Overview 

Each accommodation is loaded as a single product and has a specific pricing season and location. The location of the accommodation has to be within the radius of a created area in order to be displayed on the Planner. 

In order to add inventory accommodations to modules or templates, they have to be created previously in the inventory.

 

Article Available in Video The information in this article is available in videos and with additional details below.

 

 

00:00: This guide will walk you through the steps to access and navigate the TripBuilder Inventory. 00:05: Once you login to your TripBuilder instance on the Dashboard, you can navigate to the Cockput section to enter the TripBuilder Inventory. 00:13: Click on the Inventory link to access the Inventory. 00:17: The inventory, located inside the Cockpit, is where all the products, modules, and templates are created and managed. It is the place where the actual trip and tour templates are built and published in order to be displayed and used on the Discovery and Planner. Let me give you a brief overview. 00:36: Click on the Package Builder on the upper left. This is where your offered tours are created and managed. In this section, Templates and Modules are built, and areas and descriptions can be added and saved. 00:48: Navigate to the Itinerary Templates section. 00:51: An itinerary template acts as a blueprint for a tour. In this view, you have an overview of all your created templates. Published templates are examples of trips that are displayed on the Discovery. You also have the possibility to save templates as "custom", which are not shown on Discovery but are a good example of templates to be tested first before publishing or to create a trip for a specific customer only. By clicking on "Create Template", a new template can be created. 01:19: Navigate back to the Package Builder and click on Modules. 01:23: This view shows you all your created Modules. As described in the Itinerary Templates section, Templates act as the main blueprint for a trip. Itinerary Templates can be built in a stop-to-stop program plan, or in a modular approach, by using Modules. Different types of Modules are supported that can be used as many times as needed, allowing different Itinerary Template possibilities. Modules allow you to create, for example, fixed trips, with the offering of pre-and post-programs. 01:54: By clicking on "Create Module" a new module can be created. 01:58: Navigate again back to the package builder and click on Areas in the drop down. 02:03: Areas form a major component of the itineraries as they are used as itinerary stops. They delimit the area where customers can overnight, allowing them to choose from the available activities and accommodations. They include several descriptive elements, as well as pictures, to give an overview of the route of the tour. Areas must be created in the Inventory before they can be used in templates and products so that the area can be referenced to the exact location and displayed correctly on the map. Your TripBuilder comes with an area database of over 30 tausend areas, shown in this view. 02:38: Clicking on the area "Aachen" for example, opens the detail view of the area. 02:43: In the detailed view of the area, you will find information such as the area naming convention, rating, nearby airports important for the flight search, the hotel search radius, as well as activity search radius and general coordinates of the location. 02:58: Access the area descriptions section in the package builder drop down. 03:03: Area Descriptions are used to describe an area, a stop within an itinerary, where the customer can overnight and choose from a selection of optional activities. In order to create an Area Description, the area must be created beforehand. Within your TripBuilder, a recreated set of location content is automatically available. 03:24: Start typing in the search field to search for an area description. 03:28: Search for example for Berlin. 03:31: Select Berlin from the search results. 03:34: A detailed view of the area description will be opened. Navigate between the different tabs to explore the area content. Starting with the description, which is divided into Key Sentence, Short Description and Log Description. 03:48: Click "Pictures" 03:51: ...to view the pictures which will be displayed with the area. Or click on Translate ... 03:56: ...to view the translated description. 03:59: Own contracted Products not sourced via a live API can be added and managed in the Inventory. To access the product section, click on Products. Different types of products can be created, such as accommodation, transfers, rental cars, activities and more. 04:17: In the Products section click on Accommodations - Own Inventory. 04:22: Create accommodation manually with your own contracted rates. Each accommodation is loaded as a single product and defined with seasons, prices and special offers based on your contract with the supplier. The location of the accommodation has to be within the radius of a created area in order to be displayed on the Planner. In order to add inventory accommodations to modules or templates, they have to be created previously in the inventory by clicking the "Create Accommodation" button. 04:50: Navigate back to the Products section and click on "Accommodation - Bed Banks" 04:55: This overview gives you a view of the accommodation NBC within our database. This descriptive content and pictures are used and displayed with accommodation sourced via supplier APIs. But also can be used to create your own inventory accommodation with your own season and pricing. 05:12: Click within the Products drop-down on Transfers. 