WETU – helping the travel industry sell better

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If producing content-rich, interactive itineraries that inspire your guests to travel is key for you, WETU is your answer!

WETU is the place to store and distribute your content for and to your travel partners, and it’s a quick way to get noticed. It only starts there, imagery and videos stored in WETU that are relevant to bookings are automatically added to your WETU itinerary, making your customer eager to convert.

Here is our favourite part… You can create a gorgeous WETU itinerary from ResRequest in seconds, with an easy ResRequest integration. In two clicks, your sales team can open their ResRequest booking, in WETU.

Paul de Waal, WETU CEO believes technology doesn’t sell travel, great content does. “You have a small window of opportunity to engage and communicate with your customers using your best content. Travel is back on everyone’s mind and this is the time for suppliers to be putting their best foot forward with their best content so that what we see is worth selling,” says Paul.

Launched in 2009, WETU came to be after Paul saw a massive opportunity to help the travel industry store, organise and share its content.

Today the WETU platform seamlessly, efficiently and quite beautifully arranges, organises and curates the complex, complicated world of different languages, cultures, time zones, suppliers – all perfectly wrapped up in a variety of streamlined itineraries, brochures and catalogues.

“People are bombarded with information, they want one place to go to that they can trust with accurate, informative and exciting content”, Paul explains.

How WETU can help you

  • Centralised access to all your content
  • Interactive itineraries bring that rich content to convert prospects
  • Professional presentations that impress and inspire
  • Centralised curation, storage and distribution for all your best content
  • Exposure to over 200,000 global trade visitors to the Content Portal
  • Digital tools such as iBrochures, itineraries, catalogues, APIs and file sharing to optimise your marketing and B2B collaborations

“It’s time to get intentional with what you put out in the world,” says Paul. “Suppliers who load their best-quality content to WETU are the ones that stand out from the sea of same and really leverage our incredible trade reach.”

Let the numbers speak for themselves

WETU has 1396 itinerary building clients (50+countries) and is available in 15 different languages. WETU statistics from January 2020 (before Covid): 

  • 550 000 unique visitors accessed content
  • 69 000+ itineraries built
  • 600 000+ itinerary views

Take a look at some WETU itineraries

For more information about our integration to Wetu visit our Online Help guides or Contact ResRequest Support to sign up.

How to engage with your guests on social media?

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Did you know that 4.48 billion people use social media worldwide? So it’s fundamental to have a social media presence for your hotel because of the huge potential in this space.

Guests today not only use search engines but also troll social media to make informed decisions about their next vacation. Looking through online reviews and posts from other travelers to help guide their decision as to whether or not they will book with your accommodation or not. Hence it’s essential that you have a solid social media marketing strategy that will entice guests to frequent your accommodation and also recommend you on social media.

So just posting random content and pictures will surely do the trick, right? The answer to this question is an emphatic, NO! Managing your accommodation’s social media is beyond ‘just posting’.

If this is your first time creating a strategy for social media or perhaps you want to rethink your approach, then you can read our previous blog post that guides you through 5 ways to improve your social media strategy.

This blog post will help you discover ways that you can better engage with your audience and help you increase your exposure through social media.

Engagement is key

Have you ever felt ignored? Right or wrong, it creates a negative association that stays with you, and chances are you are reminded of it when you see that person again or even hear their name. The same applies when guests leave a comment on your social platforms and there’s no response.

A golden rule that all social media marketers should follow and never break is, ‘you must respond to all comments made on your page’. Even if you have a few hundred followers, never break this rule. Engagement is key, and if you want to position your brand positively, respond to all comments, but also ensure that your response time is quick.

Use high-quality images

This is often the most overlooked aspect of social media marketing. Make use of high-quality photos across all your social media platforms because this will convey consistency, professionalism and sets a good reputation for your brand. Highlight your guestrooms, restaurant decor, food, wildlife, show pictures of your guests enjoying their experience (make sure to get consent from your guests before posting), and perhaps even tagging your guests on social media, this will increase your exposure and family and friends of the guests will take notice and hopefully plan a trip to your accommodation in the new future.

