Tour-Operator Reservation System for Tailor-made Holidays
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Documentation: Admin - Location tree

Introduction

The location tree is used to create and update:-
  • Tour Operator brands
  • Staff at the tour operator
  • Suppliers
  • Countries
  • Resorts
  • Ports (airport, train  station, ferry port)
  • Hotels
To open the Location Tree:-
  1. Click on the "Admin" Application Tab
  2. Click the button in the Locations box
The element types listed above are seen by the system as a tree, possibly with several roots:-
  • Each brand (known as a TourOp) your tour operator has setup on the system is a tree root
  • Each TourOp has Staff, Suppliers and Places branches
    Each of these types can be assigned to one or more TourOp's so may appear in several places
  • The Places branch has a list of resorts as its sub branches
    The resort's country is ignored, so resorts from different countries are presented in the same list
  • Each resort (place has hotel and or/port "leafs"
The tabbed window indicates which type element of the tree you are currently viewing; it is not used for navigation.

Note that as with all other admin screens, you need to be an Administrator and not have "Read only" option set in order to add new items or updates existing items.

The TourOp screen

A TourOp is used to group a selection of product, which may include product shared with another TourOp, as well as product only available to itself. In this context product relates to destinations, hotels and other suppliers. Yuo can also assign staff to specific supliers - the staff member may only create holidays for the TourOps to which they are assigned.
Clients are shared between all TourOp's; each holiday is assigned to one TourOp; a client may thus have bookings with several different TourOp's.
Each TourOp can have a separate set of documentation (or share documentation, if needed).
All reports automatically provide the option to select which TourOp's should be reported for, so that reporting can be done company wide, TourOp wide, or across several TourOp segments.

If each brand you are running is entirely separate (especially with separate accounting), then it may make more sense to have each one as a different client of the system, rather than using TourOp's. TourOp's make sense if several brands share product (to avoid loading contracts multiple times); you need to easily report/compare activity across brands; you only want one client database.

If the only reason to have separate TourOp's is to change the documentation (.e.g change the company logo/contact details), an alternative is to use the Holiday Tags , and in documentation templates include different content (e.g. logo path) based on the Tags value.

A TourOp is considered by the sytem to be a supplier. Therefore you can assign services to yourself -  ADJuster services that are holiday wide are assigned to the holiday TourOp; and you may, for instance, own your own hotels etc (though it would normally still make sense to setp a real supplier for this).

When you have a TourOp, the contents of it's tree are removed from the navigation. Re-open the LocationTree screen if you need to access the branches.
 
See "The Supplier Screen" notes below for details about the fields on the screen; noting the following TourOp specifics:-
Code : A unique identifier for this operator, upto 5 characters. This cannot be changed at a later date.
Name : The publicly visible name for your brand
TourOp's : Do not select any - this will be set to the TourOp that is been created
Supplies : You will need at least 'Adjustment'.
Real supplier and booking agent are not relevant
If contact information is entered, your documentation may use these values, rather than having the details entered separately into each document template; similarly, the documentation may choose to use the Public notes .
 

The Staff Screen

Each member of staff who is to use the system must have an entry; the  staff member can be restricted to certain types of usage
Login ID.
If you are operating several TourOp brands, you can pick which ones the staff member will work with.

Login ID : a unique identifier for this staff member; this cannot be changed at a later date; unlike other ID's this can be a little longer than 5 characters.
Full Name : the name displayed to your customers (e..g on quotes, emails)
Email : Email address to display on documentation, and the destination address for Exported documents when they are sent to the staff member.
Phone and Fax number : for display on documentation; if the system is integrated with a phone system, the phone number would also be used to identify which member of staff is receiving/initiating a call.
Tour Op's : Set the TourOp's for which this client may create holidays. This may also affect which holidays the staff member can run reports for, and which product and documentation is visible.
Login allowed : Set to No if the user should no longer have access to the system (e..g when they leave the company). It is not possible to delete staff member entries
Assignable : Set to No if this staff member should not have holidays assigned to them (e..g they are not part of the sales or customer service teams)
Administrator : Set to No if this staff member is not allowed to do administrative tasks (typically those found on the Admin Application Tab). The staff member is still allowed to view the data, but may not make changes to it.
Read-only : Set to Yes if this staff member may not make any changes to data on the system (both admin and holidays/clients). This is useful for auditors and staff that only need to use reports.

The supplier screen

A supplier is anyone supplying a service who is not a hotel (or a TourOp). Although they are also suppliers, Hotels are distinct because, as physical locations, they are valid end points for transfers. Hotels must be created within a resort listed under the Places branch, not as a supplier.

