Rezgo.com

Is Rezgo Right for Your Tour Operator Business?

Stephen Joyce — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 20:04:08 +0000

We are often asked whether Rezgo would be a good fit for a particular tour operator’s business. The answer to that it really depends on whether or not their business is a traditional in-bound/out-bound tour operator who bundles airfare, hotels, and other products together and sells them as a package or whether they are an in-destination tour & activity provider that sells, for example, bicycle tours, attractions, bus tours, sightseeing tours, river rafting, aerial tours, and a host of others.

If you are a traditional tour operator, for example like WestJet Vacations, Nolitours, or Transat Holidays, or even a smaller tour operator but still focused on packaging, then Rezgo is probably not a fit for you. Rezgo does not support GDS connectivity and doesn’t work with accommodation product. If this is the kind of tour operator software system you need, then you are probably better off looking at Softvoyage (if you’re Canadian) or EzRez (if you’re everywhere else). There are a lot of tour operator software systems out there that support traditional tour operators.

If you are a tour operator who sells services like bike tours, whale watching, river rafting, zip-lining, guided hikes, and the like, then Rezgo is probably a really good fit for your business. Rezgo is designed to help tour operators to sell their services directly to the touring public. Rezgo has a whole host of features that are optimized for schedule based daily or half day activities.

To help you decide whether Rezgo is a right fit for you, we have prepared a few pages on the Rezgo site that go into a bit more detail about the differences between Rezgo and other tour operator software systems.

The Great Selection of Tours & Activities in Amsterdam

Stephen Joyce — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 05:52:59 +0000

Amsterdam City Tours offers sightseeing tours and excursions in and around Amsterdam and Holland. We also offer private sightseeing tours, bike tours, bus tours, canal boat tours, foreign-language tours, walking tours and sightseeing tours for schools & (corporate) groups.

See all of Amsterdam’s and Holland’s landmarks and attractions, including Amsterdam and its canals, de Keukenhof, Aalsmeer, Zaanse-Schans, Marken, Volendam, Windmills, Scheveningen, The Hague, Delft, Rotterdam, flowerfields, the Redlight District and many many more.

Our Amsterdam City Tour Guides will tell you all kind of interesting facts and information about Amsterdam and Holland.

To book your Amsterdam experience, visit Amsterdam City Tours at http://www.amsterdamcitytours.com.

5 Easy Tips to Increase Your Tour Sales with Rezgo

Phil Caines — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 20:20:26 +0000

1. Keep Your Brand

When customers are on your website and looking for their next amazing tour, activity, attraction or event, they want to feel that they are on a trust worthy site. One way to build trust is to keep your brand the central focus during the booking process. Here are 2 things you can do to keep consistency with your marketing site:

2. Sell the Experience Not the “tour”

Customers are looking for an experience that they will remember for years to come, and not just the features of the tour. Ensure that when you are writing your descriptions in Rezgo that you use descriptive and emotional language as well as the standard “features”.

Tell them the effect that viewing a museum will have on them. Compare these two descriptions:

“Spend 30 minutes in Ye Old Museum where 40 different old things reside”
“Be swept back in time at Ye Old Museum where 40 different exhibits will let you feel what life was like in the days of old”

As you can see, the second description is much more inspiring.

Pictures and video are a must. Did you know that 65% of all people are visual learners? This means when they can “see” an experience, they will be able to imagine themselves participating in the experience, which will lead to more sales.

Rezgo has incorporated a simple photo and video gallery that when used correctly is sure to increase your sales.

3. Give Incentives

Everyone wants a deal, with the economy rebounding, people want to travel, but a little incentive would definitely help. Rezgo has a built in “Promotion Code” system that gives you the ability to generate coupons for your consumers. These coupons can be used in your Google Ad-word promotions or you can feature a banner on your site that states “Use Promo Code: ONLINE to save 15% while booking online”

There are many ways that you can use the promo codes, but the fact remains, customers like to feel that they are getting a special deal. It is also helpful if you put a time restriction on the promotion, for example: “Use Promo code: SUMMERSALE before July 31st and save an additional 25% on all tours!”

