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32.1. Social Site
The social site in Arctic provides a closed, social network where guests can interact and remain connected with you before and after their trip. The social site allows guests and guides from a specific trip on a specific date to interact with each other by sharing photos, videos, comments and more. The social site is a great feature for allowing relationships to build between guests, guides and you as an outfitter. The social sites are always available and there are many guests who return year after year to look at past trips and download the photos that were posted. The social site can be made available to your guests at the time of reservation or can be made available after the activity ends.
Generally, we have found that the social site is most beneficial to outfitters that offer multi-day trips where guests will spend several days with each other. It can also be used for large groups or before trips to provide a place for coordinating logistics and preparing for the trip.
For multi-day companies, many have found that making the Social Site available at the time of reservation allows guests to get to know one another before they arrive to participate in their trip which reduces the initial time it takes for the group to get to know each other and "break the ice". The guests who participated arrive knowing a bit about each other.
For other companies, the variability in groups and guides means that it makes more sense to offer the social site only after the trip has completed. Any of the methods above work great and you can decide on what works best for your guests and your trip offerings.
To use the social site there are some settings that you should look at first and then you will need to enable the social site for either a whole trip type or a single trip.
Settings
To access the Social Site Settings, go to the "Settings" page under "Social Site". Here you will find settings for requiring guests to complete their evaluation first before they can access the social site and for controlling the activity notices that the system will send when new content is posted.
The first setting "Require Evaluation First" allows you to use the social site as incentive to get guests to complete the evaluation (assuming an evaluation is setup for the trip in question). If you choose to "Require Evaluation First", even if you set up the social site to be available at the time of reservation, once the trip is complete and you send out your evaluation emails, Arctic will not allow the guests back into the Social Site until they have completed their evaluation. This allows your guests to benefit from the pre-trip interaction but still allows you to use the social site as incentive to complete the evaluation after their trip is over. The option also works really well if you have your social site set up to only be available after the trip returns. In this instance, before your guests will be able to access the Social Site initially, they will need to complete your evaluation.
The next setting "Send Activity Notifications" allows you to choose whether activity notices are sent when new content is posted, and if so whether guests will be given the option to opt out or whether they will be given the option to opt in. These settings are explained in further detail in the "Activity Notification Emails" section of this chapter.
In the next section, we will explain how to enable social site for your trips and trip types.