Glossary

A

Affiliate

A third party who is rewarded for sending traffic or bookers to your site. Load them as an Agent and you can track their clicks / bookings; make them a free Marketplace account and they can access lots of tools to help promote your products

Agent

A third party who gets assigned to bookings in your system so that they can be paid Commission. Either because they made the booking themselves, or because they are an Affiliate who sent the customer to you.

API

A way of building other software that can talk to TourCMS, TourCMS has APIs for retrieving product information and making bookings

B

Booking

Stores the travel details for a group of Customers. Can be used for creating quotes which can then be converted to bookings if the customer decides to take them. A booking has three stages - Quotation, Provisional and Confirmed.

Booking Engine

Also known as the Online Booking Engine. If you decide to take web bookings this is the part of TourCMS that your customers see. Can be configured to match your existing website design, take online payments, send confirmation emails etc. Booking Engine support pages

C

Channel

Each Booking in TourCMS is made against a particular Channel; it is a way of setting the language, currency and brand (amongst other settings) that the customer will experience.

Category

A possible value for a Group, used to help categorise travel products. For example you may have a Group called "Activity" with possible Categories of Fishing, Cycling, Rafting etc.

Collection

See Product Filter

Cost Price

The amount of money that you pay a supplier for a particular product, or other costs incurred to you for that product. Used to calculate Margin

Commission

Amount or percentage paid to an Agent to reward them for making a booking. Travel Agent Commission tutorial

Customer

An individual who may feature on one or more Enquiries or Bookings in your system. You can add customers from an existing database if you have one, they do not need to have an actual booking in TourCMS

D

Departure

A way of loading pricing and availability for a Tour. A Departure is a single instance of a Tour/Trip. It will have a specific start date, a specific end date, a limit on the number of people who can attend most likely a Sales Price. Alternative methods are Freesale Seasons or Hotels.

E

Enquiry

A request that comes from a customer. For example a brochure request, a tailor- made tour request, a “contact me” request etc. They can be assigned to individual Staff users for processing

F

Freesale Season

A way of loading pricing and availability for a Tour. A Freesale Season defines a date range that a product can be booked in, plus the price for that period. By default any date within the range can be booked however limits can be placed on durations and start/end days of the week. Alternative methods are Departures or Hotels.

Flag

A “to do” item or task that needs to be undertaken – such as “call back the customer to confirm their dates of birth”. Can be set automatically to indicate events (such as the receipt of a new online booking) or issues (such as the tour is about to start but the full balance has yet to be received).

FTP

If you use TourCMS to manage your website content using Templates then TourCMS will use FTP to send new and updated pages to your website. Your web host will be able to give you your FTP settings

G

Group

Either multiple Customers travelling together on a Booking or...
 

A way of organising travel products into Product Filters (Collections). You may have Groups for "Location", "Activity", "Difficulty" etc.

H

Hotel

A special type of Tour that allows loading of complex Room or per person pricing. Can be used for Hotels, Villas, Chalets, Camp sites, Cruises etc. Examples in the Solution Library

I, J, K

L

Login

See Staff Account or Agent
 

Already got an account? Login here: Supplier / Agent

M

Margin

Gross profit. The amount you sell a product for minus the Cost Price

Marketplace

The TourCMS Marketplace connects the Tour Operators using TourCMS with third party Partners who can promote their products, providing traffic, leads and sales. Learn more about The Marketplace

Markup

An amount/percentage added on to the Sale Price of a product to get the final asking price. Useful for adjusting pricing for different market places / brands or for quickly adjusting the asking price of lots of products in one go. Can also be a negative amount to apply a discount

N

O

Option

Products that can be added to a Tour/Hotel when making a booking. Can be used for things like equipment hire, flights, extensions, discounts, insurance etc. See examples in the Solution Library

P

PPC

An advertising model whereby a site that wants traffic pays out a certain amount of money per click (alternative models include CPA).

Product Filter (Collection)

A mechanism for grouping related Tours together. For example if you sell in two countries – France and Spain – and you have three product types – wine tours, cycling tours and hotels – you can create a collection that includes just Spanish wine tours. Useful for building web pages, reporting or setting user access restrictions. Product filter (Collections) tutorial

Promo code

A piece of text that can be entered at time of booking to obtain a discount. More on Promo codes.

Q

R

Rate

When discussing Hotels in TourCMS a Rate is a type of Room (double room, sea-view room etc) which does not have a limited availability loaded, e.g. it will continue to sell for a given date until taken off sale. Hotel information.
 

For other Tours a Rate is a way of loading differnt prices for different people (discounts for children/seniors or different prices depending on how many people book).

Report

A way of getting structured information from TourCMS. There are several handy preconfigured reports and a custom report builder in the "Reports" section of TourCMS.

Room

An actual physical unit (room) in a Hotel (Room 1, Room 2 etc), once booked for a specific date it is unavailable for others to book. Can be used for a cabin on a boat/train or a camp site pitch.

RTF

A type of document format. RTF Templates can be used in TourCMS to generate letters or other documents to send to Customers, Suppliers or Agents. Documentation manual (Emails / Invoices)