Here is a good tutorial to help you set up your own promo codes.

4. Connect with Others

One of the beautiful things about Rezgo is that it lists your live availability. This means that you can stop picking up the phone when a customer wants to book a tour. Better yet, when your sales agents want to book your tours, you can set up a Vendor account with your products they they sell live, without having to call for availability.

Vendor accounts allow 3rd parties to receive a commission for selling your products. Rezgo has all of the reporting and tracking you need to see who is selling your products, and we can even help you distribute your commission checks.

There are a growing number of Vendors that are looking to sell more tour, activity and attraction products, so go to Rezgo Connect and see what is available. You can even sign up for your own Vendor account if you want to start selling other Rezgo Supplier inventory on your own website. There are many options to help you increase your revenues!

5. Link to Sell

The more inbound links you have connecting to your booking page means that your tours are liely to be found through search engines. We have a number of tools available to help you get your tours linked.

Submit a tour to be reviewed in our Amazing Tours Blog
Use our automatic “book-now” button generator to link your tours where ever they are mentioned on the Internet

Let Us Know

Have you found an interesting way to increase your sales in Rezgo? Share your ideas with the community!

Carribean Vacation Activities

Rezgo Support — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:02:48 +0000

Caribbean Vacation Activities is owned and operated by Louri Lynn Throgmorton and J. Summer Westman - both are full-time residents of St. Thomas. They live, work and play in the Caribbean.

Louri and Summer love the islands and want you to have a great time on your vacation, which is why they have traveled throughout the Caribbean and found the most fun things for you to do while you are visiting the islands.

Come meet the great people they have met; go on their tours; see the islands from the perspective of the people who live here. They know you’ll have fun!

Caribbean Vacation Activities offers a large variety of tours and activities on Rezgo’s online tour software. They have a large inventory on a variety of islands including St. Martin, Sint Maarten, St. Thomas, St. John, St. Croix, Dominica, Bonaire, Antigua, and Anguilla.

Aeon Tours Paris

Rezgo Support — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 19:02:42 +0000

City Tour Booking Software

Aeon Tours offers city tours of Paris. They focus on cultural tourism and have many unique tours which use Rezgo’s online booking software for their booking engine. You can see the Paris Essentials Tour, Louvre Museum Tour, Classic Marais Tour, Latin Quarter Tour, Palace of Versailles Tour, Paris Wine Tasting Tour, and Private Tours of Paris.

Wild West Horseback Adventures

Admin — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:36:34 +0000

Wild West Horseback Adventures uses Rezgo’s tour software to accept live tour bookings through their website.

Canadian Outback Adventures

Admin — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 18:29:04 +0000

Canadian Outback, Rafting, Tour Booking Software, Rezgo

Canadian Outback Adventures sell group events and river rafting adventures. Their tours and trips can all be booked online using our online tour reservation system, Rezgo.

North Van Green Tours

Phil Caines — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 18:32:07 +0000

NorthVan Green Tours uses Rezgo for online tour booking

NorthVan Green Tours uses a great Wordpress based site template to integrate with Rezgo. They feature some unique and environmentally friendly tours around Vancouver.

A Special Memory Wedding Chapel

Rezgo Support — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:57:07 +0000

A Special Memory Wedding Chapel uses Rezgo for their online wedding booking system. This is a great site with lots of exotic and interesting packages. If you are looking for a Vegas style wedding, this is your company!

Rezgo Breaks the 100 Country Mark!

Phil Caines — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 17:11:03 +0000

As of June 1st Rezgo has tour, activity and attraction suppliers in 100 different countries around the world! These suppliers use Rezgo to manage their online bookings, their back office bookings and are starting to use the powerful distribution capabilities.

The country that made the tipping point was Romania. Romania has seen some amazing growth in recent years with a year on year average GDP growth of over 6%. Tourism is also growing at about 4% each year. We welcome our Romanian suppliers and look forward to helping them increase their online bookings with Rezgo.

