TourCMS Marketplace question

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Permalink Reply by Alex Bainbridge on January 26, 2012 at 1:20pm

Hi Peter

Its a bit patchy to be frank.

Some are dong great out of the newspaper deals (with UK newspapers) (i.e. 1 booking a month, perhaps, not sure about active holidays though)....  others are finding it a useful way to work better with their EXISTING partnerships.

Then there are the larger distribution companies - and I know that in 2012 that is going to be interesting due to the large relationships they have.... those taps have not been fully turned on so not surprising you are not seeing bookings from that.

Then there are things like being able to add a live search to your own website, add your tours to your Facebook page, or create a special offers page such as http://toursift.com/deals/ 

And of course in the UK, GO Activities....  (which now has 100+ UK based activity suppliers from TourCMS into their site, in one form or another)

SO YES, the TourCMS Marketplace is working fine. Could it be better, yes of course it could. 

You shouldn't have to put TOO MUCH time into it actually - you have done most of the work already (setting up your products - although your product filters could do with some attention) 

Howabout adding an agent sign up form to your website? http://www.tourcms.com/support/marketing/affiliate.php

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Permalink Reply by Peter Syme on January 26, 2012 at 4:32pm

Hi Alex

Got the FB stuff set up back in April but it does not drive anything. I am doing a complete overhaul of all our websites and online presence and IT provision over the next 6 months so trying to see where the time/effort/reward is worth it

As you know I am a donkey with Tourcms I find it difficult unless it is the basic stuff so nothing ever gets done quickly with it

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Permalink Reply by Alex Bainbridge on January 26, 2012 at 4:45pm

Hi Peter

We can sort you out - its a matter of making your north african product NOT appear in your Scottish product channels - which requires some tweaking to your product filters (we can fix that). Will at least stop the warning emails I know you are being sent ;)

Reading your comments from various places around the web over the last couple of days there is an interesting point about the Marketplace - it permits you to have relationships with agents / affiliates that you would not otherwise have previously considered valuable - so instead of having 10 great relationships you could now have 200 lightweight ones..... and this hasn't quite sunk in yet - although this is how the larger tour operators think when they market (except x those numbers by 5)

Very happy to have a proper conversation about many other ideas too....  at some point

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Permalink Reply by Peter Syme on January 26, 2012 at 5:29pm

Hi Alex

Yes part of my review is obviously focused on distribution and the best way to do it. Most of our best agents are just not interested in using marketplace as they have their systems and are happy just to fire us a email. I see the opportunity in signing up new ones, even if they are lightweight if we can have 200-1000 it may make an impact. Some of the new distribution platforms are starting to work for us all be it slowly.

It is hard work doing all the content management to feed all the distribution channels though as you know and I cannot outsource it as it needs product/destination knowledge.

I think I understand what you are saying about the product channels as reading the documentation now.  Trying to figure out the filters as well

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Permalink Reply by Hiking Croatia on February 2, 2012 at 10:26am

Is the marketplace working for anyone yet?

I have limited time allocated to working on our various distribution channels and would like to work out f it is worth putting time into the TourCMS marketplace

If I may join the discussion. – We made the decision to use TourCMS as our main production system in the 2012 season. The Marketplace was one of the reasons. However, we see that this is indeed a long-term prospective. Also, you have to spend a lot of time negotiating with the channel owners. Many of them apparently are not getting any sizable revenues from resale of tourist products. They will offer you commercial advertising and back links.

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