Selling fixed departures and group blocks to agents

To sell fixed departures to agents, publish each dated departure with a real seat count that the system takes down under a lock, a release date after which unsold seats stop selling instantly, a minimum number you judge on a day you choose, and a cancellation ladder counted from the departure. Agents need seats left, what is included and the terms on the page they book from.

What a fixed departure is, in system terms

In a booking system a departure is a handful of facts, each of which decides something:

• A start date and a length, say seven days and six nights.
• Seats: a cap, or none ("seats available" on free sale).
• Sold: written only when a booking is placed or cancelled, never typed.
• A release: how many days before departure unsold seats stop selling instantly. Each departure can carry its own, or take the programme's default.
• A stop-sale: close one date without touching the others.
• A guaranteed mark: this one runs, whatever the numbers.

In iTravel a programme like this is a package, and each date is a departure with exactly those fields. You add departures one at a time, or every chosen weekday between two dates in one go. A departure that has sold seats can be closed, but never deleted or cut below what it sold, because bookings name it. How the package around it is built is the subject of building holiday packages agents can book.

Day tours have departures too: an option on a date, sometimes in a time slot, with its own capacity, as tour operator software should hold them. The board, minimums and cancellation below work for both.

Seats are people, rooms are how they sleep

The arithmetic of a group catches people out, so write it down once.

• An adult or a child takes a seat. An infant does not.
• The price is per person by how the room is shared: one adult pays the single rate, two pay twin, three pay triple. A room the season does not price (no triple, say) is refused, never guessed.
• Each child is priced by age in the bands you set, and every child needs an age. A child outside every band pays the adult rate.
• You can set a minimum and a maximum number of travellers per booking.

Seats are taken inside the booking transaction, under a lock on the departure, so two agents cannot both take the last two. A cancellation gives them back by the same path. When a departure is full you can keep taking requests on it (your switch): nothing is confirmed or charged until you say yes. The general case is in on request vs instant confirmation.

Release: when unsold seats stop selling

A departure's seats rest on rooms and coaches you have contracted, and those contracts have release dates of their own. Once a departure's release passes, it stops selling instantly, and an agent pricing that date is told in words that the seats have been released and to ask you. Setting your release a few days before your hotels' leaves time to hand rooms back cleanly; how big that margin should be is covered in hotel allotment, release periods and stop-sales.

Blocks held for one agency

Groups are often one partner's business. iTravel holds two kinds of block for one partner agency, or for every agency in one price tier:

• Room blocks: rooms of one room type (or one rate plan) of your hotel, for a run of nights. Each night is released on its own, a number of days before that night, or held to the night. A four-night block therefore releases on four successive days, not all at once.
• Seat blocks for tours: places on one tour option over a range of dates, optionally one time slot only, released per date the same way.

For each block you choose whether the agency may still buy from your general stock once the block is used. For room blocks you also choose where unsold rooms go at release: back to your general stock (the default) or back to the hotel. Sales take the agency's block first, and a cancellation gives back exactly what it took.

Two things the agency sees only if you switch them on. My allocations shows its admins what you hold for them, what is used and left, and the next release. A release reminder emails them, for blocks held for that agency alone, a set number of days before rooms or seats go back (three unless you change it, between one and thirty), in one email per agency.

For you there is a pick-up figure per block (held, sold, on hold, released, left) and a report per agency you can export: what decides whether next season's block grows or shrinks.

Minimum numbers: who decides, and when

A minimum to run is yours to set: per product, optionally per option (a shared van needs two, a private car none), per day, and per time slot if you judge each time separately. You also set the judging day, a number of days before departure.

• Only travellers on confirmed bookings count. Holds and requests are not travellers yet.
• Before the judging day a short departure reads below, with the days left; from that day, decide; at or above the minimum, reached. You can record that a departure runs anyway, and undo it.
• A package departure you marked guaranteed is never judged.
• A morning email can tell whoever may cancel which departures have reached their day to decide (your switch).
• Nothing is ever cancelled automatically. The system reports; you decide.

Agents see the result if you want them to: switch it on and the tour page, the package checkout and dated search cards say guaranteed to run or needs 2 more travellers, from your own minimum and nothing else.

If you do cancel, it is one action with a preview per booking and per currency, on the basis of a full refund because you cancelled (the default) or each booking's own policy. The date is closed for sale first, then each booking is cancelled through its own channel's path. A run that stops halfway can be resumed.

Deposits, balances and the agent's account

Trade groups traditionally pay a deposit, then a balance by a set date. In iTravel an agent's booking is charged to the agency's account in full when it is confirmed: from its prepaid balance, or within the credit limit and days to pay you set for that agency (see agent credit and prepaid wallets). A partner who should pay later gets credit terms, not a deposit schedule. Deposit and balance schedules are for travellers buying on your own website, where you switch them on.

Before confirmation there are two softer steps: an agent can hold seats for the hours you allow, and a request charges nothing until you accept it.

After confirmation, the cancellation ladder decides what the agency gets back. A package's ladder runs from the departure date on the destination's clock and is frozen on each booking, so a later change to your terms never moves what an agent already holds. Cancellation policies agents can read has the patterns.

What an agent needs to see before booking a departure

Most departure questions that arrive by email are answered by the right page. On iTravel's package page an agent sees, at their own tier and in their agency's currency:

• every departure still to come, with seats left (or "seats available"), a guaranteed mark, and its status: open, closed, released, sold out
• the price per person sharing on each, and the prices by occupancy, children's bands and infants
• the programme day by day: place, meals, where the night is
• what the trip is made of, and what is and is not included
• upgrades and extras, per person or per booking
• instant confirmation or on request, and the cancellation terms

A booking cut-off is enforced when the agent prices a date, and the refusal says why: must be booked at least 48 hours before departure (local time).

The operator's view: one board for every departure

The departures board lists the tour days and package departures that have bookings, soonest first: bookings (the waiting ones named), travellers, places taken of the capacity, the agencies involved, time slots, and closed or guaranteed marks. A departure short of its minimum reads like 4 of 6, decide in 3 days. From a departure you can email everyone on it, cancel it, or print the guide's and driver's manifest, which lists a package's guests room by room. For the wider group workflow, see group travel software.

A worked example: a 30-seat departure

Say you run a seven-day programme with these settings (illustrative): 30 seats, release 30 days before departure, a minimum of 16 judged 35 days before, twin 900 per person, single 1,250, child aged 2 to 11 at 600. Your ladder: free cancellation until 45 days before, 50% kept from 45 to 15 days, 100% inside 15 days.

Two things are worth noticing. The seats Agency C gave back did not go on sale again, because the release had passed: an agent pricing that date is told to ask you, and whether to move that departure's release is your call. And the cancellation took the departure back below its minimum after it had been reached. Reached is a count, not a decision: to lock the departure, record that it runs anyway, or mark it guaranteed.

Before you put the next departure on sale

• Seats match what you hold: the rooms and coach seats you have actually contracted.
• Release before your suppliers': the hotels' and the coach company's.
• A judging day early enough to cancel before your own suppliers' penalties begin.
• Guaranteed only when you mean it: you will run it at any number.
• A ladder agents can read, with steps that line up with what your suppliers will keep.
• Hold hours long enough for an agent to check with the client, short enough not to block the departure.
• Partners' blocks with their release days, the general-stock rule and whether they see My allocations.
• Credit terms checked for every agency that sends groups.
• The page read as an agent: seats left, status, inclusions and terms where an agent looks for them.