The first and most important thing to remember is that the daily deal sites need you more than you need them.  Don’t settle for the standard rates.  Make sure you negotiate a better split for your business and put an upper limit on the number of vouchers you sell and the expiry of the deal.  You don’t want to end up selling out your entire season’s worth of available seats at 75% off!  Needless to say, if you did that, you probably wouldn’t have a next season and we don’t want that either.

Once you’ve decided to move ahead with a daily deal, follow these steps in Rezgo to make sure you simplify the experience both for you and for your customers.

Set-up for Success

1. Create a separate tour for the daily deal.  The tour should be different from your regular tour and should not be visible on your regular tour list. You can do this by making your tour PRIVATE.  This way, it can only be reached through the link provided on the daily deal site after the voucher is purchased in the redemption instructions.

2. If you can, add an add-on to the tour that adds a value to the tour but has little cost to you.  Perhaps combine it with a restaurant or an attraction who is willing to provide a free lunch or free entry (where the cost to you is $0).  This increases the value of the tour and so, when you discount it by 50%, the discounted price is higher.  Remember, you are not artificially inflating your tour price (as some merchants have been caught doing), you are in fact offering more and therefore are justified in pricing it higher.  Set the price for the tour option that you create for this tour to the discounted value.  This way, your reports will show the discounted price as the amount paid for the tour.  When you reconcile your vouchers with the daily deal site, you’ll be able to apply the commission paid to the daily deal site as a marketing expense against the revenue made for the tours.  Setting up your tour this way will also make it easier to see whether or not the group deal has any impact on the bookings for your regular products.

Any opportunity to increase the value of your tour without increasing your cost means more money in your pocket at the end of the day.  This is also why it must be different from your regular tour because you do not want to devalue your existing offerings.

3. Specify as part of your terms that the deal is for online bookings of tours only and subject to availability.  This way, you avoid getting swamped with phone calls which can take valuable time out of your day.  Make sure to set up some availability rules that restrict the days that the daily deal tour can be booked.  You generally want to use the daily deals to push slow or low season days or periods.  You can do this by using the Rules manager in Rezgo.  This is an important point because the daily deal site will try to get you to offer your regular tour.  Don’t do it!  How will your full customers feel sitting next to someone who just paid 50% less.

3. Add a custom form field to the option for this tour that is “Daily Deal Voucher #” with the following example instructions.

“Please enter your daily deal voucher id in the space provided.  Once we confirm the validity of your voucher we will confirm your booking.  Select “Daily Deal Voucher” as your payment method during booking. Your original voucher must be presented at the time you take the tour or your tour will be cancelled.”

4. Add a manual payment method called “Prepaid voucher” or “Daily Deal Voucher”.  The customers will select this payment method when they complete the booking instead of the usual Paypal or Credit Card payment method.

What you want to remember is that the voucher that the customer has purchased from the daily deal site is a form of payment for your services, not actual payment for your services.  When the booking is made, they use the voucher which they bought from the daily deal site to pay for the tour.  In the same way a gift certificate might be used to pay for a tour.

When the booking comes in, you should check the voucher code that is entered by the customer with your list provided by the daily deal company.  If it is valid, then change the status of the bookign to “Confirmed” and Rezgo will send out a confirmation email.  The customer will receive their voucher and receipt via email.  If the voucher is invalid, you can either cancel the booking or ask the customer for a valid voucher number.  Remember to collect the vouchers on site when they arrive for back-up.

Post Deal

Once your deal is all done, go into the booking report and make sure to run a report for the time period during which time the deals were redeemed.  Because you set up the tour as a separate tour and option, you’ll be able to sort your data by tour name and option in order to see how many bookings you received and your revenues (not including commission to the daily deal site).  You can then cross reference your numbers in the system with the records from the daily deal site to determine how well (or not) the promotion worked for you.

Having a software system that accepts daily deals doesn’t help you make money, understanding how to use the system to structure and execute a profitable deal does make you money.  Daily deal promotions are expensive and can be time consuming.  Following some simple planning steps and setting up your availability and rules the right way can go a long way to making your daily deal experience a positive one.