Stay engaged on your platforms, and use high-quality photos to accurately depict local attractions and essential features your accommodation may offer, which will in turn easily influence search results.

Make use of #hashtags

Hashtags play an important role in improving your brand’s visibility and help grab attention on your social media platforms. A hashtag helps to highlight the social media post to the audience. Hashtags have no boundaries, so people from all over can connect to you without any barrier.

Reach out to travel influencers

Influencer marketing is a profound way to reach new audiences and boost your brand awareness. Most travellers in this era are young and tech-savvy, and leveraging partnerships with travel influencers can help hoteliers reach a wider audience and boost engagement and bookings. 

Research shows that today’s consumers trust peer recommendations over and above all other forms of marketing, so making use of social media influencers can be of great benefit to your brand.

The added benefits are that most influencers are on highly visual platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat, and these are excellent sources for compelling and engaging content. Partnering with an influencer can be a cost-effective method to boost your content creation thereby having a direct impact on your online social presence.

There are many ways to skin this cat, and there’s no holy grail when it comes to social media marketing and each approach and strategy will differ from brand to brand within the same industry. So finding the right strategy will involve trial and error, but the most important thing to remember is to be consistent and follow through with all interactions on your platforms.

2020 Unwrapped

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For most people, 2020 sucker-punched us and bumped us around like some traumatic roller coaster ride. For a select few (Zoom stakeholders, Amazon investors, introverts), this insane calendar year had much better outcomes. Albeit that we had different results this year, there is one thing we can all agree on…

With 2020 just about over, it’s time to catch a breath and reflect on our wins and, for us in tourism, prepare for a much-welcome recovery.

ResFit

We rebooted our team wellness programme, ResFit, with a fun emoji theme. We added elements for Family (including those with fur, fin, and feathers), Earth, Interests, Tech, Sport, and Give Back. We’ve included some favourites for you from our ResFit gallery. 

Changing to working from home came with challenges but our team consciously continued to participate and connect with each other by meeting virtually and sending regular personal messages and stunning selfie posts through our internal chats.

We prepared our office according to Covid guidelines but we have not yet been able to head back. Each time we’re about to reintroduce office working, we hear of another spike in Covid cases. So instead we converted our office into temporary digs for a few staff. We are looking forward to introducing some safe in-person collaboration – especially since our superheroes desperately need access to ResCafe!

ResCafe

At the beginning of the year we learned the importance of filling our Superheroes with coffee. Of course our heroes need more than ordinary coffee, we organised a special brew of vibranium-based espresso.

DEFN: Vibranium (/vaɪˈbreɪniəm/) A Marvel Comics metal, noted for its extraordinary abilities to absorb, store, and release large amounts of kinetic energy.

Our secret is that our coffee machine is made of vibranium so when you get the chance to drop by the ResCafe, we look forward to filling your cup with a vibranium-boosted espresso. 

Community Give Back

We continued to Give Back to communities around us, by donating furniture to a local residential home, The Horizon Farm Trust.

With budgets being under strain we looked for Give Back projects that could help communities, using resources we already had at our disposal. With everyone spread far and wide we had to put some interesting collection plans in action. Our team rose to the logistics challenges and managed to collect outfits for the Princess Project, odd socks for the Odd Sock Project and unused reading glasses for the Bright Sight Project.

We supported an anti-poaching initiative by purchasing Great Plains anti-poaching Covid-19 masks, which we used as staff prizes in our virtual team building socials held during Covid lock down.

We financed food bins through the locally based Neema Foundation as they rallied to provide food parcels for families struggling during Covid. 

We added extra Christmas cheer by putting together 12 Santa Shoeboxes, filled with all the necessary supplies and lots of love.

