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Because Rezgo is flexible enough to adapt to all kinds of tour and activity booking setups, getting started can feel overwhelming. It doesn’t have to be! While you can dig deep into Rezgo’s settings and different availability configurations, you can also launch a fully-functional booking website in just a few steps.

STEP ONE: Load your tours and options

First, you need to load your inventory. In Rezgo, inventory is broken down into two major parts:

  • Items: These are your tours, events or activities. If you run three different bike tours that take guests to different parts of the city, you’d create three items, one for each tour.
  • Options: Options are the bookable versions of your items. If one of your items is available morning, afternoon or evening, you’d create those as three options for that item.

On top of items and options, you can also set up pricing tiers for your options for things that affect your pricing. Usually, these are used for age-related pricing, like Adult, Child and Senior.

Before you start creating items and setting up options, you should make sure you have your activity’s information ready to go. This includes your description, itinerary, schedule and photos, as well as your pricing.

Now, it’s time to create some items, then add some options to those items.

Along with the linked articles, you can check out our Getting Started video series or let our built-in onboarding help you get set up. Here are some specific videos that can help:

STEP TWO: Add a payment method

If you want to make money with online bookings, you need to be able to get paid. Once your tours are ready to go, you should think about how you’d like to take payment and convert your site visitors into paying customers.

Generally, that means taking payments through a payment gateway, through PayPal, or both. While Rezgo supports manual payment methods, most customers who book online will expect to pay online, too.

We support a number of payment gateways around the world, so take a look through the list and see which are available in your region:

Once you’ve set up an account with any of our supported gateways, you can find more instructions for configuring it to work with Rezgo in the article in that list. If you’d like to use PayPal either on its own or with another gateway, you can learn more here.

STEP THREE: Manage your other settings

Rezgo’s settings offer a lot of flexibility that can help make Rezgo perfect for your business. They let you customize the look and feel of your booking website and emails, the content of your notifications, the custom fields you include in the booking process, security and user groups, and much more.

The default settings are set up to cover the basic needs of the average Rezgo user, but every business is unique, and the average is probably not exactly right for your needs. Take a little time to learn more about everything you can customize and adjust by watching the videos in this article.

You’ll need to complete these three sections before you go live:

With those done, you’ll be ready to add Rezgo to your website and start taking bookings. But if you want to customize your Rezgo experience so it’s perfect for your business, you’ll also benefit from taking a look through the rest:

STEP FOUR: Add Rezgo to your website

You don’t need a website to use Rezgo. Rezgo gives you a booking website that you can customize and use right out of the box, so you can get started right away.

We do recommend having a company website, though. A professional company website offers a lot of benefits, including improved search engine optimization (SEO) and more customization and branding options.

We offer several ways to integrate Rezgo with any website.

  • A book now button or booking widget: This is the easiest option. If you have a website and you’ve set up Rezgo, all you need to do is add a Book Now button to your website in a prominent spot and link that button to your Rezgo website. Easy as can be! We also offer a booking widget if that’s your preferred approach.
  • The Rezgo WordPress plugin: This is a more customizable approach. It lets you add a fully-featured booking experience to any WordPress website. This offers a lot of flexibility and customization to any business that can manage a WordPress install or can work with a WordPress developer.
  • The Rezgo API: This is the most advanced option, recommended only for businesses that have experienced web developers on hand and that want to invest in a fully-custom integration for their website. This requires a lot of work and technical knowledge, but it will allow you to make a Rezgo integration that is truly unique to your business.

Remember, the Rezgo white label booking website is available to every Rezgo account. You can always start with the white label and consider more advanced integrations as you go.

STEP FIVE: Final testing and launch

To test the full booking experience on your Rezgo account, you’ll first need to make sure you have a credit card on file and then activate your account. You can learn more here:

Once your account is activated, you can start taking bookings right away. First, though, we recommend running through some basic tests to make sure your booking website is working correctly, and to experience the customer booking flow for yourself.

Consider running through the tests on a desktop browser and on a mobile phone to make sure the experience is perfect for all of your customers.

Note: If you’re testing with a live payment gateway, you may want to create a $1.00 test option in your inventory in order to test the payment process without charging a large transaction to your credit card.

  1. Using Firefox, Safari, or Chrome web browser, go to your Rezgo website.
  2. Look over your website to make sure any template customizations look how you expect them to look.
  3. Check to make sure your public tours are showing correctly in the tour list (and any private tours aren’t visible).
  4. Click one of the tours in your list to view the tour details.
  5. On the tour details page, check to make sure all the content you entered is showing as intended.
  6. Check the calendar to make sure the available dates for the tour are displaying as intended.
  7. Click on one of the available dates to view the options for the tour.
  8. Check to make sure the options displayed are the ones you wanted to display (based on your rules).
  9. Select one of the options.
  10. Make sure the pricing tiers are correct.
  11. Select a price tier by adding a quantity, and click Add to Order to continue to the secure booking process.
  12. Check that any related items you’ve added show up correctly before checkout.
  13. On the secure booking page, make sure that there is a padlock icon in URL bar.
  14. Check to make sure that all custom form fields are appearing as intended.
  15. Enter in sample (or live) data into the guest/passenger fields and click the next button. Use your own email if you want to confirm that notifications are working correctly.
  16. On the payment information page, enter your billing address information.
  17. Check to make sure your front-end payment methods are displaying as intended.
  18. If using a payment gateway, enter in payment information using a valid credit card.
  19. Click on the complete booking button.
  20. If payment is being made with a payment gateway, the resulting booking will be confirmed.  If the booking is made using any other payment method, the booking will be marked as NOT YET COMPLETE and payment status PENDING.
  21. Check the receipt to make sure all the information you expect is displaying as intended.
  22. Check your email to make sure you received a booking notification from Rezgo.
  23. If you added your email as the customer email for your test booking, check to make sure you received a customer booking confirmation.
  24. In Rezgo, check that the booking shows up in your booking list.
  25. Click on the booking to view the booking details.
  26. If the booking was paid using a payment gateway, then the corresponding transaction should be attached to the booking.
  27. Go to the Daily Manifest (under Bookings) and check the day of the booking to make sure your test booking’s passengers are listed.
  28. Go to Reports and check the booking report to make sure the booking is shown.
  29. If you are satisfied with the booking, change the status of the booking to CANCELLED.
  30. Refund the credit card transaction if needed.

Congratulations! You’re ready to start taking bookings.

From here, you can start digging deeper into the system to discover all the ways Rezgo can be used to increase your bookings and make your job easier.

If you haven’t, make sure to add a link to your website that points your customers to your Rezgo site. Follow the instructions in this tutorial video: