When there’s so much choice in the market, it can be really difficult to make the right booking system choice for your business.
It is a growing expectation that consumers book activities online whenever the mood hits. So how do you choose the right system, what questions do you ask and are you even ready for it? There is a lot of information available online so read around from official, unbiased sources and speak to industry peers and gather as much information as you can. You will find that individual tourism boards also release papers; such as this great one from Tourism Victoria.
Your Booking Systems
From experience the following questions are some of the items that can be brushed over in demonstrations – however, these things are crucial in making your choice:
- Are the reports accurate?
- If I give away a FOC sale is this reflected accurately in my reports as a $0.00 booking? This means integration into any accounting program is useless as the reports will automatically be incorrect.
- Can I edit prices and availability for a specific date and time, without it affecting other sessions?
- Can I reallocate an individual, an entire session or an entire day of bookings from the one screen (in the case of wet weather or other circumstance)- how does the system notify my customer of these changes.
- Can I quickly cancel sessions per day or across months if I need to, without having to do it individually?
- It might seem, on paper, to be cheapest system but are there any hidden fees- setup fees, training and implementation, basic vs. pro plans? What will it cost me per month with my estimated volume?
- Ensure your new checkout is going to be completely secure – it must be https with a padlock! If it doesn’t have this IT IS NOT SECURE for you or your customers and you may be liable.
- Do the features advertised actually work in the way you expect them to? Explain to the demonstrator what you feel a feature is; and make sure their feature supports that.
- Can you accurately track distributor commissions per sale, so that I know exactly how much commission has been paid to each distributor in real time?
- When I create a back-end booking can I send an email from the system to my customer?
- What level of support do I get; email only? online only? 24/7-phone support – does this cost extra?
Distribution Channels
Selling your products via various channels can be time consuming, as you are required to log into their admin areas to update your product, pricing and availability. A few booking systems now claim to have direct connections into various Australian distribution channels. These connections can take time to do properly and there is some misleading information being published in the market place so make sure you speak to your partners to ensure the system does have a live connection in place.
TXA
TXA is well established and an important part of the tourism eco-system across Australia. Combining ATDW, V3 and various booking systems; TXA enables suppliers to connect to a vast range of distribution channels in real time, enabling customers to book and pay instantly. TXA has a close relationship with all Australian States and Territories and also enables seamless distribution across their websites including Tourism Australia. Some systems that are not connected to TXA have tried to disparage the value of TXA.However,TXA’s distribution massively increases your online visibility which funnels consumers to your own website for bookings.
Be Informed – seeing is believing
Your business is valuable and it is important to be well informed before you make a decision. The good news is you have a number of trusted and reliable resources available to help.