Socials

Our Social Bees were buzzing as usual and we kicked off the year with a braai at the ResPlex, where in true ResRequest fashion, we shared in laughter, fun, and food.

We celebrated Valentine’s Day dressed in red, and coordinated our annual Easter egg hunt event pre-lockdown. Little did we know that we would never get to run around the ResPlex looking for the loot, as lockdown effectively put an end to our plan. But anyway, we still look good in red!

Once lockdown and working from home became the norm our Social Bees made sure that our team stayed connected, arranging virtual team-builds with loads of quizzes, keyboard-pictionary, and the odd virtual workout.  As lockdown levels lifted we headed to the beachfront for a community walk. This was perfect for our team to reconnect with one another, and adhere to social distancing norms.

Taking care of ourselves

We preempted the first phase of lockdown with an option to start working from home before the official announcement was made. The balance of our team moved off-site the week of lockdown and we transitioned to a fully work from home-based setup. Lockdown came with its own challenges. Many of us were negatively impacted by personal losses, moving home and becoming ill, we recognised we were under unprecedented pressure.

Through our team’s Discovery Medical Aid, we implemented an Employee Assistance Programme. The EAP programme helped our team individually with legal advice, counselling for those in need and financial planning. It also equips our HR team with a health-check. This helps our team direct the right training and conversations to keep our team-health as high as possible, especially during such a challenging time.

Our Social Bees and HR teams also stepped in to keep our team connected with “Grab a sundowner and chill” virtual socials. 

Recognising our health and well being were taking strain, our HR team made an important call, announcing our first “ResRequest Public Holiday” on 25 September. This gave our team a 4 day weekend, which was much needed after many months of stress and worry.

In addition to keeping our minds healthy, we put in some effort with some gym sessions arranged virtually by our awesome PhysEd trainer, Rudolf Krige.

We welcomed new Superheros with new superpowers

There is always a high level of excitement when a new superhero joins the team. We can’t wait to find out what superpowers they will add to the mix. It was with much excitement that we welcomed Tracey as our first-ever HR superhero, Sheldon joined our first line of defense against the dreaded bugs as a Tester, and Rory and Justin (our own Batman and Robin father-son team) joined our Strategic Development and Product Maintenance Team.

We wrapped up our year in Wonderland

For the first time ever we held our year end Christmas wrap-up virtually (sniff!). We reflected over the year and peeked into 2021, in ‘Alice-Through-The-Looking-Glass’ fancy dress. What we saw is a future of hope and possibilities. 

Similar to when Alice said: “It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then,” we realised that we might not be able to eradicate the world’s Covid problems, but what we promise to do, is to be the best version of our new selves.

This has been a challenging year for those of us in tourism and so our wish for you is that you and your family celebrate a very Merry Christmas together, and that your 2021 is bright!

Global Protocols: ‘Safe stamps’

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COVID-19 has certainly made most of us navigate this world with much fear and trepidation. From the paranoia of going to the grocery store to even the anxiety of leaving our homes out of fear of somehow being exposed to COVID. The tourism industry was undoubtedly hit the hardest with travel restrictions placed upon most / if not all countries across the globe. Since then we have seen a gradual lifting of those regulations and so responsible tourism has taken on an entirely new emphasis as we turn our attention to the most effective ways to enable our economies to recover from the fallout of the global Covid-19 pandemic.

To adjust to the “new normal”, the WTTC (World Travel and Tourism Council) together with health experts and other leading associations are working together to achieve effective recovery protocols by developing meaningful action plans that optimise sector-wide recovery efforts, according to the WTTC.

The WTTC aims to publish protocols in phases for the following industries including; Hospitality, Attractions, Outdoor Retail, Aviation, Airports, Short Term Rentals, Cruise, Tour Operators, Convention Centres, and MICE, Car Rental and Insurance. Each set of protocols takes into consideration the guidelines provided by the World Health Organisation and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

By implementing these action plans the WTTC aims to standardize safe travel by developing new global standards and a stamp that allows travellers to identify businesses and destinations that are adopting world-class health and strict hygiene protocols. 