05:16: Transfers are used as connections in Templates. Each transfer is a single product with a specific start and end location. A transfer in the Inventory can model any of the following means of transportation: Car Train Bus Flight Car Ferry Boat Bicycle Motorcycle and Walking 05:36: By clicking on "Create Transfer", a new transfer product can be created. 05:41: Back on the Products drop-down, click on Transport. 05:45: Inventory transports can be used as primary connections between Departure and Arrival airports in a template, like live flight offers. Transport can be of type Flight Bus or Train 05:58: Click on "Create Transport" to cerate a new transport type. 06:02: Another product option are "Transit Activities" 06:05: Transit activities are activities or tours that can be used between stops and might often be used to model multi-day tour packages such as: Group Tours Cruises Fixed Private Tours and /or Rental Car Tours Each activity is loaded as a single product with specific pricing per season and location. In order to add inventory activities to modules or templates, they have to be created previously in the inventory. 06:31: Let's discover such a Transit Activity. We have created an example trip to Namibia. 06:37: In the detail view of the activity, you can navigate between the different tabs. The segment tab allows you to create the day-by-day description and outline of the trip you want to offer. 06:48: Preview the created segment description from a Discovery and PLanner point of view. 06:53: The created segments will be showcased in a similar way to your user in the Discovery, Planner and Travel Documentation. 07:00: Besides Transit Activities, also Stop activities can be created within the Inventory. 07:06: Stop activities in the inventory model activities or tours that take place in a certain place, in a city. They always start/end in the same place, and maybe anything from a small day activity to a multi-day tour: Private Day Tours Private Multi-Day Tours or Cruises Each activity is loaded as a single product with specific pricing per season and location. In order to add inventory activities to modules or templates, they have to be created previously in the inventory. 07:36: See this example activity "Royal Versailles & Paris". 07:40: Stop and Transit Activities are built up in a similar way, as you will see in the detailed view of the activities. They are following the same tab structure. 07:50: Navigate to the next section within the Products drop-down. Base Services. 07:56: Base Services are additional components that have fixed pricing for a given duration. They offer the option to shorten or extend the duration of service by subtracting or adding a specified amount from the fixed price. Each Base Service is loaded as a single product with fixed pricing for the standard duration and optional pricing for additional days or hours. Base services are used, for example: To add single fees to a tour, such as national park fees. To add a service for a specific duration (measured in days or hours), such as a driver or guide. 08:29: Moving on to the discovery of the next product type which are Rental Cars. 08:34: Rental cars are used as connections in Templates. Each transfer is a single product with a specific start and end location. The pick-up and drop-off locations of a rental car have to be the same as the stops added to a template in order to select them properly. 08:49: Pricing of a rental car can be structured with different seasons and rental duration prices per day. 08:55: The last but not least product type which can be created within the TRipBuilder Inventory is Upsell Items. 09:02: Upsell Products are additional products or services that the user can book. With the help of the ruleset, upsell products can be displayed for all of your templates or for specific ones, depending on your needs. Upsell Products have a dedicated step within the planning process, and they will be displayed in the first checkout step before the user needs to fill in the personal information. If a template has no upsell product assigned, then the step will not be displayed in the checkout process. 09:30: The supplier section allows you to create and manage supplier information within the TripBuilder inventory. The stored supplier information can be added to inventory products. 09:41: The supplier in the inventory can be managed with two attributes: Supplier: The company that legally sells a product and acts as the official supplier of the inventory product. Operator: The company that in the end provides the service operationally. Could be a subcontractor of the supplier. 10:00: Both attributes, the supplier as well as the operator, describe a contact to whom notification emails are sent during the booking process of an inventory product. Additionally, the supplier information defined for an inventory product is shown in Customer Care in the Services & Price List view and can be edited. 10:19: Navigate further to the picture library section. 10:22: While not mandatory, it's recommended that pictures are organised in folders, as in any other file system structure. For that purpose, use the New Folder button at the top-right of the screen. 10:34: Pictures must be uploaded to the Picture Library before they can be added to the different areas, products and templates. 10:41: While uploading pictures, they will be cropped to the correct ratio as it should be displayed on the Front-end of TripBuilder. 10:48: Once the picture is uploaded in the system, you can add the License information on the Licence Tab next to the Description Tab. 10:55: We hope you enjoyed this TripBuilder Inventory overview. Discover more details of all mentioned sections in the following guides. Thank you

How to create inventory accommodation? 

