Bookings

The booking component acts as the central place to store and track all information pertaining to the reservation. As the sales rep works with the potential guest to refine their reservation, additional guests, notes, and specifics on the trip and departure are added to the booking.

Bookings can be created by the sales team via WordPress Dashboard, or directly by guests via the front-end of the website. Global bookings management will allow the sales team to search, browse, and edit all existing and past bookings in the system. Bookings can be sorted by “status”, “sales rep assigned”, or “related trip” for easy reference.

We work directly with the sales team to match online reservation process with the booking info required by the organization, including all payment flow (deposits, invoicing final payment) as well as the send out of key emails and information (deposit required, booking confirmed, travel info).

Guest Management

All guest information submitted via the booking process is is saved to the guest database. The trip leader creating the booking on the front-end is automatically added as a WordPress user, enabling the retrieval of guest and booking information for later bookings.

Guest details are extensive including fields such as location, dietary requirements, age, ability level, ect… Sensitive information such as CC info, or personal info are not stored in the guest database. This component is not intended as a CRM but rather a data-set to create trip rosters and send post booking information to the guest.

We would recommend integrating the booking process and various points of contact on the website with a 3rd party service such as SalesForce, Mailchimp, or Constant Contact to manage CRM requirements, and mail out’s to the Guest database.

Notes

Notes are additional details added by the sales team to a booking or guest entries. Notes are auto-created at key points during the booking process to track when certain events took place such as a client paying online or sales member sending a particular email.

Notes can also be created by the sales team and associated with a particular booking or guest. This provides the sales team with the admin tools to track key information gleaned from the trip leader as the booking is confirmed and guest information is collected. (For example “Guest#225 Suzy Q is allergic to peanuts”)

Dashboards

Sales Team Dashboard

Each member of the Sales team will have access to a custom dashboard which brings together bookings, notes, and trips assigned to them into a comprehensive admin panel.

Trip Roster

Trip roster report provides a page to view all upcoming trip dates and all guest information associated with that particular date in a “trip roster” view. This report includes notes added, as well as payment status for each confirmed guest. This would be the info sheet provided at location to the hospitality provider such as the lodge, hotel or outfitter.

Booking Dashboard

The booking dashboard is where the sales team will be sending emails to groups and guests, creating notes, and and adding details to the booking as they communicate with the trip leader and individuals within the group. This is also where the sales team can monitor the payment status of each guest, and follow-up accordingly.

Finances Dashboard

All accounting information will be exported from the system and managed in  accounting software of the team’s choosing (I would suggest Quickbooks). Although accounting will take place outside of the system, the finances dashboard will support the following views

• Yearly snapshot of transactions
• Revenue by trip
• Revenue by Sales rep

Book Now Functionality

Trip pages are designed to funnel user experience to a “Book Now” process. This is the first step in creating a booking. At this point we’re collecting the basic information the sales team needs to get back to the potential guest with deposit request and booking confirmation.

As their filling out the forms users can select preferred departure date and any pricing options related to that trip. When a web user takes this step and fills out the “Book Now” form several events are triggered:

1. Information is firstly validated and screened for security checks
2. New booking created in booking database
3. Guest / Trip leader info is added to the guest Database
4. Note “Booking Created by Guest” added
5. Associated trip consultant is notified by email with booking information and link to “view booking online”
6. Guest information is added to 3rd party list management (example: Constant Contact)
7. Guest is notified with a brief thank you email

Trip Invoice

This will enable the sales team to open a booking and auto-generate a comprehensive invoice for the group or individual guest within the booking. Invoices can be sent to the entire group or individual guest in HTML/email format at any time. Invoices will also be sent automatically in emails to group and guests at several points during the booking funnel.

Group Invoice

• The “base group price” is determined by the trip being booked and number of guests
• Invoice displays “Group Transactions” related to this booking, status,and amount

Guest Invoice

• The “base guest price” is determined by the trip being booked
• Any “Group Transactions” are taken into account, divided by the number of guests and subtracted from the guest total. Group transactions are also visible in the individual guest invoice.
• Invoice displays individual “Guest Transactions” related to this booking

All Invoices

• Branded header with company info, invoice# and guest information
• Alumni discount calculated for each guest
• Taxes (GST/PST) – calculated
• Trip Insurance fee added
• Trip Cancellation fee
• Tenure fees
• MRDT taxes
• Percentage based global group discount can be applied to booking at any time.

Payment Processing and Transactions

Any invoice sent from the booking system will include a “pay online” option, this will bring the user back to a secure page on the website listing a few details about their booking as well as a secure form to enter CC info. The sales team can also process payments over the phone on behalf of the client with this same method.

This page will be integrated with a 3rd party credit card transaction provider such as Moneris, Stripe or Paypal, and users will never leave the site during the booking and payment process. All processing is handled via SSL encrypted API calls.

Once the user pays online and we receive a successful confirmation from transaction provider via API, booking is updated in the admin with the appropriate “booking state” (example: 2nd deposit received), and both sales team and guest are notified by email.

Although there is no specific credit card details stored in the system TripPress does provide comprehensive reporting on trip payment transactions completed within the system. Transactions can be exported via XML from the system. The following information is tracked with each transaction (Transaction ID, Date Processed, Guests, Amount, CC Fee, Outfitter commission, Balance, Source , Method, )

Group & Multi-Guest Management

When a new booking is created, the initial guest information is added to the guest database and  used to determine the “trip leader.” When the sales team is ready to populate the rest of the booking information (after receiving the 25%) deposit, additional guests can be added with ease within each booking.

Although the sales team can add extensive details to each guest profile, we will ensure that setting up initial group info is a quick and easy process. Within the booking dashboard the GUI will enable the sales team to quickly add a new guest to a booking using only their first name, last name, and email. Additional details pertaining to each guest can be added at a later time, as the sales team collects more information from the group.

Managing and requesting deposits and payments from individuals within the booking will be a key aspect of this feature. Guest -> Booking featured required to support this need include:

• Guest payment booking status (i.e. has this particular guest paid their deposit?)
• Guest balance from past transactions (i.e. how much has this particular guest paid already?)
• Guest alumni discount
• Auto-notes functionality (example: Brooke sent Guest#123 a second deposit request)
• Send deposit request, final payment, booking complete emails to individual guest
• Auto-emails – “You’ve been added to the group”

Send Emails to Group and Guests

This is a key feature of the booking system available to the sales team which enables the automatic creating of branded, pre-formatted emails. These email are populated with default content, invoice details, trip details, and travel info.

These emails can be generated by the booking system and sent out by the sales team at key points during the booking process. Although default content will be setup for each of these emails, the sales team can override content, prices, and email content within each booking to suit their needs.

Standard emails sent to guests after they’ve initiated a booking may include.

• Send request for group deposit (includes attached invoice)
• Request for second deposit to individual guest or whole group
• Request for final payment to individual guest or whole group
• Booking Complete (“take me with you” package)

This saves the sales team having to manually assemble post-booking details as their requesting payment and confirming bookings. In addition the guest receives a professional, branded, comprehensive, visually consistent email each time one of these key communications happens.

3rd Party Integration

We have experience integrating the following systems with TripPress platform.

Transaction Providers

• Moneris
• Stripe
• Paypal

Reservation Systems

• Resco
• TourTools
• SoftTrips
• Peak15

Accounting

• Quickbooks

CRM

• Mailchimp
• Constant Contact
• MailerMailer
• SalesForce

Data Import / Export

• XML
• CSV
• TourTools