To obtain a Safe Travel stamp, countries and their destinations will have to share their protocols with the WTTC, who will then validate that they are in line with the WTTC guidelines. 

By following these protocols companies are eligible for a safety stamp that you can display proudly on your website, thereby providing travellers with confidence that your destination has taken all steps to ensure they travel safely.

2019 unwrapped

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Christmas wishes from our team

What’s kept us busy this year

We’ve had a great year preparing a bigger foundation for exciting plans we have for 2020. A big change we underwent was merging our team into our new Durban office, dubbed ResPlex. This merge meant moving 17 families from Richards Bay to Durban and we’re thrilled to announce that they arrived in true superhero style and they’ve all settled in well to the new climate and surrounds.

Our move was pretty smooth but it did not go without a few Kryptonite setbacks which may have affected you. We have still not found a reliable VOIP telephone system – please bear with us and feel free to send any suggestions if you’re a SA local!

Of course, our move meant we also had some key staff out of action which resulted in some slippage in our services during May and June but we’re thrilled to announce that we’ve fixed these gaps and our superhero strength is back!  

We grew our talent

We said goodbye to some team and we welcomed others. Added to our team are: Kenton to our data onboarding team, Gareth to our rate setups team, Jerron (with his superman strength) joined our technical team and Michelle leads our new user interface and experience team (UI & UX). On our design front, Ben jumped in to rock our marketing team and Natasha Cross joined us to lead our training programme and team. Clinton is our recent addition who joined our frontline support team, so you’ll be hearing from him soon!

We welcomed future recruits

Not only did we grow our numbers in the office, but also 4 sprogs were born to 3 of our wonder women.

We worked best together

Having our team all in one space has also given us many opportunities to host a bunch of socials including a poker afternoon and new office warming braai, with a team salad competition thrown in. Of course dress up for Halloween is always a hit and a chance to pull out some scary pranks.

[Above-left] Dev lunch at RocoMamas [Middle] Nathan and Brandon our office handymen and [Right] Tash showing off with her bundle of joy!
[Above-left] A very scary looking ResRequest crew all dressed up for Halloween [Middle] A lekker team braai at ResPlex and [Right] John, the kingpin of poker.
[Above-left] Walter chills after semi-grating from Empangeni to Durban [Middle] Nicol celebrated 5 years with a traditional custom cake (Lama design of course!) and [Right] We just adore our cats!

We loved travelling

We now service 600 properties in 19 countries, 2 being in Asia. So ResRover and Ntando attended trade shows across the globe including ITB Berlin and WTM London.

We grew stronger with ResPlex Talks

This year we introduced ResPlex talks hosting topics such as The evolution of Development Methodologies and Navigating cultures and customs in Customer Service. This new addition to our staff wellness programme has given us all the opportunity to broaden our knowledge and learn new skills.

We wrapped up the year with a great Christmas picnic

[Above] We celebrated our new-found spot with a festive Christmas picnic in our lush garden. We know that we have a talented crew so we opened the floor for a talent show where some of our talented sang, played the guitar and danced.

[Below] John, Keenan and Alex added some stunning vocals and chords while Mike awed us with his storytelling and magic tricks.

[Above] Keenan and John set the mood at our 2019 Christmas party

Jerron claimed our ‘ResRequest Strongman’ title in our impromptu arm-wrestling competition.

Because we love giving back to the community, the contestant’s participation prize included nominating a charity for us to donate to. The gift went to support the Neema Foundation and Movember.

[Above] The guys taking up the Movember 2019 challenge

We wrapped up the afternoon with our tradition of watching annual reviews from each of our departments to remind us of all that we have achieved and experienced this year.

