ResRequest’s Exciting Leadership Changes
Discover exciting leadership changes at ResRequest, as we embark on a new chapter with a strengthened team committed to delivering exceptional hospitality software solutions and customer experiences.
Accounting Integrations
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.
Fiscalisation within ResRequest
Fiscalisation is designed for Tax Authorities to collect and record VAT transactions accurately. Recently there has been a wave of fiscal requirements for the online recording of VAT transactions. In this article, we explain fiscalisation and how it works in ResRequest.
Sell more beds by working with OTAs
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.
Travel Trackers announce new release for ResInsite
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.
Professional services
In November we established our new Professional Services Department to meet a growing need for business-level consultation and address how ResRequest fits into your business processes.
This department is strategically positioned to assist you with business consultation, with this team also responsible for implementations and data restructure projects.
“Our objective is to provide high-level consultation to ResRequest customers that will maximise their business efficiencies and revenues through the use of our produts and services,” says Albert Smith, Professional Services Manager.
By consulting with clients and working with developers where applicable, this new department will help you customise and optimise ResRequest in your business.
Introducing the Tourism Reboot Package
“We have seen clear indications that markets are reopening and we can help you prepare for the rebirth of tourism in your market,” says Albert.
To kick off the new year our Professional Services Team is offering a ‘Tourism Reboot Package’, intended to be the launchpad to give your business efficiencies and booking volumes a boost.
The Tourism Reboot Package includes the following:
- A full system audit and report on ResRequest modules not being utilised or needing attention.
- An audit and review on your agents, including historical performance, commission structures, and where to focus your relationship-building efforts.
- A review of functionality not being used that should be incorporated into your processes.
- Consulting sessions to:
- Formulate your Operating Procedures and recommend process optimisations.
- Review reporting being used and build/adjust reports.
- Review your current online sales strategy and connections.
If required additional services can be assessed, and quoted. These include:
- Rebranding/updating of your ResRequest public pages and documentation.
- Training sessions for new staff and existing staff needing a refresher.
This package is a fixed fee of $1050 with 30-hours of consultation over an eight-week period. Sign up before 31 January 2022 for a 10% discount.
If you are as eager to prepare for the market upswing as we are – email us at support@resrequest.com, and one of our Professional Services team (below) will be in touch.
tourism.today
tourism.today – travel trends the tourism industry needs.
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.
Plans available
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.
WETU – helping the travel industry sell better
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?
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.
Increase your direct bookings with ResNova 3
Meet Bob, an extreme “hodophile” (One who loves to travel). After his most recent trip to Africa, enthralled by the beautiful landscapes and captivated by the majestic “Big 5”, he couldn’t help himself but trawl to your website to plan his next trip to Africa.
However, his booking experience has left a bitter taste in his mouth, after finding the process to be slow, and difficult to view on mobile – as a result, Bob, unfortunately, decides to abandon his booking.
Just like Bob, there are many users/customers who experience the dissatisfaction of a poor booking experience. One thing that is crucial to note, is that your guests’ first experience of your business begins with the success of their booking experience.
So just how can you tap into this opportunity and turn it into a success for your lodge?
The place to start is with our booking widget, ResNova.
What is ResNova?
ResNova is our booking widget, which enables you to embed your ResRequest availability and rates anywhere on your website. It offers two formats so you can show your information in either a calendar matrix or a quick search…or both!
You have choices when it comes to deciding how you would like to set your widget up. You have the option of simply showing availability, or enabling the full booking process.
You even have a list of payment gateways that you can choose from, to ensure your guests can make payments during the booking process.
Why ResNova?
Our most recent development on ResNova, means that it is now built with technologies that provide a sleek and stable booking experience. Just like Bob, most of your guests will access the internet using their mobile devices and with our latest development, we wanted to ensure that their user journey is optimal and user-friendly.
Our new features include:
- Let your users make bookings in a few quick and easy steps from any device.
- Customise the buttons, colours, and hover states to align with your website branding.
- Now includes an integration to DPO payment gateway.
- Payment plans are now accessible to users making bookings from your ResNova widget.
- Track where your bookings are coming from by selecting a source per widget.
- Extended search functionality allows the guest to select and filter properties.
- Back-office live chat to stay connected to our team, for any ResNova queries that might pop up.
To learn more about ResNova, and our latest features, contact our support team or visit our Learn Online site.