Discover Hawaii Tours

Rezgo Support — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 16:44:22 +0000

Discover Hawaii Tours

Discover Hawaii Tours has integrated the Rezgo booking system for the full range of their tours, activities and attractions all over Hawaii. This is a beautiful site!

Desert Adventures

Phil Caines — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 21:37:35 +0000

Desert Adventures

Important Update Regarding Upcoming Pricing Changes

Stephen Joyce — Wed, 20 May 2009 18:25:56 +0000

On May 1^st, 2009 we announced some major changes to Rezgo’s pricing model. Here is an overview of those changes:

Starting June 1^st, Rezgo is changing to a pay-for-performance pricing model.
All of Rezgo’s features including back-end bookings, multiple users, co-branded domain name and live credit card processing are now available to all members.
The default rate is 5% for bookings that are processed through the front-end of your site. These are bookings that are made by customers who visit your website and click on the “Book Now” (or equivalent) button and process a booking using the Rezgo booking functionality.

We Hear You

Since our announcement we have received some great feedback from our members. As a result of our member’s feedback we are adjusting the way that back-end bookings are charged so they reflect the way members are using the back-end to manage their businesses:

All back-end bookings are charged at a rate of 1% to a maximum charge of $300 per month. This means that you will never pay more than $300 regardless of how many bookings you add into Rezgo using the back-end booking interface.
If members do not use back-end bookings, they will not be charged for the use of the back-end bookings.

We feel this change allows all members to use our back-end system to consolidate their bookings and better manage their inventory. If you have never entered a back-end booking, sign-up for a free webinar and we will show you how it is done.

Lets make it work!

We value all of our members and want to work with each of you to find a solution that works with your business. We are happy to report that we have been contacted and have negotiated rate contracts with members representing over half of the bookings in Rezgo. If you want to negotiate a preferred rate contract, please contact us today.

What do you need to do?

There are some important changes that we need to mention. Before the end of May, if you have not negotiated a rate contract with Rezgo, you will be prompted to add your Visa or MasterCard when you login to Rezgo. This prompt can be ignored for now, but on June 1^st, if no contract has been made, or no credit card has been added, then you will be unable to access the back-end of your account. Don’t worry, you will still be able to accept bookings through the front-end of your site.

In order to avoid this situation there are three options:

Enter your credit card number (we will prompt you starting May 20^th) for monthly billing
Contact us to negotiate a special rate and monthly invoicing
Contact us to close your account

If none of these actions are taken by June 1^st, 2009 the back-end of your Rezgo account will not be accessible until you enter your credit card.

Thank You!

We appreciate your business and with your continued support we will continue to make Rezgo the best tour, attraction and activity booking platform in the World.

Rezgo In The Know - April

Rezgo Support — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 23:56:20 +0000

The Rezgo Community Keeps Growing

Rezgo has continued to experience massive growth over this past year, we now have over 800 accounts that are located in nearly 100 different countries all around the world!

In terms of the number of bookings that are going through the system, we have experienced our largest month ever for March. Year on year we have experienced nearly a 500% growth rate in the number of bookings!

With the difficult financial times, having a powerful online sales tool to help generate additional bookings is more important than ever. We look forward to helping you increase your bookings and having a stellar sales year.

Vouchers and Check-In

Rezgo has added a voucher and check-in system to our supplier accounts. Vouchers have multiple uses; they help suppliers ensure that those people going to their attraction have not duplicated their receipt; they help customers feel confident that they have purchased a tour and have official proof; and they help Vendors ensure that bookings that go through their marketing site will be verified.

Vouchers are given to customers in three situations:

The booking comes from a Vendor
The supplier has a payment gateway integrated with their front end
The supplier changes the booking from “Payment Pending” to “Payment Received” in the Bookings section of the Rezgo Supplier back-end

For more information, see our video and support article

Get Connected

We have done a soft launch of Rezgo Connect, the social network for connecting tour and activity Suppliers with their reselling Vendors. We have several Vendors that are in the process of setting up accounts and we are also in the process of signing more Vendors to our network.