And because of this incredible effort that each of our team contributed – Santa bought us some personalised mugs for Christmas, because every superhero needs a recharge.

That’s what we are, not just a team, but a family. One day we might be the justice league but for today, we are team ResRequest.

Here’s to 2020 – we hope it’s your best year yet! And ours!


5 ways to improve your social media strategy

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With 7.7 billion people in the world – 3.5 billion of us are online and with the digital and social media landscape continuously changing it can be a challenge managing your business whilst keeping your eye on social media. Some businesses in Tourism choose to opt-out of investing resources into social media, however, it should remain an integral part of an overall marketing strategy to see any return on investment and to see tons of guests walking through your doors. To be successful on social media you need to rely more on a clear strategy than just random postings and hashtags. In this post you will learn the 5 ways to turn your business from zero to hero on social media:

Step 1: Audit your current platforms

The mention of the word ‘audit’ can run chills down anyone’s spine, however, a social media audit can be a quick and painless process provided that you understand its purpose, to identify what’s working and what’s not. Create a spreadsheet to help with your research and findings. It just makes it easier whenever you need a quick reference.

Some detective work is required during the process, and so here are some guidelines to assist you:

Step 2: Identify your Goals

If you were to reach a target, set your sights, take aim, and fire. Having no goals and nothing to work towards to market your business reflects poorly on your brand.

As this phase/step will have a direct impact on your ROI, you should ask yourself:

Step 3: Create a persona

In this step, you create your most ideal persona based on information from your social media insights and your google analytics. Try and be as specific as possible, the more you define your persona the better. For example, if you have identified your target market as singles who travel – it would be okay. However, if you have taken it a step further and identified your target market as singles, who live in England, between 25 – 34 years of age, and earn over $60 000, primarily use Facebook, and have interests in outdoor activities you will have much more success.

Answer the following questions when creating your persona:

Step 4: Competition Analysis “A horse never runs so fast as when he has other horses to catch up and outpace.”  – Ovid

Well said, Ovid! Sometimes a competitive analysis is never fun because your competition could be way ahead but at the same time, it helps put things in perspective and helps you finetune your strategy and see where you rank amongst your competitors. Important points to consider when conducting a competition analysis: This process should never be overlooked and requires continuous monitoring to make sure that you don’t lose sight of your competition.

Step 5: Using all your findings create a content calendar

A content calendar is usually in a spreadsheet format (although there are other platforms to schedule content like Hootsuite), it is used to schedule content across all your social media platforms. Why is a social media content calendar important? Because it provides an overview of your content over months, weeks, and days. It allows you to visualize how your content according to your overall strategy. The other benefit is to allow you to prepare content around specific days that are important to your brand, public holidays, etc.

This is just the beginning! To be relevant and on top of your competition, it does require you to continuously re-evaluate these steps to be a success. Having a rock-solid strategy now in place, imagine the impact your reach could have on your business!

Why we love automated testing

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Automated-Testing-VS-Manual-testing

Why we love automated testing?

As a business that follows the Software as a Service model, ResRequest’s team is mainly made up of Developers and Customer Support consultants and we use many tools to help provide a great service for our customers.

Our Dev’s are in their element when nestled in front of multiple screens and have cool tools on hand to work with…

In this article our Dev team share what tools they use to test the product that they build and maintain.

Manual Testing vs Automated Testing

Manual testing is performed by a person carefully executing the test steps on computer software. Automation/automated testing means using an automation tool to execute your test case suite. This way, the actual outcomes of the tests can be compared with that of the predicted outcomes, to help identify issues, bugs, anomalies or limitations.

At ResRequest, we continually strive to improve our awesome suite of products. A lot goes into researching, developing, and delivering a great product. Automated testing is only one of a  myriad of ways that we strive to deliver the best product we can.

You might ask: “Surely manual testing is sufficient to deliver a product to the end-user?”. In many cases that’s true, but in today’s competitive world, filled with changing technologies and demanding user requirements, it is imperative to ensure stability. 

