ResRequest is the logical place from which to generate your official tax invoices because it contains all relevant pricing, tax, and customer data. You can integrate your ResRequest system into an accounting system to send invoices electronically from ResRequest.
Connect your rooms, rates, and availability from ResRequest to online travel platforms so you can sell Direct, via OTAs, and via Travel Agents. Connecting to these online travel platforms is valuable as they specialise in electronic marketing and selling your rooms.
ResInsite takes your ResRequest data and transforms it into pre-built tourism charts. Developed and supported by Travel Trackers, this application is ideal for business stakeholders who need to see business trends and make decisions that improve operations and increase revenues.
Safari Analytics, Pomerol Partners’ African office, has partnered with technology systems including ResRequest, Benson, Hospitality Technology International (HTI), and Protel, to create tourism.today, a collection of highly intuitive interactive charts that show travel trends and tourism recovery as it happens.
tourism.today takes aggregated and anonymised data and plots booking trends in Africa. The data is extracted from participating technology systems and plotted on interactive charts to highlight travel patterns including what markets are opening and which source markets are the most active. The information is based on bed nights, yield trends, created dates, and originating countries.
Tom Imrie is a Pomerol Partners Africa Senior Consultant, and one of the founders of tourism.today. Tom says they saw an opportunity to help African destinations recover from the global pandemic by understanding source market trends by looking at real data. “We wanted to build charts from live data that could help African buyers and suppliers see where tourism was coming from and when those markets would be travelling,” says Tom. “It was important to us that the data give the tourism industry crucial information and market buying patterns like length of stay, lead time, and average purchase rates.”
“This information will help tourism markets with their marketing and rate strategies both during and beyond Covid,” says Ntando Bhengu, new Business Development Manager at ResRequest, one of the participating technology providers.
tourism.today is designed to equip groups including property owners, travel agents, tourism boards and associations, and charter companies with real-time charts that show travel trends impacting Africa to better inform their sales and marketing strategies.
There are 4 plans available to subscribers. Data contributors have FREE access to the Starter Plan or are discounted $29 on another plan.
Sign up as a data contributor before 28 February 2022 and you will also receive free access to the Lite plan for 6 months.
For more information contact us at support@resrequest.com or visit tourism.today and sign up online.
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
“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):
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.
Expedia Group is one of the world’s biggest travel platforms. In the first quarter of this year, Expedia Group has brought in 92 billion USD in gross bookings and secured over 300 million bed nights through its over 200 travel booking sites in 75 countries.
Properties using ResRequest can now connect directly to Expedia Group without a channel manager. Having access to this online platform gives properties significant advantage, as online bookings are growing and Expedia Group is a leader in this field. Adding Expedia Group to our list of connection partners is part of our ongoing commitment to provide you with the best ways to grow your business through various sales channels. Connections to Expedia Group are facilitated through ResConnect, our API and controlled with user access permissions.
The connection process is simple.
Sign up with Expedia Group and an Expedia Group and ResRequest consultant will be in touch to get you set up.
Your rates and availability are distributed and updated on Expedia platforms, directly from ResRequest. Bookings made by Expedia Group are automatically highlighted in ResRequest for your central reservation team to review, along with an email. All you need to do is manage your profile information on Expedia Group – they’re really helpful and have a team to assist with these housekeeping items.
Cost for using this connection.
A once off ResRequest setup fee of approximately 1 hour is billed at our standard data set up rate. The Expedia Group sign up is free and commission is only charged from the first booking.
Track the success of the connection.
As bookings are automatically linked to an Expedia Group agent and an Expedia Group source. Your marketing team can run their favourite report to track bed nights, yield, average length of stay and revenue filtered or grouped by the Expedia Group agent or source.
Customers have already started using the connection.
We have over 40 properties active with the ResRequest-Expedia Group connection. Join this growing number of customers and start selling your bed nights fast and easily!
For more info on all the online options available, see our Channel Management starter pack.
ResInsite is here to leverage your data for smarter and faster decision making – saving you time, optimising your revenues and launching you into the world of big data on a flexible and intelligent platform.
Your business quietly collects millions of rows of data – whilst you are expertly tucking your guests into bed for a good night’s sleep – ResInsite is churning those rows into deep insights and smart business decisions. The Results? More guests to tuck away and more time to focus on perfecting the art of a memorable stay.
Using QlikView, a charting tool, Pomerol Partners have worked with ResRequest to bring you ResInsite – a business intelligence application. ResInsite graphs your ResRequest data so you can make smart decisions based on your data trends. An in-the-cloud solution that offers guided insights into what has made your business a success and how to keep it trending upwards.