In order to load an accommodation, please make sure you have the following information available:

• Description of the hotel
• Exact address, location, and phone number
• Net prices for all room types
• Representative, high-quality pictures of the hotel (we suggest 3-6)

 

Steps to create an inventory accommodation

• Go to Cockpit
• Click on Inventory
• Click on Products
• Click on Accommodations - Own Inventory

• Click on the button Create Accommodation to open the following screen and enter the required information. 

Please note: All required fields are marked with a *.

• The Hotel search field, on the top of the mask, allows searching in the Nezasa hotel property list and allows to automatically manage the static hotel information such as description and pictures. 
  • Note: If you want to use your own description and pictures for the accommodation, please ignore this field. 
• Add the Name of the Hotel 
• Choose the contracted Currency 
  • Note: This is only possible while creating the accommodation. Once you click Save, the currency cannot be changed for this accommodation anymore.
• Select the Star rating of the accommodation
• Enter a Long Description 
  • This description will be displayed in the hotel's detail view, inside Planner, as well as on the travel documentation. (Layout: with description)
• Enter an Attribution
  • A shorter sentence will be displayed together with the long description, which can serve as additional information. 
• Add the Location 
  • Adding the location is necessary to make sure that the accommodation is displayed and can be added to a specific stop. The location of the accommodation has to be within the radius of a created area in order to display on the Planner. 

• Click Save
  • After clicking Save, the draft of the hotel will be created and you will be redirected to a new page. 

Please note The field Key Sentence has been deprecated and does not show in the Planner or Travel Documentation.   The accommodation will not be created and the information won't be stored unless you click on Save. Only after clicking Save the draft of the accommodation will be created.

Important: The currency cannot be changed after the accommodation is created. While the rest of the fields are open to being modified (in the draft and in future versions), the currency is considered integral data of the accommodation.

 

Adding Room Categories

On the tab Room Categories, various room categories can be added. There is no restriction to the amount. 

• Click on the Room Categories Tab 
• Click on Add Room Category 
• Enter the Name of the Room Category and hit OK. The entered room categories will appear on the screen. 

• Enter a Mini Description which should be displayed with the room category if required. (optional) 
• Select the Pricing Type 
  • Price per Room 
  • Price per Pax
• Click on the small calendar icon to add a Stop Sell Date (optional)
  • Specific dates (i.e. single days and/or date ranges) where the service cannot be offered can be entered here.

Know more: Create one Room Category with seasonality first. The season tables of the room categories are copied and only have to be entered once. When changing one of the season tables, all season tables are adjusted accordingly.

 

Know more: Learn more on how to create the inventory accommodation with occupancy pricing based on room types here.

 

Create Pricing Season

Know more: Check out the How to create pricing seasons article to know the pricing season creation process.

 

Add Condition

After you have added a pricing season you will be able to add a condition to each season. 

Clicking on the editing pen next to each season will allow you to define if a minimum stay is required for the room category and season. 

• Click on the edit pen 
  • A pop-up window will open, where you can define the condition for Min. Stay.

 

• •  The minimum is set to 2 nights per default. Change to the number of nights which are required.
    • Note: Changing it to a lower amount will result in an error when saving.
• Click Save 

Adding Special Offers

Know more: Check out the How to add a special offer? article to know the creation process of special offers.

 

Adding Amenities

Know more: Check out the How to add amenities article to know the creation process of single amenities and amenity groups.

 

Adding Pictures 

Move to the Pictures tab to be able to add pictures to your accommodation. The tab is directly linked with the picture library. 

Please Note Pictures need to be uploaded to the Picture Library before they can be assigned to an accommodation.

• Click on the Picture Tab
• Click on the + to access the Picture Library 
• Select the pictures that you want to add to the accommodation and click on assign. 
• Click Save

Know more We recommend uploading and adding at least min 3-6 pictures to your accommodation.

Miscellaneous

This tab provides a variety of informational attributes related to the accommodation inventory, like:

• The Supplier and Operator for the respective inventory product - further details can be located in the Inventory Supplier Management article.
• The Commission Category, already established by your TripBuilder administrator, which outlines the commission amount an agency receives upon the sale of this product. Go to the Agency Commissions article for more information.
• The possibility to add Internal Remarks, where you can insert any necessary internal notes. Please note, this field is not visible to agent users or end consumers. For further understanding, the article Internal Remarks on Inventory Products offers in-depth information.
• The Referencing Templates where the inventory product is included. Direct associations to each template definition and its overall status are presented.
• An External Comment can be displayed to end users in the 'Remarks' section of an accommodation plan in Planer. This feature is typically utilised to inform travellers regarding any scheduled unavailability, maintenance, or construction work. Keep in mind, the external comments will only be visible provided the booking date precedes the expiration date.