At ResRequest, we understand that developing quality takes time, and so, we recognise strategies need to be put in place to help keep us ahead of today’s break-neck pace. One of the many strategies we use to help us, in this regard, is automated testing.

Rationale

ResRequest values automated testing over manual testing, because:

  • Manual testing of every possible workflow, field, and scenario takes time and money.
  • It is difficult to manually test all different themes, layouts, setups, currencies, etc.
  • It does not require human intervention and can be run unattended.
  • Executing automated tests can be quicker than doing the same testing manually.
  • Automation helps cover bigger areas of an application, which prevents any unforeseen regression issues from occurring.
  • Even though we, at ResRequest, love testing and using our products, manual testing can sometimes be tedious and repetitive, and as a result, error-prone.

 

Benefits

 

Why spend time and money on automated testing? 

It brings the following to the table:

  • Can be a lot faster than manual testing.
  • Ensures consistency.
  • Improves accuracy.
  • Reusable test scripts.
  • Helps ensure stability of the final product.

What should be tested with automated tests?

Ideally, it should focus on:

  • High risk and/or business-critical areas.
  • Test cases that need to be repeatedly/regularly executed are also great candidates to be automated, as their scope should be well understood.
  • Testing that is very tedious or difficult to perform manually can also greatly benefit from being automated – computers don’t get bored.
  • Testing that is time-consuming should be automated, if it can be done reliably. This helps us focus manual testing on areas that would benefit more from having a little more human touch.

Disadvantages

Though automated testing has many advantages, it also has some disadvantages:

  • Proficiency in programming and some level of technical knowledge is required to write the automation test scripts.
  • Debugging automated test scripts is quite involved. Identifying limitations in the test script requires an in-depth understanding of the technologies used, as well as the application/software being tested.
  • Test maintenance is costly, as each update/improvement/feature may require an updated or new test case.
  • Automated tests cannot (and should not) entirely understand the end user’s use-case/requirements. The automated test case will simply execute a number of instructions and will not know if the end user’s experience can be improved, by changing the overall workflow of the software it is testing.
  • Automated tests can never beat a human tester’s expertise and knowledge of the application it is testing, and should, therefore, be used alongside manual testing and only where needed.

Selenium

There are many tools and applications that can help with automated testing of a system or software. At ResRequest, we have chosen Selenium for this task.

What is Selenium?

From the Selenium website: “Selenium automates browsers. That’s it! What you do with that power is entirely up to you. Primarily, it is for automating web applications for testing purposes, but is certainly not limited to just that. Boring web-based administration tasks can (and should!) be automated as well.

Selenium has the support of some of the largest browser vendors who have taken (or are taking) steps to make Selenium a native part of their browser. It is also the core technology in countless other browser automation tools, APIs and frameworks.

Selenium’s primary purpose is automating web applications for testing, web-based administration tasks can also be automated as well. Selenium has the backing of large browser vendors who have ensured that it is a crucial part of their browser. Browser automation tools, APIs and frameworks are just some of the platforms using selenium at its core.”

How does it work?

Selenium interfaces to a web browser’s driver, that driver then connects to the web browser to control it. The next step is to instruct Selenium on what to do, and it will take care of explaining it to the chosen web browser, in a way that would make sense to the relevant web browser.

What’s ahead?

Currently, we use Selenium and automated testing on some of our core products, but we plan to roll this out to as many ResRequest products as possible, in the future. All hail our robot overlords!

Our embarrassing travel moments!

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We’ve all had them – those cringe-worthy moments when we want to laugh and crawl into a hole at the same time. Somehow these moments are more embarrassing when we are travelling, maybe because we don’t always know who’s watching!

 

We asked our team for some of their top most embarrassing moments. Put your coffee aside because you may spill it, and see if you can relate to any of these stories.

