Mike Herrmann

In case you missed it, we recently released In-App Messaging, and its been a great feature for our users to send messages to other TourConnect users they are connected with. However, there were a couple limitations – it was 1-to-1 messaging and it was limited to only other TourConnect users. We all know the value of communication and the benefits it can offer – but lets be honest, it is hard to always be on top of it and it isn’t always necessary for every message to be a custom message. Who has time to copy-and-paste too.

Today, we’re excited to release enhancements to our messaging tool. First, you can now select multiple connections to receive the same message without having to copy-and-paste. Simply choose the connections who should receive your message, hit send and we’ll take it from there and send them your message.

We know not all of your partners have TourConnect accounts (they should be though right? Send them an invite) and the limit this creates in having a single place to message all of your partners. For this reason, we’ve also added the ability to send the messages to email addresses. This all-in-one solution helps streamline your communications from a single platform and save you and your team time, hassle, and gives you peace of mind that your partners are getting the messages they should be.

Benefits of Using TourConnect Messaging

• One tool to manage all of your messages to your partners

• Quickly see who has opened, read and clicked on your messages

• Another great tool included in TourConnect

Our new messaging tool is available to all of our users today. If you are on our free accounts, you can message up to 20 partners at a time. Upgrade to our Connected Plan to select all the partners you need to.

TourConnect has a really diverse customer base. We have companies from well over 100+ countries – ranging from single owner/operator tours or small B&Bs, to ITOs, and large multi-national corporations. And one item that holds true across all is their need to continually be organized and efficient with their time. As we continue to grow the TourConnect platform, we’re focused on ways in which we can drive efficiency across our entire customer base. This is why we’ve added an Internal Notes feature to our Contract Management Tool.

Whether you are a supplier sending your rates, or a buyer using TourConnect to manage all of your static rate agreements, it is important to be able to record information for you and your team’s eyes only. These may be reasons why the commission rate is what it is or a note from a conversation during a trade event about this years rates.

These notes stay throughout the lifecycle of the contract and will always be available when it comes time to readdress the rates – during loading time or before the next round of rate updates. Its a great way to keep the right information in a logical and sharable place – for you and your entire team.

To learn more about our Rate Management tool and how it can help drive efficiency for you and your team register to attend one of our upcoming webinars.

We feel passionately that partnerships are a core piece to the success in the B2B tourism market. Because of this we are continually building tools to enhance these relationships. We already have great existing offerings which help you better organize your partners, discover new partners, and even a private social network for your partners to post periodic updates for you to easily see on your Newsfeed.

When we looked at our tools to see the next logical step, we felt we could help make conversations and communication more accessible. Within the TourConnect platform, there is already so much you can do to interact and engage with your partners, but we saw a gap of being able to directly reach out to your partners. We’re excited to now be able to allow you to directly message your connections in TourConnect all from within TourConnect!

What this means now is we’ve unlocked a much easier workflow to getting the answers you need – all in a single platform.

We’re excited to be making just some of the following workflows easier:

Suppliers: Uncertain of the deadlines for marketing materials? Just ask, get an answer and send your marketing materials over with just a few clicks of the button.

Suppliers: Did a new partner just accept your connection request? Send them a message introducing yourself – straight from within TourConnect.

Buyers: Missing some rates from a tier 1 supplier. Send them a quick reminder in-app. They’ll then be in TourConnect to send over their new rates.

Buyers: You’ve used PartnerFinder to find new product offerings and now you can directly communicate with them on TourConnect. You and your colleagues will be able to keep up with the conversation…no more shared inbox communication necessary.

 

In-app messaging is available to every account. Simply head to your connections list, click the message button and send your partners a message. This is just one of many upcoming features putting you and your partners at the core of TourConnect.