home > support > web design > joomla extension

Tour Operator extension for Joomla

TourCMS can be easily integrated into a Joomla powered website by simply adding Booking Engine links to existing product pages (learn more). Deeper integration is available via use of our XML API and now our new Joomla extension which allows developers familiar access to display product descriptions, images and availability pulled from TourCMS within the Joomla environment.

How it works

Installing the TourCMS Joomla extension enables a new TourCMS menu item in the Components menu within the Joomla administration interface. Within this new admin area users can enter their TourCMS API Credentials and decide which TourCMS Tours/Hotels to add to their Joomla website.

The extension caches all of the standard Marketplace data relating to each Tour/Hotel including descriptions, images, lead-in prices and a monthly overview of the next 12 months of availability. This information can be displayed via templates or modules (see "Modules" below).

There is some optional information that users can choose to enter into Joomla for each Tour/Hotel (see "SEO" below)

SEO

Users can enter aliases (for SEF URLs), meta keywords, meta descriptions, and titles for each Tour/Hotel manually into Joomla. Additionally different Long descriptions can be loaded rather than using the text stored in TourCMS, handy if product descriptions are also being distributed to other websites via the TourCMS Marketplace.

Modules

The TourCMS Joomla extension provides several optional configurable modules that can be used to display product information.

Tour/Hotel Map

Displays the Tour/Hotel "Start location" on an embeded Google Map, includes settings to allow the user to enter their Google API Key and set the map height (map width determined automatically).

Tour/Hotel Availability

Displays monthly availability for the current and next year indicating Tour availability for up to 12 months in advance.

Uses the core component settings to determine how to link to the TourCMS booking engine (popup window / iframe / standard link).

Tour/Hotel Booking price & link

Displays the Tour/Hotel "Duration description", lead-in price and a "Book online" link. Includes settings to allow the user to toggle different fields on/off (i.e. to show the price but not a booking link).

Uses the core component settings to determine how to link to the TourCMS booking engine (popup window / iframe / standard link).

Limitations / future additions

• The extension only provides access to the standard TourCMS Marketplace descriptions (most of the data listed on the Show Tour API). While you can load a custom description, meta keywords/tags and title for the Tour/Hotel in Joomla, storing other data would require modifying the component.
• While the extension is fully translatable the configuration is currently limited to a single Website channel API details, this means that descriptions are currently limited to a single language (although this can be any language supported by TourCMS and your TourCMS account can support multiple languages).
• A bulk import feature is planned, this will allow all Tours/Hotels to be imported in a couple of clicks
• A basic search module is planned, this will allow searching Tours/Hotels by keyword, country and monthly availability

Download

We hope to have the extension finished and available to download soon, please contact us to register interest and request early access.