• You can now bulk archive bookings instead of just archiving one by one.  This is particularly useful if you have a lot of old bookings that you want removed from your bookings list.  Archived bookings are still shown in all reports and manifests.  Thanks to Peter at Shearwater Tours for reminding us not to forget this feature.
• Custom form fields are now included in the booking report.  For those members who use custom form fields to collect extra information from customers, this is a great feature.  Custom form field results were only available in manifest reports on a per tour/per date basis.  You can now choose to display custom form fields as part of the booking report and then export them if desired. Thanks to Mt. Rainier Scenic Railway for suggesting this feature.
• The copy email feature has been moved to the option level.  The copy email feature now allows you send an email notification to a specific email address when a particular option is booked.  This is particularly useful if you need to notify a guide or third party that a specific tour option has been booked in Rezgo.
• We have removed the Java based image uploader and replaced it with an new version that is easier to use and doesn’t require any additional installations or downloads.
• The image gallery allows you to change the sort order of your images in the image gallery.  The thumbnails for images has also been increased and the manager lets you re-crop a thumbnail if you are not happy with the current version.  The maximum width of the images in the image gallery has been increased to 800 pixels.
• Gallery images used to be compressed into thumbnails and space surrounding the image would be filled with white space in order to create a square image.  Gallery images now show up with edge to edge cropping so they are more aesthetically pleasing when viewed in the booking interface.
• Adding and editing inventory has been completely redesigned in order to make it easier to add new tours/activities and edit existing items.  The error handling for the adding and editing process has also been improved making required fields more obvious as you go through the add or edit process.
• We have also improved and clarified some of the instructions that apply to the add and edit inventory process.  Hopefully, these changes will make things easier for both new and existing Rezgo members.

In addition to the new features, we’ve also fix a number of bugs including:

• Custom form dropdown values not being selected on booking edit.
• Spacing on booking edit occasionally shows $1000 values as $1. Thanks to Life is an Adventure for helping us debug this one.
• Phone XML fields returning unexpected response.
• Credit card details showing a broken image in Rezgo account settings.
• Rezgo invoice details not appearing in certain circumstances.
• Exported booking manifest is not showing all fields.
• Some navigation breadcrumbs are not showing correctly (beta).
• Vendor transaction report does not include bookings with deleted inventory.
• IE rendering errors on changing images in the gallery (beta).
• Image crop screen is cutting off elements when larger images are used.

We have a fairly good list of feature requests that we are already working on.  If you have a specific feature you would like to see added to the system and you would like us to review it for consideration, please visit http://www.getsatisfaction.com/rezgo and submit your idea.  If your idea makes it into a release, we’ll be sure to give you credit for suggesting it.

Look for updated video tutorials coming soon.

But what will these messages do for you as a small business.  Well, to be totally brutally honest, I don’t think you need to worry about it or even care.  What these messages will do is make it easier for other systems to connect to your Rezgo accounts in order to share your data.  So, for example, if you want to create a relationship with some third-party website and they want your tour data, you just point them to the Rezgo API and give them your credentials.  Simple as that.

In the long-term our goal is make it simpler for larger travel technologies like Expedia, Orbitz, and Travelocity to connect to Rezgo and resell your tours and activities the same way they do hotel rooms or airline seats.  Even though they can do that now, to some degree, they can’t do it with real-time availability. The problem is that they need access to a lot of data to make it worth their while.  By growing Rezgo and building an API that is OpenTravel compliant, we are positioning you and your tours/activities to be picked up and marketed by these players.  Will that happen now? Not in the short-term, but all of these relationships take time and effort to develop.

The publishing of the OTA_TourActivity messages means a lot to me personally and to Rezgo as a company.  It is a reflection of our continued commitment to improve the opportunities for small business in the travel industry and to continue to develop the in-destination tour and activity segment as a whole.  In an increasingly crowded space where new booking engines are popping up all the time, I’m reassured by the knowledge that no one in the segment is more involved and understands the space better than we do.

You can find out more about the 2011B Publication here: http://www.opentravel.org/News/ArticleView.aspx?ArticleID=134

The first thing to look at is whether or not your offerings are obvious to visitors.  When you go to your homepage, is it obvious what you do?  Do you make it clear that you are a tour or activity operator and do you clearly describe what you do?  Another way to see if your homepage is good at directing visitors to the right information is to look at your Google Analytics.  If your homepage has a really high exit ratio (30% or more) then you should consider reworking the content to be more effective.  This is a clear indicator that visitors to your homepage are not getting the information they need or don’t know where to go next, so they are simply leaving your site.

