In this video, we will explain to you how to create a local agent.
Transcript
Hello! In this video, I'm going to show you how to create a travel agent in TourCMS. TourCMS provides a powerful set of tools to work with travel agents, web affiliates, and hotel concierges.
Creating a Travel Agent
In our TourCMS account, travel agents are set up in the Travel Agent Manager, which you can find in the Partners menu under Local Agents. These are your travel agent records, and you can configure them however you like. This data is not shared with any other company, including the travel agents themselves. However, there's also an additional aspect that we call the TourCMS Marketplace. From the travel agent's perspective, this enables them to just have one travel agent account and then deal with multiple TourCMS suppliers in a consistent way. You do not have to use the TourCMS Marketplace, but it will benefit you if you do.
So if you decide to just create a travel agent here in the Travel Agent Manager, you can see in this overview all your connected travel agents. To create a new one, you just scroll down to the end of the page. Type in the name for the new travel agent you want to create, select a Commission Scheme or a Net Rate Tier (both are supported by TourCMS), and the way the bookings will be paid for.
Payment Options
The first option here is a Retail Travel Agent. So that works just like a customer: the travel agent will pay you at the moment the booking is made, and they will retain their commission. So if they are on a 10% commission fee, they will pay you 90% out of a booking over 100%.
A Trusted Travel Agent works the same way, but trusted travel agents can place bookings even without payments, so you trust that they'll pay you afterwards.
Lead Customer: If you choose Lead Customer, the lead customer will pay you the price of the booking without the commission of the travel agent.
And if you choose Lead Customer Advertising Tracking or Web Affiliate Style Agent, the customer will pay you a full 100%, and you will then forward the commission to the travel agent.
Agent Configuration
So once you set all these parameters here, you can just create a new agent. On the next page, you can configure a few more fields or a little more information on this travel agent. You can assign them a code. You can put in here a contact name. You can enter a contact phone number. Fax, if that's still necessary. You should definitely enter your email for a new booking, so if a new booking comes in, the travel agent will be informed about it by email. There are actually two emails you can configure, and you can configure a different email address for invoices. You can enter the postal address of the travel agent here, the country they're based in, the VAT rate they're working with, or sales tax ID, whatever you need. If you have created agent groups, you can group the agents here. You can assign this agent to a specific group, which will help you a lot for reporting purposes.
You can once again change or set how to pay for the booking option. And you can also set when the full balance of a booking is due, like how many days in advance it has to be paid. You can enter an organisation, if the travel agent belongs to some kind of organisation, and the membership number. And you can also choose again the commission scheme you want this travel agent to run on.
Email and Permissions
Email Settings: By default, they will get an email confirmation for a booking payment, pre-trip emails, post-booking emails, and supply notification emails. You can turn this off if you want, just in case some bigger travel agents send their own emails. Then you would just untick these check boxes out here and choose which emails you want to send.
You can also assign check-in redemption permission, with no voucher redemption permission, so that they can see the information but not the redemption of the check-ins, or that they have full access to all the bookings. Also, internal staff notes, and external agent credentials or ID.
So that's pretty much it. You save the changes, and your new travel agent is created here in TourCMS, ready to sell your products. You can then create a login on your home page for them so that they can log in and sell your products on TourCMS.