For users of the TourCMS tour operator ecommerce platform

search and book possible with TourCMS?

A lot of sites give visitors the possibility to choose 3 (or more) criteria from drop down boxes (e.g. drop down one: locations, drop down two: different levels and drop down 3: type of action) with the result a list of available products. From these search results the clients can directly make a booking (or request).

Is this possible with TourCMS? It seems a basic requirement or am I wrong here ..

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Permalink Reply by TourCMS team on May 27, 2008 at 7:50am

Hi Luit,
You can "build" one (using an XML export from TourCMS) - however this does require some development at your end.

However, we are planning to build a "live search" on search.tourcms.com.com (not there yet) - which you could "rebrand" as your own site - and also CNAME your domain name onto (meaning that your customers would think it would be your own site). This you would be able to configure (much like you can configure the booking engine) - however, because it is insecure (unlike the booking engine) you would be able to make greater changes to the HTML layer.

Would that match your requirements?

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Permalink Reply by Kristian on July 3, 2008 at 12:59am

Hi Alex,

I had spoken with you at some point about providing a calendar on the frontpage of my site, that allowed customers to book a tour, any tour, much like the airlines have through a single booking engine (Airline equivalent in brackets):

Choose the date (date)
The package (from where to where)
and a list of available options or open slots is returned. (choose your flight).

This is a standard booking procedure that the general public is fairly comfortable with. Alternatively, customers could go to a particular tour and then start the booking process.

Is there the ability to have a single booking engine (which in and of itself would effectively meet the search requirements spoken about above), instead of a multitude of independant ones??

This would also make website integration much easier and links in with the "asset allocation" facility spoken about in another feed, as the "available options/slots" part of the engine, could show departure times for scheduled tours (as with airlines) and the available times slots for private charters.

Kind Regards,

Kristian...

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Permalink Reply by banurekha on July 2, 2008 at 9:45am

Do you provide an XML export right now?

Can I have more information about this?

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Permalink Reply by TourCMS team on July 3, 2008 at 12:08pm

Hi Banurekha
It is possible to make your own XML export in whatever format you like.

Is this for searching on your own site - or for giving to a 3rd party like an agent? If I know for what purpose you want the XML we can give you the best answer.

Best wishes. Alex

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Permalink Reply by banurekha on July 7, 2008 at 4:43am

Hi Alex,
Yes this is for searching from our own site.
We want to develop a trip search in our site that is based on the tour information we have configured already in tour cms.Is this possible now and if possible can i have the xml export as early as possible.

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Permalink Reply by Alex Bainbridge on January 30, 2010 at 10:19pm

Just to close this off (2 years later)
We now have a LIVE XML API for tour search - so you can build all sorts of search functionality now