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Travel website / Affiliate perspective

The TourCMS Marketplace solves the problem of how to deal with many small tour operators / activity providers all who have completely random product data formats, average online booking capabilities and constrained web skills / technology budgets

Key benefits

• Full content including company descriptions, tour descriptions, geocodes, images, dates, prices & availability all via web based XML API
• Find new suppliers to work with via the Marketplace - including how they like to commercially contract and their contact details. Makes it easy for new partners to be found and deals to be struck
• Supports transactional model as well as other business models (PPC, pay per listing, affiliate, agent etc)
• Marketplace partner interface includes booking details, click statistics etc
• A full GDS style approach - i.e. end point contracts - you contract with the supplier, the supplier contracts with you. The TourCMS Marketplace is just the data conduit
• Centralised commission billing scheme can be used (commission payments flow from supplier to TourCMS to you as the OTA / travel website)

Can bookings be made with the suppliers?
Yes. Or you could chose not to (e.g. you could be running a PPC travel product directory)

The 4 key ways of sending bookings to a supplier via the TourCMS Marketplace:

• Your own booking engine / payment gateway - Because you have (or can get via API) true availability, you can take your own bookings via your own booking engine / payment gateway and be confident it is available. You could then email / fax the supplier. The availability won't be updated though until they enter that booking manually into their system
• Send the consumer traffic to the supplier's website - use the TourCMS tracking system (365 day cookie) and the consumer books direct with the supplier (ideal for affiliate style deals)
• TourCMS booking engine - You can incorporate a standard TourCMS booking engine into your site - with your design - but functionality decisions are made by the supplier. e.g. for white water rafting companies they tend to ask for emergency contact information. For international tours, they ask for passport information. This booking engine can be iframed into your site.
• API - View documentation

Depending upon the permission settings (controlled by the supplier) you will either be able to see no booking information, summary information or be able to, via the API, recall the entire booking detail. By default you can see summary booking detail (travel dates, sale value, commission earnt, lead customer name)

Do you have to use the content supplied via the Marketplace?
No. You could just use the Marketplace to find new suppliers.
Or you could just use the dates & prices data to feed an existing relationship with a supplier (where you have your own, unique, content perhaps for SEO purposes).

What kind of suppliers are in the Marketplace?
Tends to be many adventure travel / activity suppliers. Also villa / ski chalet operators and a few sports event tourism suppliers.

The vast majority of these companies are not available elsewhere. We do not vet these suppliers but do include their financial protection / bonding information which you may use to make your own judgement about working with them on a case by case basis.

Who owns the copyright to the content? Is the content public?
This should be indicated between you and the supplier in your own contracts. Remember we have end point contracts hence the commercial contract is between you and the supplier at prices and terms that you both agree to. TourCMS do not need to know what is in the contract.

Note that the channel XML response includes the commercial information about the supplier (fields marked private) and this should not be made public.

What if the content is not very consistent?
An example is where a supplier may have product names in upper case and others have the content in lower case. Or perhaps their company description is a little "flamboyant" or written in 1st person (where we prefer 3rd person). In these situations please tell the supplier and suggest they fix it. We plan to introduce a mechanism to flag content that needs improving. The ultimate sanction is that you can remove a connection from a supplier hence not see their content (but that is a little extreme!)

How much does it cost?
Nothing! You can setup for free.

If you wish to use central commission billing scheme then we will take a fee from the supplier for this service. You will earn 6% of the commisionable sale value on confirmed bookings.

Sign-up for a partner account

What does the TourCMS Marketplace look like?

Find new suppliers / channels
Find new suppliers that match your requirements
You can then go to a subsequent page that has the full detail including sample products




XML test harness
Making it easy to test the XML and see what kind of content your suppliers have




Design your booking engine
Note this screenshot is from similar functionality from the supplier side





See also

• Marketplace overview
• DMO destination marketing organisation perspective
• Supplier / niche tour operator perspective

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