 

“I had a connection through Abu Dhabi in the early hours of the morning. Half asleep, I disembarked the plane in Abu Dhabi and sleepily followed the other passengers into the airport. It was only when I found myself being asked by taxi drivers where I was staying that I realised that something wasn’t right! I was in arrivals and not transit! The surprise gave way to panic as I only had an hour before my next flight. I started trying to find an official to ask how to get to the transfer lounge but it was 1am in the morning and the airport was empty. Finally, I ran into some flight crew and I tried to explain what had happened, they looked confused and pointed further down the hall. I raced off, heart pounding and arrived at immigration. This could not be happening. I had no visa but I was asking to leave the country! I stammered out the story to the gruff immigration officer and he called another officer ove. ‘No visa’, his colleague barked. I tried again to explain what had happened and begged them to let me through as my flight would be boarding by now. Together they started talking fast in Arabic and I wondered how bad the Arabic prison system was. Suddenly I was handed my passport and told ‘Go on. Your flight is boarding’. My legs felt shaky and I felt dizzy with relief that I had made it through. I arrived at the boarding gate just as they were finishing and collapsed into my seat, exhausted. It had been both the longest and shortest hour of my life ever!”

 

Another flight story on a very different aircraft and an even more nail-biting experience.

 

“We were travelling to a remote part of Africa from Joburg and were waiting for the plane from the lodge to collect us. The airport was full of commercial planes and a few large charter planes. We then noticed a small, unbelievably small, plane bobbing through between the bigger planes. We had a sinking feeling. Surely not? Could people even fit in that? The miniature plane came to halt and we got a phone call that our charter was ready. We went out to meet our pilot, and of course, he led us to the plane that we had been observing, which seemed even smaller close-up. Trying to suppress our nervousness, we loaded our bags and prepared for take off. The little plane seemed to take forever to lift off and sounded like the engine was taking strain. Finally we were in the air and the pilot tried to engage us in conversation but we were on the edge of our seats, unable to speak. It seemed like every breeze tossed the plane around. Throwing up probably wasn’t the best first impression to make, but it felt very likely! The two hour flight felt like a lifetime and we finally arrived at our destination, white-faced and shaking. ‘How was the flight?’, the lodge manager asked as we disembarked. We smiled weakly, ‘We’re so happy to be here’.”

 

Off to Europe for a train ride, a long day and some luck.

 

“Ten years ago, I was returning to London from a small town in Germany called Ahrensburg, and because money was tight, my travelling time was dragged out over 24 hours (2 flights, 2 trains rides, 1 hitchhiked lift and a bus ride) with lots of waiting around in-between them all. By the time I landed in London, I was extremely tired and as soon as I had jumped onto the tube out of Heathrow airport, I fell asleep. When I woke up, I realised that I had missed my stop and travelled to the opposite side of London! Thankfully I still had my luggage, but my chance for a hot shower and a proper bed would have to wait as I had to double back on the tube ride, and this time I made sure I didn’t close my eyes!”

 

How would you like to be without your luggage for three weeks while you travel around East Africa? This is what happened on one of our team members, and let’s just say, he now always triple checks his flight time.

 

“I arrived at the airport confident that I had plenty of time before departure. I was travelling to East Africa for three weeks and had quite a hefty bag to check in. I ambled over to check-in and thought I may as well check-in early and then grab a leisurely coffee to pass the time. However, that plan changed quickly as I was told that my flight was leaving in 20 minutes and it was too late to check in luggage. My cries fell on deaf ears and I tried to explain that I had read the flight time wrong. Now, not only was I having to sprint to get to boarding, but I had to leave my bag with everything I needed behind. Needless to say, the first thing I did on landing was to buy some clothes and deodorant. I learnt a stressful lesson and this drama is never to be repeated.”

 

Travel is exciting and always a big adventure but sometimes there are unpredictable hiccups that make these trips even more eventful. These dramas sometimes make the best stories with valuable lessons attached. What are your most memorable travel adventures?