Traditional approaches to hospitality analytics are time consuming and often filled with best guess scenarios cobbled together on platforms like Excel. Now you can deploy award-winning software in your business that offers guided analytics, driving faster responses to the changing business environment without the need for costly development and the associated teething problems. Easy to deploy, tried, tested, effective and the perfect match for your ResRequest platform – ResInsite promises to mature your organisations’ approach to analytics and data with stunning results.
Data validation:
We customise a few simple settings that allows us to tailor ResInsite to your unique reporting methodologies. We will work closely with you to verify that the data is accurate and the figures and results that you are both used to and expect are reflected.
Going live:
We automate the process of gathering and aggregating your data from ResRequest. We show you how to navigate ResInsite, it’s tips and tricks and how to get the most of its’ suite of analytics. We monitor your usage and ensure that it’s deployed in an effective manner for your needs.
Support:
Pomerol Partners work in conjunction with ResRequest to ensure that issues are seamlessly resolved, and your questions effectively answered.
Customisation:
We listen to your needs and where appropriate will ensure that your ResInsite grows as fast as you do.
Billing:
Billing is processed monthly in advance. The cost of ResInsite is $155 per user per month. Further customisations and integrations into 3rd party applications (finance, accounting, HR, tour operator, etc) are possible, subject to standard consulting fees and are separate from user license fees.
Please contact resinsite@pomerolpartners.com with any questions or to sign up for this product and service.
Imagine working with an online travel agent who understands how African lodges work. Someone who specialises in attracting customers who want your African experience. Someone who understands how your transfers and extras work and who can sell your beds, without you having to do anything!
Many of Africa’s top booking agents and safari specialists are investing in development to be able to link to ResRequest via our ResConnect product. Allowing them to easily check availability, quote accurately, and even book – saving the guest, agent and lodge time.
As a FREE business to business interface, ResConnect enables remote lodges to have a greater online presence and increase their sales by having real time inventory available for their agents. This is a safe and hassle-free way to streamline agent business whilst having full control of the shared information.
If you have any questions or want to know the next steps to getting connected, please contact us on: support@resrequest.com.
“At Expert Africa we breathe a sigh of relief when one of our lodges moves to ResRequest. We know it’s a reliable platform, we know it’ll work well even when comms are challenging, and we know that we’ll easily be able to access their availability information through ResConnect – which speeds up our business of sending travellers to them on tailor-made itineraries.”
-Chris McIntyre, Managing Director, Expert Africa
“Our travellers can get all the safari lodge information they need in one place, from wide screen photos to number of beds, map location, Trip Advisor reviews, amenities, as well as availability which ResConnect provides dynamically.”
-David Tett, President, Bushtracks Expeditions
“ResConnect allows us to provide our African Safari Experts with access live availability and rates information – This enables them to instantly engage with travellers and rapidly develop and dispatch available and accurately costed itineraries 24/7/365.”
-Joanne Dickson, CEO, Go2Africa
“ResConnect is going to allow us to make our booking process for lodges much more efficient”
-Johnny Prince, CEO, Timbuktu Travel
Timbuktu Travel is an online platform empowering people to easily discover and book hand-picked safaris across Africa.
followme2AFRICA is happy to partner with ResRequest to provide their clients with a seamless online booking platform. The integration will allow our clients access to rates and availability, ensuring maximum sales penetration as well as an easier way to transact. The integration will ensure reduced time for the booking process, a key requirement across their client-base.
“The channel allows our clients to now access far more room stock as well as offers real time ability to up-sell on accommodation. This is a proven method to increase revenue for both our contracted suppliers as well as the company itself.”
-Tony Brink, General Manager & Head of Product of followme2AFRICA
“Our continual partnership with important channel distribution platforms such as ResRequest reiterates our commitment to offering our clients the best service, platform connectivity, and booking efficiency as possible”.
– Rory Mathew, IT Manager of followme2AFRICA.
Africa Travel Resource is a travel company specialising in assisting travellers to create authentic and innovative trips to Africa.
Next steps for lodges: Connections are quick and easy – just build a relationship with the agent you’d like to connect with. Set them up in ResRequest as an agent and user, then send a request to support@resrequest.com to link you up. Each connection is FREE – with a nominal once off setup fee.
INDABA is one of the largest tourism trade shows in Africa. It showcases the widest variety of Africa’s best tourism products and attracts international buyers and media from across the world.
Mike Coppinger, Jill Bennett-Howes, Natasha Bame and Ntando Bhengu represented ResRequest this year at the tradeshow and exhibited in the shared SATSA stand. The weather didn’t play ball for the opening day with Durban experiencing heavy rain, but fortunately it was dry in the exhibition centre!
