Vouchers are ticket like pieces of paper OR barcodes (for mobile use) that enable you to identify and then admit fully paid customers.
TourCMS has a standardized voucher system. The advantage of using the TourCMS system is that it interacts with companies upstream (e.g. large online travel agents) and companies downstream (e.g. hardware devices as used in ticket booths or visitor centers).
i.e a customer can approach a ticket counter with a Viator generated voucher and be redeemed once. Cutting fraud. No inefficiency.
The TourCMS system helps with
- No double redemption (ensures that a single voucher can only be redeemed once).
- No wrong date redemption (a booking must be used on the day it was booked for - especially useful if the prices are changing on a per day basis).
- Voucher recall - if you have subsequently found a booking to be fraudulent (stolen credit card etc) and wish to cancel a booking, the voucher will now no longer be redeemable.
Additionally, the voucher system helps with efficiency
- The customer can redeem from a mobile device without printing out a paper voucher. Ideal for on the day mobile bookings.
Setup
TourCMS supports a two-phase voucher redemption system. The first step is a bus check-in e.g. you may want to track a customer has got on a hotel pickup bus. The second step is the voucher redemption step. e.g. the customer checking in at a visitors center. If you are just starting on using vouchers, you probably only want the voucher redemption step.
To turn on, go to Setup - Bookings General Settings - there is a switch there.
Redemption can be done by any member of staff with booking permission (logged into TourCMS). Additionally, you can set up external companies (e.g. attractions) either to be able to check (read-only) or check and redeem. These need to use connected devices and uses the TourCMS Marketplace API. A separate permission for this is visible on travel agent manager - on an individual travel agent.
i.e. if you have a 3rd party attraction in your destination who is receiving your vouchers, they can do redemption checking without any access to TourCMS.
Remember that TourCMS redeems PER COMPONENT not PER BOOKING i.e. if you have 2 tours on a booking, each is redeemable separately.
%voucher_link% can be added to your email templates for a link to the hosted TourCMS standard voucher:
External redemption
Alongside the functionality WITHIN TourCMS, there are four other routes to do redemption via TourCMS.
- Palisis provided hardware
- TourCMS Point of Sale app (iPad) (contact TourCMS if you would like to test this)
- Build your own - the TourCMS API is available and handles all these features
The TourCMS barcode uses the QR barcode format. External companies considering voucher redemption need also to be able to scan PDF417 format.
The TourCMS API (on which this technology is based) has the capability to reverse a redemption.
Redeem externally generated bookings
If an online travel agent wishes to produce bookings redeemable via TourCMS technology EITHER they must use the TourCMS barcode data format OR TourCMS needs their barcode data within the agent_ref data field on a booking. If they don't have a barcode, this is OK too. Further information on the useful API information page.
CODE_128 barcodes on standard voucher
TourCMS uses QR-Codes as default setting on vouchers, but subsystems can instruct TourCMS that they would like EAN 128 barcodes, the standard voucher now respects that.
Please refer to the "Inline booking notification webhook" article here, for details on how to configure this option.
Other notes
- The Today functionality (within TourCMS) lets you see quickly bookings arriving today that are not redeemed.
- In the reports section, there is a report for unredeemed vouchers. Maybe see if there is a trend on why people are not arriving.
- Some promo codes require that you show a club membership card at the point of check-in. If you add a note to a promo code this will show to whoever is doing the redemption.
- Unpaid balances will also show at point of redemption - BUT only unpaid balances owed by customers and some kinds of travel agents. Trusted travel agents (e.g. larger online travel agents) will not have their unpaid balances shown to the member of staff at point of check-in.