For users of the TourCMS tour operator ecommerce platform

Set up Private Tours along with Scheduled Tours

Hi All,

I have been using Tour CMS for scheduled tours, and it has been working extremely well. However we also do private tours (mainly for cruise passengers), and I've up to date I have just used Google Calendar for this. It would be much better to have everything in TourCMS. I'm not sure how I should set things up to do this properly. We have basically 3 options, though we often tweak products to create a custom tour. What I really want is that when I run a report I can see the private bookings along side the scheduled tours, so that I can see what is happening is the coming days and plan accordingly.

Any Advice from users who have had teh same problem or the TourCMS team would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Andrew.

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Alex Bainbridge on August 3, 2010 at 2:40pm

Hi Andrew

Could you create a separate tour name for this?
Then, once you have that tour, create a really long freesale season (perhaps couple of years) with zero price.

When you come to tailor made that new, private, tour - create the booking using the staff booking engine, tweak the prices to match what you are selling at.

Then, in reports, you can see - e.g. arrivals by the week - by which tour name - where the customers have come from?

Would that do it? Thanks. Alex

(I was assuming you didn't want these private tours to be bookable online by the customers - if you do then my advice would have been a little different)

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Permalink Reply by Andrew on August 3, 2010 at 5:08pm

Thanks Alex,

I've been playing about a bit and I think your solution world pretty well. In a perfect world it would be bookable online, but I think our pricing structure might make that a bit tough. We price per hour and per person.

We often send a request for payment with PayPal. If I could ask for payment through TourCMS after making a staff booking then I think the option you outlined would work extremely well. Is there an easy way to do that?

Thanks for your help.

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Permalink Reply by Alex Bainbridge on August 3, 2010 at 5:11pm

Hi Andrew

You can make it bookable online - e.g. you could create a fixed departure at a stated price. No reason not to do that.

With paypal take a look halfway down this page
http://www.tourcms.com/support/payments/paypal_setup.php

You can put one of these tokens in an email. The customer clicks on a link, makes a payment, and your sales ledger is updated.

Cheers. Alex

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Permalink Reply by Gavin Ronan on August 10, 2010 at 7:24pm

Hi Alex,
I've have been sampling this option for some private touring of between 2 and 7 days we are offering that has custom pricing as well.

In the freesale, it talks about duration and number of nights, but when I trial the booking, the availability screen only comes up with start date. Is it possible to have it have a finish date options appear to the right of the departure dates based on minimum and maximum days configured in set up?

At the moment, I'm creating the booking and manually adjusting pricing and dates. Is this the best way? Maybe its there and I'm missing it...or not! please advise.

Also, any updates on inventory controlled options????
Thanks,
Dana

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Permalink Reply by Alex Bainbridge on August 10, 2010 at 7:48pm

HI Dana
If only a start date shows this probably means that the min and max durations are the same (set up on the freesale tab on tour setup)

I suggest you send us a support email because then you can tell us exactly what tours you are setting up and we can think about it

Nope - should be able to do this online and get the right prices calculated, all things being equal.

Thanks. Alex

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Permalink Reply by Dana Ronan on August 11, 2010 at 4:29am

Thanks Alex. Have had a tweek and yes - my error. I will distill what I need to do from a pricing point of view and contact support if I'm not getting the results I need.

Dana