2019 was a big year for us at TrekkSoft. Apart from opening new headquarters in Barcelona, we made many big and small improvements to our booking and management tool. 

Through it all, we remained focused on three key areas: improved communication with our customers, increased control over pricing and availability, and improved mobile sales experience. 

Here's a run-down of all the improvements we made to ensure the long-term success of our customers. 

New features

Advanced Agent Commissions

It is common for tour and activity providers to work with a wide range of resellers to reach different target markets. Operators can also setup different commission rates for different products depending on the the popularity and price of a product. This means that each resale agent can have different commission rates for each product they resell.

To track these commission rates, we created Advanced Agent Commissions. With this tool, you can set up different commission rates for each product the agent sells, track their sales and create agent reports to show commission owed at the end of each period. 

You can also adjust the commission settings to calculate a flat fee or a percentage of the sale.

Learn more about our Agent and Reseller tools here

Trip Planner (Beta)

Another feature we released in 2019 is our Trip Planner that is now in Beta. Created with bus tours and boat tours, this tool is perfect for companies that want to maximise their resources.

For example, if you run three bus tours that go along the same route, you could use one bus instead of three to run the tours, so long as you have the spare capacity to do so.

The Trip Planner makes this easy to plan and organise, allowing you to maximise your resources at had. It's an easier and more flexible way to allocate and reallocate your resources (that's what we call the staff, assets and materials required to run a tour), while managing your tours and guests too. 

Big updates

Booking widget 2.0

We also launched a newly designed booking widget to offer a more streamlined and seamless booking experience on your website, while retaining the ability to sell add-ons and shop items, and allowing customers to redeem discount codes and gift vouchers as well. 

The biggest change to the booking widget is that your customers can now add multiple products into the same basket, and pay for it all in one go. 

Learn more about our booking tools here.

POS Desk 2.0

In May 2019, we also updated the POS Desk, another sales tool crucial to the sales operations for many tour and activity companies. It now has a simplified checkout flow and design, allowing you to take a booking and process payment in fewer steps.

Towards the end of the year, based on user feedback we received, we also brought back the ability to display products that companies resell. 

TrekkConnect

TrekkConnect remains the largest channel manager in the market and we will continue to add more marketplaces to the tool, giving tour operators and experience providers more channels to reach their target audience. 

TrekkConnect's self-mapping tool allows you to easily connect and sell through standard marketplaces like TourRadar, Musement, Tiqets, Project Expedition, Globol and more. 

In 2019, we also added Klook, Headout, World++, LuluTrip, Aoliday, RRUU, Trekhunt and more.

Learn more about TrekkConnect here.

Extended reports

Our users have also requested more opportunities to export their data to make it easier to generate reports for different stakeholders. We listened to these requests and created Extended Reports so that all guest information is available in one sheet, removing the need for multiple exports and Excel wizardry to generate the right report for your business. 

Here's what you can export along with regular sales reports:  

• Buyer information
• Agent Commission Rate
• Guest: Created
• Guest: Checked-in
• Guest custom fields

Other noteworthy updates

Expiration dates for discount codes 

We've updated our discount codes so that operators can now set discount codes to automatically expire on a specific date. 

Daily cash reports on mobile

For users who rely on the mobile app to take bookings and payments in cash, they can now generate a daily cash report to track how much cash they've collected for the day. 

New payment providers on TrekkPay

This year, we added iDEAL, the top payment method in the Netherlands, to our list of payment services on TrekkPay. 

Get support when you need it

In 2019, we changed the way our Customer Success Team was structured. We split the team into Technical Support and Customer Success Managers. 

Technical Support Team

The Tech team, also sometimes referred to as the Support team, is responsible for answering technical questions about the reservation system. They also detect bugs in the system and work with our engineers to quickly resolve these issues. 

With the Tech team in place, we've been able to:

• Create bug reports on behalf of our customers, better manage queries and bug reports to reduce waiting times. 
• Implement a new chat tool to make it easier for you to reach out the the support team.
• Improved expertise on issue resolution.

Since these changes were implemented in June 2019, we've been measuring our progress on two fronts: Quicker responses and Better responses.

Here's how the team has fared so far: 

• Quicker responses: Average first-response time has dropped to 30 minutes, compared to 150 minutes in June.
• Better responses: 94% of conversations were rated “Above average” in November compared to 83% in June, with a heavy drop in September.

Customer Success Managers

Customer Success Managers are responsible for our customers' retention, happiness and expansion. This means they are in constant contact with our users, from onboarding to long-term account management, growth and success. 

Want to learn more about these new features? Schedule a call with us to find out more.