Supplier Connectivity

Tourplan's Supplier Connectivity, available with our Enterprise Edition, empowers your Tourplan system with real-time supplier search and booking facilities.

Enjoy instant access to a full range of hotel/activity/theme parks/car rental and other supplier dynamic and contracted rates, with the ability to instantly confirm and guarantee a booking.

How Does It Work?#

Via direct online connections with hotel, car rental and other supplier systems such as central reservation systems (CRS), global distribution systems (GDS) and Channel Management Systems, Tourplan provides you with the ability to instantly search for and book services from within your Tourplan Booking modules and hostConnect and webConnect applications.

Key features include:#

• Access to products at dynamic rates including 'Best Available Rate' (BAR), 'rate of the day' and other special rates.
• Access to products at nett rates (where supported by the supplier systems).
• The ability to view and compare on the same screen, rates and availability from your own Tourplan database alongside rates and availability from the external supplier systems.
• Bookings made are automatically and simultaneously created in both your Tourplan system and the external supplier's system.

Key Benefits To You, The Tour Operator...#

• Instant confirmation (or indication of no availability) for bookings.
• Access to additional product rates and inventory including special offers, best available rate, rate of the day, and last- minute rates, all without needing to monitor manual supplier communications and update your internal database.
• Significant efficiency gains via automated searching, communications and bookings processes.

Simply put, Tourplan provides the central software and supplier connectivity; while you choose which products and suppliers can be searched and booked through mapping in your own Tourplan system.

How Do I Get Started?#

With the growth of connected booking networks globally, many suppliers can now offer you the ability top book directly in their preferred online distribution platform. You will negotiate directly with them on the associated cost benefits available.

You define in Tourplan which suppliers and their associated product you wish to enable external connectivity to.

Tourplan can be configured to:

• A) combine and show rates from the external supplier systems with rates in your own system, enabling instant rate comparison with your contracted rates and supplier dynamic rates, or
• B) view rates from the external supplier systems, separately from your own contracted rates loaded in your Tourplan system.

From your Tourplan FIT booking modules, hostConnect or webConnect, you will be able to search and book services sourced in real-time from the external supplier system.

When you book an externally connected product, the service is automatically added to your Tourplan booking and likewise the booking is automatically made in the external supplier system.

The service in your Tourplan booking holds all the usual operational and accounting details for onward processing, accounting and reporting.

Next Steps#

Your local support team will guide through these processes:

1. Request Activation - In the supplier system.
2. Credential Exchange - Configure API credentials.
3. Product Mapping - Map supplier products to your database.
4. Testing - Validate in the sandbox environment.
5. Go Live - Activate for production use.

Supplier Extranet#

Supplier Extranet is an easy to use, web based tool for suppliers to:

• Confirm on-request bookings / update supplier confirmation numbers.
• Update contracted / special rates.
• Top-up your contracted allocation.
• View and export (to Excel) forward bookings.
• Take payment for bookings via Virtual Credit Card (requires a separate 3rd party VCC account).

Key Benefits#

• Hotels can download their own forward bookings reports.
• Enhanced supplier relationships with high volume hotels.
• Hotels can update booking status and insert their confirmation number.
• All updates flow seamlessly into the relevant Tourplan back-office booking.

The Supplier Extranet is a quick and easy way for hotels to provide top-up allocations or update special pricing on contracted rates.