Best practice guide for how to load suppliers 

Overview

The difference between Suppliers, Products and Options

Tourwriter Suppliers follow a hierarchy in that you must have a Supplier with at least one Product loaded, which has at least one Option loaded before it can be used in an itinerary. By structuring your supplier data in this way now, you’ll be able to take advantage of additional functionality such as editing the price for each Option and automatically calculating the final sell price of your itinerary, and sending detailed booking emails to your suppliers.

Be selective with regard to what you decide to load

Some supplier contracts are complex (i.e. they have a large number of Products), in which case you could spend hours loading a single Supplier into your database if you were to load the entire content of the contract into your Tourwriter database. We strongly recommend that you only load the data you need and that you will use regularly.

Consider applying the ‘20/80’ rule

• Do you book 20% of your Suppliers 80% of the time? If so these are the Suppliers you should load first.
• Do you book 20% of Products 80% of the time? If so these are the Products you should load initially for this Supplier.

Consistency is key!

Be consistent with the use of capitals particularly under Product Names and Option Names as this information will appear on your Proposals, and in future, final itineraries and supplier email booking requests.

Examples per Supplier and Product Type

The following sections provide examples and tips for each of the Supplier and Product Types.

Accommodation Suppliers

When loading an Accommodation supplier, its Products will be the types of rooms sold, for example, Standard Room, Deluxe Room, Honeymoon Suite and so on. Load only the room types you will need.

An Option in how a Product is sold. For an accommodation Supplier this is the room configuration or occupancy, e.g. Double, Twin, Single, Triple, Quad etc. if there is a choice between 1 King bed or 2 Single beds, or 1 Queen bed or 2 Double beds, include both the Double and Twin as Options for that Product.

Suggested abbreviations

• Always state, in brackets, the age range for the Child and Infant Option, together with whether the age is inclusive. Examples: Child (2-15 yrs inclusive) or Infant (0-2 yrs inclusive).
• If describing the number of people that can be accommodated, write as 2A + 3C instead of 2 adults and 3 children
• If describing the room configuration in the Option Name, use K for King, Q for Queen and S for Single, so 2 Queen beds would be abbreviated to 2Q, and one King bed and 1 Single bed would be abbreviated to 1K+1S

Note: You can add other Product types such as Meal, Activity, Transfers if those products are offered by the Accommodation supplier. These will be available as Add-ons when using any of the supplier’s accommodation products in an itinerary. In the example below, the product other than the type Accommodation are Add-ons. Hence, Buffet breakfast, Private dining and Brilliant Blend Tour are included in the itinerary as Add-ons.

Activity Suppliers

Activity

• Always state, in brackets, the age range for the Child and Infant Option, together with whether the age is inclusive. Examples: Child (2-15 yrs inclusive) or Infant (0-2 yrs inclusive).
• If including a Family Option, specify the number of adults and children like this: Family (2A + 3C), instead of 2 Adults and 3 Children.

Note: You can add other Product types such as Transfers and Extras if those products are offered by the Activity supplier. These will be available as Add-ons when using any of the supplier’s activity products in an itinerary.

Guide

Transportation Suppliers

Note: Any ‘Extra’ products, such as lounge access, snow chains and GPS units will be available as Add-ons when using any of the supplier’s main transportation products in an itinerary.

Ferry

Flight

Motorhome

Rental Car

Transfer

Note: Be sure to include the carrying capacity of the vehicle in the option name, e.g. (1-3 pax). This will help ensure you’re adding the correct vehicle for your groups’ size.

Train

Fees & Insurance Suppliers

Fees

Insurance