ResRequest’s stand was quite tucked away within the SATSA space but our signature red and branded shirts helped us stand out. With our ‘Fresh with Flavour’ mints and our brochures and starter packs laid out, we were ready.
[Above: Jill with Elizabeth from Saruni]
The days were packed with meetings with clients and prospects for both ResRequest Enterprise and ResConnect. We found these meetings to be one of the highlights of Indaba this year. Nothing can beat meeting face-to-face and it was a great opportunity to connect with existing clients and be introduced to new contacts.
[Above: Jill chats to Ashley from Lightspeed]
Every evening the team attended networking functions and with the rain over and typical warm Durban evenings, we enjoyed being outdoors and the team shared stories and socialised at the Atta and Okavango Expedition events.
INDABA 2017 was successful for us, as we continued to establish our brand and remind the market who we are and what we do.
Written by Jill Bennett-Howes
Online selling is a very exciting area to add to your sales strategy. We’ve seen many of our customers celebrate increased profits when they implement and manage an effective online strategy.
Key elements for your eCommerce strategy
Each element will need effort from your team to prepare the strategy, implement, maintain and review it – we call this the PACstrat (of course I couldn’t resist slipping in that bit of Pacman-geek-speak!).
With an effective eCommerce strategy and a dedicated team, increased profits result through new sales and/or through more efficient business procedures.
The importance of an eCommerce strategy
You have plans for increased profits but where will your increased profits come from? Whether it’s increased sales through new channels, closing sales or working more cost effectively, a very likely source of your increased profits will come from a well managed e-commerce strategy.
Online booking words like Look To Book, Credit Cards, OTAs, GDS’ and Channel Managers very quickly get marketing and sales teams dreaming up these profits and increased occupancies. Their enthusiasm is catchy – but plug those buzz words into Google, hit enter and the volumes of search results leave you feeling like there’s not enough bandwidth on your laptop – let alone enough to get your eCommerce strategy up and running.
With this being such an overwhelming business strategy, hoteliers often make the fatal mistake of approaching eCommerce as a sales after-thought or a fishing expedition. They think that randomly implementing a few connections and a few technologies will bring the profits they seek – and they often come miserably short. They celebrate the ad hoc booking instead of comparing it with all their overall sales strategies. These customers rarely claim true online profits – in fact many of them go horribly wrong and just confuse the market or create price disparity which weakens their product and can negatively impact other carefully nurtured sales strategies.
Implementing and deploying an eCommerce strategy is a business decision – one that’s as important as your existing sales strategy. It needs a dedicated team to workshop, manage, track and refine your eCommerce plans.
So, whether your focus is maximising direct sales or making working with your partners more efficient, you’ll need to: define an eCommerce strategy, add technology to achieve it and allocate resources to ensure that you get the profits your marketing and sales teams promise. This means you have a lot of work ahead of you.
As the online inventory and availability distribution hub, ResRequest plays a key role in working with our partners and customers to identify online booking options that work for you.
To help you kickstart your blueprint to success, we have identified the online booking options available to you, their pitfalls, successes and general industry trends.
Distribution Options
Your website. Your investment in a great web design is to excite customers about your product and lead them to buy. Once your customer has made a commitment to purchase, they ask for price and availability, which culminates in a sale. For this reason close to 90% of our clients proactively engage in showing rates and availability on their website.
Luxury / remote lodges have been less confident of the value of creating bookings and processing credit cards directly from their website. Reasons for look-to-book reluctance includes fears that guests will not be able to arrange complicated transfers. In addition lodges are concerned that automating bookings sidesteps the value of building a relationship between the customer and their product. To top these concerns, many lodges are wary of how trade partners may react to them openly targeting the direct market. As a result of these concerns for many years we saw a trend of caution to creating bookings online. Many customers only displayed availability with easy-to-use enquiry forms – but this trend is changing.
Online consumers expect to be able to book online and they trust that you have implemented solutions to make their booking uncomplicated and to resolve any potential challenges. As this expectation has changed so our customers have found ways to counter online booking challenges, they’ve implemented simpler online rates, easy booking forms and resolved transfer concerns with online or central reservations solutions.
Your business partners. Over time, marketing groups have formed with the objective of stimulating travel in niche markets – sort of stitching itineraries together. Some of these groups are commercial ventures, while others are informal associations born from like-minded neighbouring properties. Over the last few years we have seen an increase in interest for marketing groups and regional availability, where independent / neighbouring properties are interested in publishing availability on a collaborative web-page. This is a market sector that is growing in popularity and benefits both direct guests and travel trade.