Rezgo Connect is an opportunity for Suppliers to increase their distribution capabilities beyond their traditional marketing sphere. If you have not set up your Rezgo Connect Qualifications, here is a tutorial for getting you started.

New Features

We are constantly upgrading Rezgo to include new and powerful features. Here are some highlights from the last updates:

For Suppliers:

Channel management

Supplier can specify which vendor can sell each option. Default is open to all vendors
If supplier doesn’t want to sell, they can specify ‘Not list in marketplace’
Hidden tours are not listed in supplier FE, but is listed in vendor FE if vendor sets as selling

Agent assignment (Rezgo Pro)

Booking manager or higher admin users can view all bookings.
They can assign a booking to an booking agent.
Sending email to the agent is optional when you assign a new booking.
Booking agent can view only assigned bookings and own offline bookings.

For Vendors:

Channel management

Only specified options are appeared in the search result.

White label / logo

Vendor can upload a logo so that any supplier that signs up through the Vendor will see the Vendor’s logo on their back-end.

If you need any additional information, be sure to search our Support Site.

58 New Regions/Locations Added to the Rezgo Location Database

Stephen Joyce — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 22:27:27 +0000

The following locations and regions have been added to the Rezgo Location Database. If you requested one of these locations, you can now update your company and product details and choose the updated location. Remember, if you ever need a location added to the database, just let us know. We have over 12,000 locations in the database now, but we know there are more.

Thanks to all the suppliers who submitted updated locations!

PHILIPSBURG,netherlands antilles,AN
SZENTENDRE,hungary,HU
ESZTERGOM,hungary,HU
MT TAMBORINE,,QLD,australia,AU
MONTVILLE,,QLD,australia,AU
BEERWAH,,QLD,australia,AU
STRADBROKE ISLAND,,QLD,australia,AU
LOTUS,,CA,united states,US
KIRKCALDY,united kingdom,GB
CLUNY,united kingdom,GB
BAYAHIBE,dominican republic,DO
AGNES WATER,,QLD,australia,AU
TARTU,estonia,EE
NARVA,estonia,EE
PALDISKI,estonia,EE
LAHEMAA,estonia,EE
GIBSONS,,BC,canada,CA
RAKVERE,estonia,EE
SEMPORNA,malaysia,MY
POMPONG ISLAND,malaysia,MY
BORACAY ISLAND,philippines,PH
LAC BAY,netherland antilles,AN
KRALENDIJK,netherland antilles,AN
JOSHUA TREE,,CA,united states,US
SAN ANDREAS,,CA,united states,US
RED HOOK,virgin islands, us,VI
ROATAN,honduras,HN
AHUAS,honduras,HN
BRUS LAGUNA,honduras,HN
CATACAMAS,honduras,HN
CAUQUIRA,honduras,HN
COMAYAGUA,honduras,HN
COPAN,honduras,HN
CORONEL ENRIQUE,honduras,HN
COYOLES,honduras,HN
ERANDIQUE,honduras,HN
GRACIAS,honduras,HN
GUALACO,honduras,HN
GUANAJA,honduras,HN
IRIONA,honduras,HN
JUTICALPA,honduras,HN
LA ESPERANZA,honduras,HN
LA UNION,honduras,HN
LAS LIMAS,honduras,HN
LIMON,honduras,HN
MARCALA,honduras,HN
OLANCHITO,honduras,HN
PALACIOS,honduras,HN
PUERTO LEMPIRA,honduras,HN
SAN ESTEBAN,honduras,HN
SANTA ROSA COPAN,honduras,HN
SULACO,honduras,HN
TELA,honduras,HN
TOCOA,honduras,HN
TRUJILLO,honduras,HN
UTILA,honduras,HN
VICTORIA,honduras,HN
YORO,honduras,HN

Another Record Booking Month for Rezgo

Stephen Joyce — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 07:31:14 +0000

Even with all the global financial chaos happening, Rezgo seems to be moving right along. February again is a record breaking month with over $287K in direct to supplier booking volume compared to $59,750 in sales for the same month last year. This months sales represent a 480% increase in volume in only 12 months. When you take a look at the revenue graph, you would have expected to see February sales volume to drop. Instead, however, we saw an increase in sales for February.