A good way to get them down the booking path is to add direct links to your tour offerings right from your home page. If you have a fairly detailed website, this may be links to your tour detail pages.  Alternatively, you can point them to your offerings by creating a link to your tour list on Rezgo.

You might want to consider using the Rezgo content widget to embed your tour list directly on the home page or even consider adding a date search tool.  This helps to drive the customer into the path to conversion right off the home page.

In this example from the Napa Valley Wine Train, a reservation box is placed prominently on the home page.  Notice that it is in the upper left hand side of the page and it is distinctively colored.  This is a highly visible area and also helps to draw attention to the reservation box.

In this example from Helicopter New York City, you can see a bright red “Book Now” button is prominently displayed on the main image on the home page.  You’ll also notice that the right side bar is using the Rezgo content widget which displays all the available tours in a convenient compact list.  The visitor, as a result, is presented with multiple opportunities to enter the booking path.

In summary, if you are looking for some simple ways to help improve your conversions, try these useful techniques:

1. Place the book now button on the home page with a link to your tour list.
2. Use the Rezgo content widget on your home page or side bar.
3. Create a reservation date search box on your home page or side bar to make it easy for customers to search for available tours.
4. Highlight your tours directly on your home.
5. Use terms like “Book Now” or “Make a Reservation”. These are action oriented phrases that drive visitors to the booking path.
6. Make your “Book Now” links available throughout the visitor’s experience.  In other words have your “Book Now” button in multiple places.

If you’ve tried other techniques that you think are useful, please feel free to share your experiences.  We love to share practical and useful advice from other operators.

What is Rezgo?
Rezgo is a cloud based software as a service reservation platform that allows tour/activity operators such as adventure outfitters, sightseeing companies, events, attractions, and activity brokers to manage their businesses (both online and offline) more efficiently. Rezgo provides businesses with PCI compliant online booking capabilities, back-office management, integrated payment processing, reporting, distribution, and social integration. More information about Rezgo can be found at: http://www.rezgo.com.

A Little about the Rezgo XML API
The Rezgo XML API is a fully capable interface to the Rezgo platform. The API can be used to retrieve tour/activity details and content, search for tours/activities based on a variety of criteria, search for availability, process bookings (with payment), and retrieve booking details. The XML API is used by the existing Rezgo hosted booking engine, so everything the front-end booking engine can do, the XML is capable of doing as well. For the purposes of Thack Boston, developers will have access to a Rezgo Vendor account which currently contains over 300 products from tour operators who currently use the Rezgo system. Developers will have the ability to search for tours, retrieve detailed contents, and request availability. Because this is a live account, developers are encouraged to take the booking process to the payment step, but not beyond. If you choose to complete a sample booking, we recommend you use the pre booking data and mimic the process of completing the booking.

The sample Rezgo vendor website & account that will be used:
http://amazing.rezgo.com
CID: p103
API Key: 2D8-F3V0-X7C0-C6I

Details about the available messages can be found at:
http://support.rezgo.com/category/developers

An open source version of the complete booking engine (front-end) is available for download at:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/rezgo/

What can you build with this API?

Well, you can build pretty much anything to do with searching, finding, reviewing, and booking tours and activities.  Since the tour data has geo-location data associated with it, you may want to consider doing something mobile or location based.  Here are a few suggestions:

Mobile booking app – A mobile interface to the booking process, with the ability to find activities close by (try Vegas or Amsterdam for this example because there are lots of products in these destinations)
Inspiration finder – A site that examines the tags and sorts products based on a visitor’s preference.
Trip builder – Choosing products from multiple sources and combining them in a single itinerary. For example, combining Rezgo with a hotel XML API to create dynamic packages.

Some Tips
Don’t be afraid to use the code base in the open source PHP parser. A lot of the grunt work has been done so feel free to reuse as much as possible. We will be on site to answer questions and provide guidance. The XML API is built on a logical flow of requests and responses. This structure uses the following steps:

1. Search for and retrieve all tours to display in a list.
2. Choose a specific tour, retrieve the details for the tour
3. Fetch the month availability and display it on the tour detail page.
4. Choose a date from the availability calendar and return availability for bookable options on specific date.
5. Select the number of guests and ensure that the number is equal to or less than the availability.
6. Gather customer information and payment for booking.
7. Send customer info and payment to Rezgo for processing.
8. Retrieve the booking transaction number (booking number) and display the voucher (if appropriate).

