales. Here we can configure the financial settings of the tool. Normally those settings are coming by default by the default channel or the default general settings, and but we can specifically configure a special sales tax type here or a special agent's commission or a special markup type only for this tool. The same for deposit. We can keep the default logic rows given by any channel or we can configure a specific percentage or a specific fixed amount of deposit for this tour. In our case we will keep it by default. And then Lead-in Price. We can also define a fixed price for this store but we will leave it automatically calculated by Tour CMS by default. And also we can change the price per person, per couple, per vehicle or per room depending on their tool. In our case the price will be per person by default. And then Save Changes.
Now in the Operation Suppliers here we can assign this store to a specific supplier and enter here the supplier code, upload barcodes from the supplier. That's a special configuration we don't talk about that in this video. But if you want to assign this store to a supplier you can previously create a supplier and then assign the supplier here. In our case we're not going to select any supplier so we didn't change anything.
We can go to Booking Size. Here in Booking Size we define the capacity and the booking size. The capacity will be how many people we can receive every day for every departure, we can support for every departure. So in our case of a museum we will say the maximum 1000. And Booking Size will be how many people we can include in the same booking. So let's say we can support bookings until 10 people as a maximum. And then Save Changes.
We're now going to configure in the advanced settings. Then in Categories we can assign different categories for this tool that is helpful for grouping tours in order to distribute for instance two different tours in different channels. And that's a special configuration and we need for that Product Filters, that's something we can explain in another video. So we'll skip this for the time being.
And we'll go to Rate Types. Here we have different options, different rate types, Multiple Rates and Quantity Based Pricing. Multiple Rates means you can offer a different price per rate, one price per adult, one price per child, one price per student and so on. Quantity-Based Pricing means you can offer a different price depending on the number of people in the booking. We have another video explaining this. So in our example we'll create Multiple Rates: Adults and Children. So we will select Multiple Rates.
In Tour Group Pricing you can select Price per Person by default or a price for the whole booking. In our case it will be Price per Person. And then Price Notes dropdown is something we are using for transfers so nothing here. Accept Child Only Bookings by default is yes, you can select yes or no. And here you can create your different rate names for different channels. In my case I have two different, I have several different channels but two different languages, German and English. So I can enter here their right names in both languages. So we will do it only for English now. Adult and number of adults here we can say higher than 18. And if we want to create another rate, please remember to activate this checkbox for every rate. And we will create here Child: number of children from 3 to 17, and select here Child. That's important because this age category is important for OTAs and so on. You can create different rates here up to 10. And it's important to select the correct age category here. And then Save Changes.
Part 2:
Transcript part 2:
Hello. In this video, we'll explain mainly how to set up the Text Descriptions and Images tab of a tour. In our previous video, we already explained how to create a tool and how to configure the Setup tab of the tool, and now we'll continue with the Text Descriptions and Images tab.
If we go to our tour, click on the Edit button, and go to the Descriptions and Images. And about Hotels, Pickups, Options, Questions, and Health and Safety, those tabs allow for the customisation of the products for each customer individually. While this certainly all are useful options, right now none of the OTAs incorporates this into the selling process. Because of that, we will skip those tabs and we'll continue with Descriptions and Images.
Under this tab, we have the Key Information tab, and we should take a closer look at this. Commercial Priority influences the order in which sales agents get your products displayed if they do a search query. It's not important, so we will leave it by default in medium.
Where does the tour take place? Already have the country, your country, according to the general settings, but if the tour takes place in another country, we can add the country here. Postal address, it's not a mandatory field, but here we can enter a postal address of your office, for instance, or to a museum, in our case, the museum's postal address.
Geocodes are different points where the tour takes place. Start and end points are mandatory. You can also add midpoints in between, but let's say for the moment we'll only configure the start and end point, which is the same. To create those geocodes, you have to click on Edit, enter the location of your tour, and click on Save. The same for the end point.
And we can continue with Tour Type. In our case, it's a day tour, but we have different options here depending on that tour. If it's a hotel, we can select accommodation. If it's a transport transfer, we can select this option. If it's a tour including an overnight stay, we can select this one. And if it's a day tour, we can select this one. There are other tour types like tailor-made, event, training, restaurant, meal, and others, but in our case, we'll select Detour.
We can continue with the Tour Leader. In this case, it's independent, but it could have a tour guide or driver, or not applicable in case of an accommodation or event.
The next point is the Grade. We can select All Ages in our case, or depending on the tour, if it's a hiking tour or any other adventure tour, we can select any other option. If it's accommodation, we can select the corresponding option, in our case, no accommodations, so we select this option. And here we can inform our customers if it's suitable for a certain group of people, in our case, all of them.
The last option is Languages Spoken. That's not very important because we handle languages with OTAs in any other way, but we can select here the language as descriptive information. Then, finally, Save Key Information.