Managing Bookings is Now Even Simpler

Rezgo Support — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 00:17:46 +0000

Managing Bookings is Now Even Simpler

We are changing the way that bookings are organized in Rezgo. We have added new ways to organize, label, set the booking status and archive all of your bookings.

If you found it difficult to create folders and set your booking status, we heard you. Now you can set the booking status and add various labels to each of your bookings. This allows for accurate records and more intuitive organization.

If you were overwhelmed by all of the bookings that were coming in through Rezgo, we also heard you. We have now added an archive function that allows you to hide bookings that have passed or have been processed. You can always do a special search and bring them up at any time.

We have made several other changes that will effect your account, please watch our short video and read through our changes on our support site:

Click Here To View Video

Connecting is Even Easier

We have included a Tab to link directly to your Rezgo Connect account from the backend of Rezgo. We are just integrating the system, and are looking to add additional vendors.

If you are interested in distributing your tours and activities through Rezgo Connect, log-in and fill out your qualifications and start connecting with the existing vendors. Here is a quick video to show you how it is done:

Click Here To View Video

If you need any additional information, be sure to search our Support Site.

Direct to Consumer Bookings Increase Four Fold

Stephen Joyce — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 21:52:09 +0000

January 2009 has been a record month and we are excited about the continued growth of the Rezgo.com platform with our supplier members. In January of 2008, we recorded $75,500 worth of bookings (converted to USD for reporting purposes). In January of 2009, booking revenues jumped to over $274,750, an increase of over 360%. We anticipate that this level of growth will continue as more suppliers continue to join Rezgo.com and actively use the system to generate both direct to consumer and distributed bookings.

Rezgo and Planeteye are Creating New Opportunities for Tourism Companies

Phil Caines — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 21:11:39 +0000

Rezgo and PlanetEye, two travel technology innovators have joined forces to feature unique and interesting destination tours and activities to travelers around the World. Using Rezgo’s distribution capabilities, PlanetEye will import, map, and display local tours and activities from suppliers who use the Rezgo Supplier system. Travelers will not only have the opportunity to find out more about these products in a visual way, but will also be able to book the activities in real-time through the PlanetEye website.

“PlanetEye wants travellers to find and experience unique activities around the world, and our partnership with Rezgo.com is an important part of our strategy,” said Butch Langlois, PlanetEye’s CEO and president. “We partnered with Rezgo because it has a growing inventory of independent destination tours and activities that are really exciting. We’re particularly excited about making a positive impact on local tourism at the destinations we feature.”

“We are really excited about the partnership with PlanetEye.” says Stephen Joyce, CEO of Rezgo.com. “Rezgo is all about bringing local tour and activity products further up the travel buying ladder and making destination activities an important part of the decision making process for travelers. The PlanetEye Vendor platform means that travelers can find and book activities at destinations in a visually compelling way. When the Rezgo Supplier system connects with the Rezgo Vendor platform, tour and activity providers gain greater opportunities to get their products in front of travelers.”

PlanetEye.com is connected with the Rezgo Vendor platform and are looking to feature additional tour and activity products on their travel planning website through Rezgo.

About Rezgo.com
Rezgo.com is a powerful yet simple suite of tools for tour and activity suppliers. Rezgo combines travel best practices, powerful e-commerce tools, and an innovative distribution platform to help deliver tour and activity products to retail partners and travelers all over the world.