Much Better Adventures put adventure seekers in direct contact with independent providers in adventure hotspots around the world and are offering a unique opportunity for locally owned accommodation, outfitters, guides and instructors like you to promote your business and destination for free.

They work alongside many industry leaders and are developing a number of marketing partnerships which will ultimately expose their members to millions of targeted web users.

As part of your membership with Rezgo, you can now receive the following discounts when you sign up to Much Better Adventures:

1. A free detailed company profile with website and contact link
2. A 25% discount on all annual ‘muchbetter’ account packages (usually from £40/year) and detailed listings (usually £15/listing)*
3. A very appealing 6% commission option available to add unlimited listings to the directory if you prefer to pay nothing upfront.

*This offer is applicable to new members only.

You can find out more and create your free company profile in minutes by visiting www.muchbetteradventures.com/apply.

Alternatively, please feel free to email Sam directly (sam AT muchbetteradventures DOT com) for more information and to discuss how you can work together.

Looking forward to seeing you in the Much Better community soon!

The Offer from MuchBetterAdventures.com

Much Better Adventures has sent all Rezgo members an offer to resell their tours.  If you are a Rezgo member, you should have received an offer via email already.  If you have unsubscribed from the mailing list, you can find out more about this offer from Much Better Adventures by doing the following:

1. Login to your Rezgo account at http://login.rezgo.com
2. In the upper right hand corner of the administration interface, click on the “Connect” button.
3. You should now be in the RezgoConnect site. If this is your first visit, you will need to agree to the RezgoConnect terms.
4. On the RezgoConnect home page you will see a dashboard on the right hand side of the page.
5. Click on the link that says “X” New Requests.
6. You will see a new request for Much Better Adventures.
7. Click on the offer from Much Better Adventures.
8. View the Much Better Adventures’ vendor profile and if you accept the offer, click the “Accept Offer” link.
9. If you wish to counter or reject the offer to connect, click on the appropriate link.
10. You can now return to the main Rezgo administration by clicking on the “Go to My Rezgo Account” button below your Dashboard.

Once connected, your tours and activities will be available for resale through the Much Better Adventures website. You can find their Rezgo Marketplace here:

http://muchbetteradventures.rezgo.com

Should you have any questions regarding this offer, please contact us.

Thank you for doing what you do!

Last month, we celebrated our 4th birthday. It’s been an amazing few years and we’re excited to be helping so many really cool businesses like yours. We ran some numbers and found out some pretty amazing things. Why not check out the post and infographic that we created to help celebrate.

Three new ways to help generate revenue

We are very happy to announce that we have secured three new distribution partners: PocketVillage.com, FlexTrip.com, and MuchBetterAdventures.com. All three are well respected brands in the adventure and tours/activities segments. Watch your inbox for an invitation to connect from these three new partners. They are eager to connect and sell your tours/activities to their audiences.

Let your voice be heard!

We are already planning the next round of releases for August to December 2011. We need to know what features are important to the Rezgo community so we can plan appropriately. Take a look at http://www.getsatisfaction.com/rezgo and let us know what features and functions you think would be a big boost to your business. Ideally we are looking for things that will make a difference for everyone. Your feedback will help us determine what features to build in what order.

Facebook: Like your way to the top!

We are pleased to bring you this special exclusive newsletter series from our partner in Australia, MyWebSchool.com. This is the first of 12 articles we will be sending out as part of our regular monthly newsletter.

Youtube, TripAdvisor, Twitter, Facebook… the list goes on. Social Media is becoming vital to the success of your business, your customers are using it every day, in fact over 700 Million people world wide and over 48% of Aussies are on Facebook and using it regularly but do you know how to best utilise Facebook to benefit your business and get the most out of your efforts?

A little planning and an easy to do list goes a long long way so we have helped out with both. Learn how to get it right from the start so you can like your way to the top with a successful Facebook strategy.

http://www.mywebschool.com/blog/social-media-2/like-your-way-to-the-top-of-facebook/?utm_source=Rezgo&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=likeFB

“Explicitly state or imply that users of the plugin must pay you money in order to use the plugin.”

When we reviewed our description and installation instructions, it did sound like you had to pay money to use the plugin.  So, we have re-written the description and installation instructions to make it clear that the plugin is free to install and activate.  We then submitted the plugin to the directory for approval.  We’re happy to report that the plugin is back in and can be downloaded and installed as usual.