The next step will be to go to Text Descriptions and Video. Here in this tab, we have a dropdown field with all our channels, and we need to select every channel and fill in the information corresponding to that channel. In this case, we will enter the information for the English channel. We have some mandatory and some non-mandatory fields to fill in here. This is important to fill in all the mandatory fields, and it makes a lot of sense to invest some time in this page. The more information you can provide here, the better for you to distribute your tours through the Tour CMS marketplace and to help your customers book. So here we can enter all the information we can provide that is very useful and interesting to have as much information as possible here. It depends on the tool. So I'll leave it with you.
You can add a video, a PDF, you can inform about experience highlights, included, excluded, hotel pickups, instructions, voucher redemption instructions, restrictions, extra essential information, long description, itinerary and receipt information. At the end, we need to click on Save Description Changes.
After that, we can continue with the Images tab. Here you can search for an image or more than one image from your hard drive and upload them here. If you maintain the high quality standard of at least 1500 pixels, which TourCMS will prompt you to get your uploaded pictures into a three to two aspect ratio. We need to upload hill landscape images. Select the image from your hard drive and then click on Upload. On the next page, you can send to cut your picture and then save the image. Here we can also add a special description for our image for each of our channels, a default description and also a special description for every channel in the corresponding language. And then click Save Description Changes.
The next tab is the Product Page URL. For the moment, I want to remain untouched as it's very greatly influenced by the sales channel. So we didn't touch this, but it's important to have a valid product page URL for every channel. These URLs are automatically generated by Tour CMS, and you can use them in your website, or you can also edit them and enter here a valid URL.
We continue to the next tab, Incomplete Data. As we have set up our tour as distributed, we have this Incomplete Data tab. This tab adds some sort of quality control, and all the requirements in here must be met before a tour can be distributed to the sales agents. As you can see, we still have some critical elements which must be added in the next video: the Dates and Prices. So, for the moment we finish this video here and we will continue with the Dates and Prices in the next video.
Part 3:
Transcript part 3:
Hello. In this video, we're going to explain how to configure the Dates and Prices tab of a tool. That's the last part of the creation process, and we can also create departures there.
So if you click on Products, Tours, you will get your tour. We need to click on that Edit button and then Dates and Prices. Here we have different sections. First, we can see a filter to filter departures between the time frame and also different statuses of the departures: Bookable, Not Bookable, Bookable but Zero Bookings, etc. And if we click on Refresh we can only see those departures according to those filters. As we still don't have any departures created here, then we don't see anything.
To create the departures list, we have to scroll down and here in the Create a New Departure in New Single Departure Date, we can create a single departure, only one. That's not very useful if we want to create all the departures for all the season. So, for that, we need to use the One Day Tour Activity Generator tool, where we can create the departures for the whole season.
The season start date is today, and the season end date is at the end of the year. On the day of the week, we can select all the days or we can unmark those days when we don't offer the tour. In our case, we'll keep all of them marked. Below, we have to enter the price information. This is the customer price. So let's say for adult it is 50 Euros and for child it is 20 Euros.
On the right side, we have additional information. The Product Note is something visible in the channel manager, and it's displayed in the booking engine for every channel. So here we can add additional information about this departure. Let's say we're going to create two different departures: one for the English group and another for the Spanish group. So here in product we will enter "English Product Note English" and in Supplier Note we can enter something like "ENG" or the same English word. Below we have the code. This is the code of the departure. We can enter a code if it's useful for you or we can leave it in blank. In our case, we'll leave it blank and click on Create Departures.
Now we have all our departures from today to the end of the year with the prices we have already entered, and the capacity is zero right now, but in a few minutes it will be refreshed to a real capacity. If we click on this button, Toggle Notes, we can see the product notes, offer notes and supplier notes for every channel. All of them have the English note.
Now we want to create the departures for the Spanish group. For that we have again to use the One Day Tour Activity Generator tool. Click here and repeat the process. We can copy the price structure or recreate it. That's very useful if you don't want to enter the same prices again. Click here and we have our prices and the notes. We will change the notes, as we mentioned we are creating now departures for that Spanish group. So we replace English with Spanish, and also in the Supplier Notes. Again, we have to define the season start date and the season end date. And if we don't offer the Spanish group on a specific day, then we can unmark it. Now again we will keep all the days. We'll keep the same price, but we'll replace the notes with Spanish. And then Create Departures.
Now, if we click on the Toggle Notes, we can see how we have our English and our Spanish departures every day.
Apart from that, here we have different columns: The Dates and the Status of every departure. Date is the start date, and status is Closed or Open. Close means the departure has been closed because of the cutoff. And Open it means the departure is still open and we can book for that departure. The Code, if we have previously entered the code, we can see the code here, in our case, we didn't enter any code. Then we have the Customer Price. Then we have an Offer Price instead. We entered one, we will explain how to do it in another video. Then we have the Quantity column with quotation. "P" stands for provisional, and "C" stands for confirmed. Those are the different statuses of the booking. So here we could see how many spaces we have already booked for this departure in terms of quotations, provisional and confirmed bookings. Then we have the Block Capacity column. Here we can see how many spaces we still have and how many spaces we have blocked in case a subsystem is blocking capacity. Then we have the Close column here where we can click and manually close the departure. And we have the Action column where we can delete a specific departure by clicking on the trash icon. And here we have all our departures.