Specialist agents. Ask any agent or tour operator and they will tell you that a large portion of their success is the skill with which they are able to quickly prepare a customised itinerary. Giving specialist agents access to your stock means that agents are able to prepare and respond to requests for quotations faster then their competitors. More then 90% of our clients allow agents to access stock with their own ResRequest login, with close to 20% allowing agents to create bookings directly into their ResRequest system.
To enable agents with their own systems to electronically extract rate and availability from multiple clients, we have developed an auxiliary product, ResConnect. Approximately 90% of our clients have established relationships with our agent partners who use ResConnect. Many of our ResConnect partners display availability directly on their website in order to compete with OTAs and GDS’. If you’re considering working with OTAs and GDS’ you should definitely be considering giving your loyal travel partners controlled access to their rates and your availability.
Online Travel Agents (OTAs) / Global Distribution Systems (GDS). Travel sites reported significant 2014 revenues: Expedia $5.7 billion, Amadeus at E1,3 billion. With revenues like these it is understandable that every hotel would love to tap into those markets. So why are remote hotels cautious of tapping into these very lucrative channels?
Concerns include the effect of boycotts by specialist travel agents and tour operators. Lodges also fear that channels will create a price war climate that will ultimately result in cheapening their products and forcing rack rates to drop. In addition lodges have logistical fears that these channels may have no concern for the guest’s knowledge or ability to transfer to and from complicated, remote locations.
Over the last few years we have seen many customers tap successfully into these channels. It takes effort and evidence shows that once the connection is established, and the right marketing effort is applied, the results are well worth it. As more products become available on these channels we expect to see OTAs and GDS’ introducing ways to help remote travellers with complicated transfers – for now it’s not a problem at all – our customers playing in this space simply make the transfer arrangements as an added on service to the traveller.
You may ask, how much effort is really needed for an online channel to sell my product? Getting return from this sales sector takes a lot of resources, time and work. Consider each travel portal as a new business relationship except, unlike traditional agents, you need to manage your own rates, your online listing and you need to learn how each travel portal works so that you can optimise sales over your competitor’s listings. Start with a few channels and, once you’ve monitored the trends and your team are experienced in working with this space, start expanding to more relevant portals.
So how does ResRequest make this happen?
ResRequest covers all your distribution needs with our own direct connections and via channel managers. The diagram below illustrates our distribution blueprint.
ONLINE OPTIONS
Online bookings are about reaching online customers and working more efficiently with your business partners through electronic connections.
What’s available?
ResRequest’s Online Bookings module lets you connect to online users electronically; distribute your availability and rates, and make bookings through online channels and your own website. Your online strategy will include one or many of the online services available to you in ResRequest. Some of these connections are direct and some are available through our Channel Manager partners.
DIRECT SALES
Ideal for your online-savvy clients and repeat customers.
Show availability and rates on your own website and give your customers the ability to ‘book and pay now’.
Your website:
1. ResRequest: Brand and use ResRequest’s online booking form and credit card gateway, or let your web designer use our interface (API) to develop your own booking form on your website. Alternatively use our booking widget, ResNova, on your WordPress or general website.
2. Channel manager: offer a direct booking form available via any of our partners channel manager.
FaceBook: Add a booking widget to your Facebook page using some of our preferred Channel Managers. A ResRequest widget for FaceBook.
TripAdvisor: Via selected Channel Managers, list your stock alongside popular OTA’s to increase your chance of a booked next to your ratings.
Circuits: Using the ResRequest interface (API) create circuit bookings within your own products or collaborating with other ResRequest properties.
SELL TO YOUR TOP AGENTS
Help your top agents compete with online travel agents by giving them an online edge.
Give your selected agents access to ResRequest with a secure login.
Give your preferred agents controlled access to ResRequest by adding them as a ResRequest user. Let them lookup availability and make bookings to increase their chance to quote quickly and book efficiently.
SELL TO AFRICA’S TOP AGENTS
Distribute your stock to Africa’s top safari agents.
Connect your stock and bookings to specialist agents and tour operators using our electronic connection programme, ResConnect.
Sign up as a ResConnect customer through our call centre. A ResRequest user is created with restricted permissions. The user is linked to each ResConnect partner via our bridge.
SELL VIA OTAs and GDS’ (Online Travel Agents & Global Distribution Systems)
Connect to OTAs and GDS’ and leverage access to thousands of global agents and travellers who are searching for a safari vacation.
Use our Channel Manager partners to distribute your inventory and rates and make bookings to OTAs like Expedia, bookings.com or GDS’ like Pegasus and Sabre. Our Channel Manager partners include: Nightsbridge and SynXis.
Select the Channel Manager that suits your distribution needs, budget and reach. Your account is setup with the channel and then we connect ResRequest for you. The last step is that you manage your profile and rates on your preferred travel sites.
