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Named Tickets
Traditionally in tours and activities bookings, particularly with day tours, only the lead passenger name has been collected at time of booking. "Named Tickets" as a concept relates to the increasing requirement attractions have to know the exact names for each ticket sold, increasingly traveller names are verified against ID on arrival.
In the TourCMS API the implementation of support for "Named Tickets" includes the following:
- An indication prior to booking as to whether "Named Tickets" are expected
- Provision for associating customers with tickets at point of booking
- Viewing which customers are associated with which tickets post-booking
Additionally some other areas of TourCMS respect "Named Tickets":
- TourCMS standard hosted voucher will display one ticket per customer with their name on
- Users in TourCMS Back office booking screen can see which customers are associated with which tickets
Check which products expect "Named Tickets"
TourCMS Show Tour endpoint includes a flag indicating if a tour operator desires "Named Tickets", additionally it details which fields are required:
<tour>
<tour_id>1234<tour_id>
...
<new_booking>
...
<required_fields>
<field>
<name>firstname</name>
<scope>leadpax</scope>
<require>require</require>
</field>
<field>
<name>surname</name>
<scope>allpax</scope>
<require>reject</require>
</field>
</required_fields>
<additional_criteria>
<criteria>
<name>named_tickets</name>
</criteria>
</additional_criteria>
</new_booking>
</tour>
A <require> value of require indicates the field is required but bookings will not be rejected if the information is not provided, reject indicates a booking request would be rejected if the information was not provided.
Additionally a separate List Tour Booking Restrictions endpoint has been provided to retrieve just this information, but potentially for multiple tours. This can be useful to check a shopping cart full of products to see which require "Named Tickets".
Associating customers with tours / tickets
When calling Start New Booking you can provide the required information for each customer, and then associate each customer with the ticket they are purchasing. To associate a customer with a booking component add a <customers> node within the component containing the index (order) each customer appears in the main <customers> node in the root of the booking, plus the id for the rate they are associated with.
For example, to book 1 adult and 1 child on a Named Ticket tour, provide the four customers in the root of the booking as normal, then when adding the component to the booking you can associate one customer with the adult rate (often r1) and one with the Child rate (often r2). The number of rates provided (i.e. 1xr1 and 1xr2) must match those provided during the call to Check Availability. Index 0 is the first customer in the XML, index 1 is the second, etc.
<booking>
<total_customers></total_customers>
....
<customers>
<customer>
<firstname>Joe</firstname>
<surname>Bloggs</surname>
</customer>
<customer>
<firstname>Jane</firstname>
<surname>Bloggs</surname>
</customer>
</customers>
<components>
<component>
<component_key>123456</component_key>
<customers>
<customer>
<index>0</index>
<rate>r1</rate>
</customer>
<customer>
<index>1</index>
<rate>r2</rate>
</customer>
</customers>
</component>
</components>
....
Viewing which customers are associated with which tickets
When calling Show Booking if any customers have been associated with tours their <customer_id> will be returned alongside the component like so:
<booking>
<booking_id>78910<booking_id>
...
<components>
<component>
<product_id>12345</product_id>
<rate_breakdown>r1|a</rate_breakdown>
<customers>
<customer>
<customer_id>4567</customer_id>
</customer>
</customers>
<component>
</components>
</booking>
This information is also included in the payload sent to Inline Booking Webhooks making it easy to pull this information into any connected subsystem.
Additionally TourCMS standard hosted voucher will list named tickets, and when viewing bookings in the TourCMS back office for any products with Named Tickets the associated customers will be shown:
Removing a customer will also reduce the sale quantity of the component by one.