In order to continue getting updates to the plugin, you must deactivate and remove the old plugin and install the new plugin.  That said, if you have any custom templates or changes that you have made to the source, you will need to make a back-up copy of the files before you remove the old plugin.  Once you install the new plugin, you can go ahead and move the files back.

I can fully appreciate that the difficulty that the plugin support team must have keeping up with all the WordPress plugins and hopefully we won’t have this issue again.  If you can, please go to the WordPress.org site and give us a good rating.  Kevin has worked really hard on putting that plugin together and it would be great to give him some 5 star love!

• Checkout the New & Improved Rezgo Online Booking Plugin for WordPress

On July 7, 2011 Rezgo celebrated its fourth birthday. What started as a part time development project for Sentias Software Corp. has turned into a full time passion for the North Vancouver based company. Rezgo, a leading reservation platform designed specifically for the tour and activity market, has been quietly building its International client base and is now used by hundreds of companies from the U.S., South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

“We are primarily an export software business. We build technology locally in North Vancouver with a core team of passionate developers and we sell it to businesses all over the World. Our goal of developing a strong focused product and providing quality customer support is helping us to build a global brand.” says Stephen Joyce, CEO of Rezgo “We have also invested heavily in educating the travel industry about the value of the tour and activity segment. This culminated, most recently, with the release of the PhoCusWright report which Rezgo helped sponsor. That report estimated the in-destination tour and activity segment to be worth over US $27 Billion.”

Rezgo helps tourism based businesses such as adventure outfitters, sightseeing companies, attractions, and activity brokers to manage and market their businesses more eficiently by providing an integrated suite of features including secure online booking, integration with credit card processors, inventory management, point of sale, voucher printing, reports, integration with WordPress, and a Facebook booking application.

“What makes Rezgo different from other online scheduling and booking systems is that Rezgo is designed specifically for the needs of tour and activity businesses. The business of running a river rafting company or a sightseeing tour is fundamentally different than running a bed & breakfast or a campground.” adds Mr. Joyce “We don’t try to do everything, we just focus on what we do best and that is serving the tour and activity market.”

That focus is paying off.  Since its launch on July 7, 2007 Rezgo has grown steadily both in members and in number of bookings. In the past three years the system has experienced consistent annual growth of 150% in the total value of all bookings generated in the system. Travel Industry research firm, PhoCusWright, recently reported that 86% of small tourism businesses are not using a reservation system to manage their day to day operations. Rezgo expects to see continued growth in both business adoption and booking volume as the demand for industry specific reservation platforms increases.

Mr. Joyce adds “We are fully aware that we will need to continue to help educate operators in order to get them to adopt tools like Rezgo. It is what we have done all along and we’ll continue to do it because it’s important. We are excited to be working with so many dynamic and interesting small businesses and we are honored that they continue to place their trust in Rezgo.”

Rezgo is an active contributor to the Open Travel Alliance, a global travel messaging standards body, and the Adventure Travel Trade Association. Rezgo CEO, Stephen Joyce, is also Chair of the Board of Directors of the Open Travel Alliance and speaks frequently at travel industry conferences worldwide.

Mr. Joyce expects to see continued growth for Rezgo as more and more tour and activity providers make the move to online booking. Companies interested in finding out more about Rezgo are invited to visit the Rezgo website at www.rezgo.com and to sign-up at no cost.

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Media Contact:
Stephen Joyce, CEO
Rezgo.com
(604) 983-0083
stephen.joyce@rezgo.com

 Rezgo stats for the last 48 months

• Processed over $41 Million worth of bookings (converted to USD)
• Over 200,000 bookings
• 400,000 + passengers
• 1600+ companies signed-up
• 86 countries represented
• Out of 80 supported currencies: Euro, USD, and AUD are the top three most popular currencies in Rezgo
• Over 6,200 tours & activities
• 13,000 + tour images
• 3,200 + unique geotags
• Out of 17 Global payment gateways: Paypal, Authorize.net, and ChasePaymentech are the top three most popular in Rezgo

Happy 4th Birthday Rezgo – An Infographic

Most recently, we have been working with the ATTA on their Distribution Working Group helping to educate and provide guidance in distribution technologies for the adventure travel space.  We believe that by being engaged active members, we will have a positive impact on the segment and help drive growth and exposure for operators across the globe.

• Find out more about the Adventure Travel Trade Association