Where hotels are part of a group, you normally create a supplier for the group company. The supplier is then assigned to each hotel as their financial and or booking provider. The financial provider may then be included in reporting (possibly instead of the individual hotels), If a hotel is assigned to a booking agent, the booking agents details may be used when sending service requests , rather than the hotels own details.
[The use of financial and booking supplier details is not yet implemented by the reporting or request modules - please submit a feature request for any specific requirement]

Code : A unique identifier for this supplier. Supplier codes are separate from hotel or other location codes, so don't have to be distinct from them; however it is recommended that you do keep them unique, to avoid confusion.
Name : the public name for this supplier, often displayed on itineraries and vouchers
Real Supplier and Hotel/Other supplier selector : This can be used for a hotel in a group to indicate the supplier representing the group company. In some cases you may also choose to create a "fake" supplier in order to display a different name or other details, the Real supplier would then be set to supplier containing the true supplier details. Since codes are specific to the supplier type, you need to specify if the code you have entered it a hotel code or a supplier code. [Fake suppliers work, but otherwise this information is not currently used]
Booking agent and Hotel/Other supplier selector : Some hotels are not booked directly, but instead are booked through their group company, or a third party such as your local representative. Set this to a supplier id whose contact details contain the reservation details to use. Since codes are specific to the supplier type, you need to specify if the code you have entered it a hotel code or a supplier code.  [NB this information is not currently used].
Default service : When you use the automatic service creators to add a service to a holiday, the system must pick one option (e.g. room type) for the service. After creating services for this supplier you can use the Default service option to tell the system which option it should use. If this is left blank the system makes a choice from the available options (the first one when sorted by the option id in alphabetic order).
Disabled : indicates that this supplier is no longer used. May cause the supplier to not be included in some selection lists.
Tags : Freeform text of upto three characters each. allows you to group suppliers together, for reporting or search purposes. For instance you could use five codes S1, S2, .., S5 to group hotels by star rating. [specific report may not yet support tags, and there is no option to only display hotels with specific tag(s) - submit a feature request if you have a way in which you wish to use a tag].
TourOp's : Select the TourOp's for which the supplier will provide services.
Supplies : Select the types of services this supplier may supply. This information may be used to display correct suppliers in pick lists, 
TourOp website : The page on your website which displays information related to this suppier and service provided. You may choose to include the link in your documentation, it is also available to users by clicking the 'i' in the Holiday Services tab .
Supplier website : For your reference, it is  available to users by clicking the 'i' in the  Holiday Services tab .
Contact name : Your contact at the supplier. This can be used to personalise automated emails such as service or updated contract requests.
Phone numbers , address , Alt. Email : You may choose to include this information on client documentation
Email : Used when requesting services and for other automated email. You might include it on vouchers.
Image URL : A comma separated list of urls for images. This may be used in client documentation (e.g. quotes), and is also available to users by clicking the 'i' in the  Holiday Services tab . The images should be pre-sized to suit your documentation format in order to avoid delays while they are downloaded.
Public description : You may include this on client documentation, it is  available to users by clicking the 'i' in the  Holiday Services tab .
Private info: this is  available to users by clicking the 'i' in the  Holiday Services tab .

The Place Screen

All hotels and ports must be within a "place".
A place code can be used when loading transfers and car hire to indicate that the transfer is available for all hotels/ports within the location (if not hotel or port specific transfer is found) - see the Service Admin documentation .

Place ID : a code unique to this place. It does not have to be unique against supplier/hotel codes, but keeping it unique can avoid confusion, especially for transfers.
Name : the publicly visible name for this place
Country : the country this place is in - countries are configured in the Country table .
Airport : The airport that best serves this location. Used by the auto flight creator. If the airport is within this place, you will naneed to create the place, then the airport, and come back to set the airport. 
Railway station : the station that best serves this location - see the airport note.
Ferry port : the port that best serves this location - see the airport note.
Tour Op's : The TourOp's for which this location is available (this may affect the visibility of hotels and ports within the location).
Tags : Freeform words of upto 3 characters each, can be used to group places for reporting purposes
Website URL : The url for this location on your own website - you might use this in your client documentation
Image UR L: a comma separated list or image url's to use in your client documentation.
Public description : text to include in your client documentation
Private notes : notes for use within your tour operator

The Port Screen

A port is an endpoint for various methods of travelling to a location, including transfers.

Code: A unique code for this port. You can use the same code for each different port type and for the location the port is in, if you wish; you may prefer to use distinct codes.
Name: the public name for this port. You may prefer to explicitly include e.g. the word "Airport", this will mainly depend on how your client documentation has been created.
Port type: Select appropriate type
Place: This is the code for the place where this port is - you must already have created the place
Tour Op's: Which TourOp's this port is appropriate for
Tags: Can be used to group ports/locations
Public description: This can be included in your client documentation
Private notes: for your toru-operator internal use