For users of the TourCMS tour operator ecommerce platform
A few questions on initial setup and the use of options
Hi,
Just in process of configuring the system for a golf tour business.
Read the manual but wanted to check that there wasn't a way that I could add an additional field to an Option. I need to be able to, not only book a golf club for a certain day, but the tee time is very important piece of information that comes from the supplier ( the golf club) and needs to go to the customer. I assume I could use the free text in the itinerary but it would be good if it was a specific customisable field that could be added to the option. Is this possible ?
Just as a check before I load lots of data - I am planning to use Hotels as the basis for a Golf Tour ( say three nights at the Ramada) as this is the key to the tour. Then adding golf clubs and transport as options - is that the best way to set things up?
Finally, the golf clubs charge different rates during the week than the weekend. The option option ! seems only to be based on volume for price. The only way around this is to creat a different option for week day booking and another for a weekend booking. Agan is this the only / best way to accommodate this ? The perfect solution would have been having date availability and associated price for options - but i guess that would get over complicated. We have golfers trying to book at golf clubs when some course are not open to visitors at the weekend.
Thanks
Mel
Views: 11
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Alex Bainbridge on -
Hi Mel
Great questions!
1) Overall yes you have it roughly right - looks like you are on the right track
2) This week we are working on functionality that permits, on hotel products, you to exclude different start days of the week for hotel RATES. I think you could then load weekend and week rates on the same hotel product - without having to use options for that. It is possible right now (using offsale / no arrivals settings) but just a bit of a pain to setup.
3) Tee times - do you check this for availability or do you just assume it is fine? On the option table there is a switch to make a group of options into a radio (so just 1 is selected from a list). E.g. if you had 5 options - for 5 tee times - and the customer then chooses one - then on the booking you have the information about which tee time the customer selected. Please do talk to us explaining how you logically organise these tee times and we can come up with other suggestions.
Thanks. Alex
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Permalink Reply by Sheila Standen on -
Additional fields in Options would be really useful for us also, as we could pull out a customised report of flight arrival/departure times without having to use free text. This would make life much easier for the people in resort who organise airport / station transfers.
Sheila
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Permalink Reply by Mel Palmer on -
Thanks good to hear I am on the right track.
The issue is less with the Hotel costs - for where we are we tend to get flat rates and if not available then we would find another.
The issue is the Golf Clubs - Weekdays are one rate Weekends are different rates, and on top of that some Golf Clubs do not allow vistors at all at the week end.
Golf club tee times are at a premium and there are certain days during the week that there is no vistor availablity, special events that mean one off unavailability and golfers booking all the time. Unless there was a link to the clubs availability database then it would be impossible to keep align - at least until everyone is on a common database - which is coming.
What we do is use local knowldge to try to get clients on all courses selected and move the days they play the courses to fit availablity - they very rarely are insistant on a set sequence - just want to play a set number of courses while they are here.
So here what we want to do.
1. Allow users to select am or pm for a given day on the website ( sounds as though this bit could be covered by the radio button? - 2 buttons am and pm)- allow a check on the Golf Club's Option "calandar" - this would not check actual availability but error / warning known unavailability e.g a week end.
2.Submit their enquiry.
3. We would then talk to the club and confirm a provisional tee time and go back to the client with a proposal - this is where the tee time field in the options come in. Another complication is that you normally have 4 golfers on a given tee time - so if we have a party of 20 golfers we will need to provide them with 5 tee times.
4. When we receive a booking we would chnage the status to confirmed - although I assume we would do this at the overall booking level
5. FInal complication is that in some circumstances - particularly in the Winter - the golf clubs charge by the tee time ( rather than by the golfer which is normal) - so it might be £500 per tee time - and that charge would be for 1-4 golfers.
Simple !
What we are trying to achieve is a balance between effiency - but keeping the local knowledge and personal contact - out differentiator from the big boys - so we don't want a fully automated solution - one that gets the initial enquiry as something that is at least feasible - and minimises the effort to administer.
One thought is that this may all be a bit too complicated from a user perspective - what we currently do is just get them to list their courses and the dates - and we work out a schedule ( part of our service) So one option is to provide the above functionality to the consultantonly and keep the online enquiry submission simple - in that case all we would want to do for the website is get them to list the courses they want to play and add a priority if their no 1 priority is not available. That would mean the calandar check on options would be available only to the consultant not the user. This would also apply to hotels - i.e priority 1, Priority 2 etc.
I would have thought that a solution could be made generic enough to apply to other sectors.
Sorry about the length of reply - wanted to get over what we want to achieve
Mel
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Permalink Reply by Alex Bainbridge on
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Hi Mel
Please keep the questions coming and I know we are having a good discussion via the helpdesk!
(in case anyone wonders why this thread stopped without answer!)
Thank you
Alex
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