About PlanetEye
PlanetEye is a one-stop destination for all your travel planning needs. The goal is to make travel planning easy. Featuring a powerful and easy-to-use planning tool; beautiful geo-tagged photographs; leading edge mapping technology and extensive travel content from a team of in-house writers and a growing number of professional sources, PlanetEye is designed for travelers who want a new and exciting way to explore where to go and what to do.

For more information about Rezgo.com, please call 604-983-083 or visit www.rezgo.com. For more information about PlanetEye, please call 647-728-4847 or visit www.planeteye.com.

Get Ready for the New Year - It’s Your Time to Shine

Stephen Joyce — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 19:47:55 +0000

As we wrap up an exciting and dramatic 2008, we look for new opportunities to grow in 2009. Part of that growth is helping you, our members, to improve your business processes and increase your sales. The Rezgo team would also like to extend a warm Thank you to all of you who have helped make Rezgo the leading tour & activity booking solution.

Expand Your Distribution With Rezgo

We are ready to launch the next evolution of Rezgo! In the coming months we are launching a social community that connects Rezgo Suppliers with Rezgo Vendors, called RezgoConnect. This innovative platform will allow any Rezgo Supplier to connect with our growing network of Vendors to resell and distribute their products. This will increase the Supplier’s reach of their products, and increase their sales throughout the year. Vendors will gain access to a growing mix of unique destination product like river rafting, bike tours, city tours, whale watching, cultural tours, attractions and activities.

We have designed RezgoConnect to cut through the normal clutter of establishing a distribution partnership by giving both parties access to all of the necessary information to connect. Both parties can negotiate commission levels, view each others qualifications, view the transaction history of each other and most importantly connect!

RezgoConnect is scheduled for a mid-December release, and our transaction system is scheduled for January. This means that you will be able to connect with Vendors/Supplier this month, and in January we will have an expanded transaction system that will allow you to receive bookings from third parties. If you are interested in utilizing this new system, there are some steps you can take to ensure that you are ready to distribute:

Load all the products you want to sell through distribution into your Rezgo account.
Make sure your tour information completed, interesting, and written well (no spelling or grammatical errors) and ensure that you add media and Geo tags.
Complete your About Us information and your Booking Terms and Conditions.

Rezgo Tips

Our support site is a great place to go if you are looking to expand your knowledge of how to get the most out of the system. If you require additional training, we also offer some support packages.

Have you wanted to ask for additional information from your customers? Do you have some great add-ons that you would like to offer your customers? The answer is using form fields, click here for more information.
Do you offer tours on specific days, and don’t know how to set them up? The answer is using rules to manage your availability, click here for more information.
Do you have several tours that you want to organize on your website? The answer is using tags/categories to sort out your tours, click here for more information.

Travel Industry News

PhoCusWright predicts travel bookings will jump by 19 percent in 2008 despite global economic challenges. Economic outlook for 2009 points to online booking as an area of growth where other areas in the tourism industry are declining. This is good news for Rezgo users! Rezgo is helping independent tour and activity suppliers save time and money while also expanding their distribution capabilities. For more information on the article goto: http://www.hospitalitynet.org/news/4038865.html

Updated Support Site

Rezgo is all about being transparent on open, and we have found a tool that offers support in exactly that way. GetSatisfaction is an open forum for talking about products, getting support, or saying something nice. We have integrated GetSatisfaction with our support site. If you have something nice to say, need support, or noticed a bug, head on over to our GetSatisfaction site support request through our online forms. and let us know. Of course you can always send us a

Rezgo’s New Users and the Amazing Tour Blog

Many of our Rezgo members have been featured on our Amazing Tour Blog. This blog highlights some of the most unique, crazy, extreme, or just amazing tours from all around the world. If you are interested in having one of your tours featured, let us know on our Rezgo Contact Page.

What Is New With You?

Have you added a new tour, are you expanding locations, have great new employee? Share your news with the Rezgo community and we may feature it in our monthly news letter.

To submit news send an email with the subject “Newsletter” to info@rezgo.com

Rezgo In The News

We have been featured in a number of articles and press releases this past month: