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8.3. TripAdvisor Experiences
To be able to easily offer your trips through TripAdvisor Experiences (previously Viator), Arctic has a TripAdvisor Experiences integration option that allows you to enable linking your trip types to TripAdvisor. This integration allows TripAdvisor to access real time availability information for trips and to notify Arctic of new bookings.
Before using this functionality, you must:
- Be setup with TripAdvisor Experiences (sign up here)
- Have configured your tour details (tour details must be directly entered via the TripAdvisor Experiences control panel)
- Contact Arctic Reservations support to connect your installation to TripAdvisor Experiences
This functionality is opt-in on a per trip type basis. This means that if there are trip types you don't want to offer through TripAdvisor Experiences you can simply leave the integration disabled for that trip type. Conversely if you already have some tours set up in TripAdvisor Experiences but don't want to integrate them with your Arctic availability, you won't enable the integration in Arctic for the associated trip type. If you take this approach you will still be able to manually update your availability information through your TripAdvisor Experiences control panel.
To make a trip type accessible to TripAdvisor, go to the "TripAdvisor" tab on the "Create Trip Type" or the "Update Trip Type" page and then select "Yes, allow distribution via TripAdvisor Experiences for the "Expose to TripAdvisor" field.
Note: Making changes on the TripAdvisor tab may also require changes in your TripAdvisor Experiences control panel as well. For example, if you want to enable automatic distribution for a new tour, that must be configured in the control panel, where you must link the TripAdvisor tour with the Arctic trip configuration. So a good rule of thumb is to just double check a trip type's set up in your TripAdvisor Experiences control panel after each change to the TripAdvisor tab in Arctic.
Important: TripAdvisor Experiences only fetches tour information once every 24 hours, so it may take time for changes here to be reflected in the control panel.
If one trip type in Arctic Reservations is listed as multiple tours in TripAdvisor Experiences: Arctic can separate one trip type into multiple product codes, so that you can map them to the separate TripAdvisor tours. If you wish to do this with a trip type that you have chosen to expose to Viator, you can set what criteria TripAdvisor should use for determining which trips on your calendar should get separate codes in their system. To set these divisions up, you will choose the applicable options from the "Separate codes for" field as shown here:
Once enabled, TripAdvisor Experiences will have access to basic information and availability details for all instances of the trip type. You can manually turn off specific trip dates if you do not want them to be available through the Viator platform.
After TripAdvisor Experiences has been enabled on your trip types and their associated trips, the next step is to map the tours in TripAdvisor Experiences to the Arctic trip types. You will do this from your TripAdvisor Experiences control panel. If you need assistance with this part of the process, you will need to contact TripAdvisor Experiences directly.
Broadly:
1. Under your list of tours, click "Manage" next to the appropriate tour.
2. Look for the "Reservation system connection" section.
3. Click "Edit" to create/change the connection.
4. A window will open allowing you to select one of the exported Arctic trip types. If you do not see the trip type yet, it may take up to 24 hours for TripAdvisor Experiences to fetch the latest information. Also note that TripAdvisor Experiences will only let you select a trip type if there are trips scheduled on the calendar within the next year.
5. Once you select the trip type, TripAdvisor Experiences will offer to make a test reservation to ensure the mapping is successful.
If you later enable or disable TripAdvisor integration for a trip type, you will have to repeat the mapping within the TripAdvisor Experiences control panel. Remember it can take up to 24 hours for TripAdvisor Experiences to detect the new trip types.
If you have any questions or run into any difficulties enabling TripAdvisor Experiences distribution for your trip types, please feel free to contact support by email at support@arcticreservations.com or by phone at (601) ARCTIC-9 (601-272-8429).