Keep it clean

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In computer science, garbage in, garbage out (GIGO) describes the concept that flawed, or messy input data produces poor, unrecognisable output or “garbage”.

 

Essentially, a system is only as good as the data you put into it. This may seem like a basic principle, but if not followed, it can be a massive exercise to try and clean up the data in your system at a later stage.

 

From ResRequest’s perspective, “garbage data” can be found in areas such as duplicate contacts, reservations info and poor housekeeping of agent/guest CRM etc. The “garbage data” becomes very apparent when you want to start reporting on this information. If the data being inserted into the system is not “clean”, you will not be happy with the results when you try and use the data.

 

Here’s an example of data that was not maintained well, on a Standard Reservations Report, compared to managed clean data:

     VS

 

 

 

 

Why would you want to keep the data in the same format?

Not only will your reports look so much better, searching for reservations in your system will be so much easier if the information follows the same format.

 

Let’s compare how a well-maintained guest contact record compares to an incomplete one on a Guest CRM report:

If you decide to run a mail campaign, to target guests from the USA, the guests who don’t have this info attached to their contact would be left out of the campaign so you would lose potential business due to the information not reaching the right people.

 

Overall, the benefits of inputting and maintaining neat data in your system are so worthwhile and will save you a lot of time in future!

 

What tools are available in ResRequest to help keep your data clean?

Replace contact: Deleting contacts isn’t so simple once the contact has been used on a reservation so we’ve given you the functionality to replace a contact with another contact. This means that all the relevant links (for reservations and financial folios) of the replaced contact will transfer to the remaining contact.

Duplicate contact check: When adding a new contact to your system, ResRequest prompts you to check if the contact you’re adding is a duplicate of an existing contact. For example, when inserting the name “John” while adding a new contact, the ResRequest system will display all existing contacts’ named “John”, so the user can determine if it is an existing contact or not.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Although it would be great for the system to prompt you in all areas where data is inserted, at the end of the day, you are the owner of your data and it is up to you to keep the data in your system in good order.

Looking good with GuestRevu

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GuestRevu helps thousands of hospitality professionals in over 35 countries spend less time stuck behind their desks by automatically collecting online reviews from dozens of sites like TripAdvisor and Booking.com, emailing questionnaires to guests so they can provide valuable direct feedback, and consolidating data to make analysing trends a piece of cake. Listen to your guests, learn from their experiences, and earn their custom and loyalty.

The best part of direct feedback is that you have a chance to resolve any potentially harmful situations before they become reviews on public platforms. By providing your guests with the opportunity to address concerns with you directly, they will often feel that their feedback is being taken to heart, and feel less inclined to vent on social platforms like Facebook and TripAdvisor. Another great benefit is that you can fix problems when you get direct feedback. As they say — prevention is better than cure.

GuestRevu’s partnership with ResRequest PMS makes this process even simpler by automating the feedback collection process, meaning that you’re able to automatically send custom-made surveys once a guest checks out, no manual effort required.

How does it work?
Save time and know what your guests are saying about you publicly by having all your online reviews collected and analysed in your GuestRevu dashboard.

Our integration to GuestRevu is automated so all you need to do is add your guests and their email addresses in ResRequest and GuestRevu will do the rest. For more info on this marketing tool, see our Guest Survey guide.

So what’s the deal?

Instead of adhering to the standard pricing structure, where you’re charged based on the size of your property, GuestRevu is offering an amazing flat rate of R350p/m for all ResRequest properties. That’s an average saving of around R200p/m! 

Not only that, but both GuestRevu and ResRequest will waive their setup and integration fees – that’s another saving of around R1,000!  

Managing your online reputation and gathering golden guest insights has never been easier, or more affordable. Sound good? 

Sign up with GuestRevu here and GuestRevu and ResRequest consultants will be in touch to get you set up.