 

Additional Tabs

00:00: In this guide we will cover what you can do in other tabs of an Inventory Product when you're creating or editing it. 00:07: The Description tab, Pricing or Room Categories or Service Categories tabs, Amenities tab, and Picture tabs are explained in each Inventory Creation video you have available. 00:19: In your library of Videos and Guidance, you can also find a video dedicated to Cancellation Policies. 00:26: In this video, we will focus on the following tabs: Tags; Translate: Miscellaneous; Integration; Reselling; and Summary. All of this tabs exist on all of the Inventory Products you can create, and they are similar in all of the products. 00:43: Let's start with tags. Select the "Tags" tab of any inventory product. 00:48: You will see a list of all the tags that have been created in your instance. If none has been created yet, this list will be empty. 00:57: You can also see if this product has any tags associated to it. 01:01: To create a new tag, click on "Create new tag". 01:05: Give the tag a name, and click on Ok. 01:08: To add your newly created tag, or any other existing tag, click on the plus icon of any tag. It will add that tag to the product. 01:18: Tags are mostly useful on listings, templates and modules, where you can find Inventory by searching for the tags. 01:26: Let's move on to translate. 01:28: As the name says, this is where you can translate the information that is visible in the frontend of your Inventory Product. 01:35: For each available frontend language (in Discovery, Planner and Checkout), that is set in your settings, you have the possibility to translate the original text. 01:45: In some cases, like Areas, and airports, you have some pre-filled translations. 01:51: Let's move on. Choose the "Miscellaneous" option. 01:55: On Miscellaneous, you can set the Supplier and the Operator of the Inventory product. To know more about working with Suppliers, check our video about it. 02:05: You can also set a Commission Category, from the ones already defined by your TripBuilder Admin. This commission categories define how much commission an agency gets when this product is sold. 02:16: On Internal Remarks, you can leave any comments you might find suitable. This field is not visible by Agent users, or end-users. 02:25: In this last information, you can see if this Inventory product is included in any Template. If so, you will see a link to that template, and their status. 02:35: Now, let's navigate to the "Integration" section. 02:39: This tab allows you to create an external reference for this product that you might use in other external softwares. 02:46: The major integrations are included, like Midoco, GIATA, Amadeus, between others. 02:54: You can then add the external ID you might use to identify this Inventory Product. The information will then be passed via the Booking API to the external system defined. 03:05: The next tab is Reselling. 03:07: On Partner Reselling, you can share this Inventory Product with other Travel Agencies, Distribution Channels or Partners. For this to be possible, your TripBuilder Admin must have reselling rules and markups created. 03:20: The last tab is a summary tab. Navigate to it. 03:24: You have the ID of your product, and it's revision. The revision is the number of edits made to this inventory product. Name indicates the name of the Inventory Product. Lastly, Status indicates the current status of the Product. Status reflects if the product is Published and visible on the frontend, or if it is in a Draft status, when you are creating it, and lastly Incomplete, if you are making changes to it. 03:51: Also on the Summary tab, you have the possibility to mark certain inventory products as "Available on Request". 03:58: When a specific component needs to be manually requested, booked or confirmed at all times, then you can set it up to be always available on request. 04:07: Marking this option as "ON", will make this product not directly booked in the time of the booking. 04:13: Lastly, on the Summary tab, in some Inventory Products, you will have the Room or Service Categories, Amenities and Special Offers displayed. 04:23: This guide covered the common tabs of Inventory products. See you next time!

 

Learn more about the use of the additional tabs in the following overview. 

 

Publishing Accommodation

Before an accommodation can be used in the Planner and added to a Module or Template, it must be published. The status of the accommodation is always displayed next to the defined accommodation name. 

Next to the SAVE button, on the top right, you will see an action button with three dots. 

• Click on the Button 
• Click on Express Publish to publish the accommodation 
  • The status of the accommodation will be set from draft mode to publish. 

 

Display in Planner 

Display of the selected accommodation in Planner: 

Display of the accommodation on the accommodation overview list: 

Display of the accommodation detail view: