Home → Arctic Reservations → Inquiries → Online Inquiries
11.3. Online Inquiries
There are two main streams from which guests can submit inquiries online. The first stream comes up in the course of making online reservations and contains two distinct tributaries.
- When setting up a trip type or rental item, you can choose to only accept online inquiries, rather than bookings. This is useful, for example, if the trip is a more physically demanding or requires a higher skill level, and you want to review the potential guests prior to accepting a reservation. Or in the case of rentals if you want to talk with guests before allowing them to rent a certain item. In this case, Arctic will display an "Inquire" button for guests interested in these types of trips or rental items.
- Arctic, also does not like to tell guests "No". So when an online trip or rental item is fully booked or does not have enough space or inventory to accommodate the desired number of guests, Arctic will offer the guest an "Inquire" button rather than sending them away. This provides your office with the opportunity to, in the case of trips, choose to overbook the trip and make the guest's reservation or to offer the guest an alternative trip option — a different time, trip type or trip date — that may suit their needs or to keep the guest on a waitlist in case of cancellations. In the case of rentals, it gives you a chance to see what the inventory constraints are and to vet the guest prior to renting them the item they are interested in or looking for dates that will accommodate what they are looking for in you don't have the inventory to cover their needs on the dates they wish to come.
The inquiry forms in the first stream are not customizable. They use Arctic's standard online inquiry form which is designed to help the guest quickly and efficiently complete their inquiry.
The second stream is when you want to send guests directly to an inquiry form that is not related to a specific trip or rental item but could be a more in-depth form for a potential guest to request additional information or is a way to gather information from a potential guest that is interested in a trip offering you have but only do on a limited availability or for which you need to vet the guest to be sure they have the experience needed for the trip.
Since the second stream scenarios generally require the need to ask specific questions, Arctic has created a way for you to create custom Online Inquiry forms. To create the custom Online Inquiry forms, you go to the "Settings" page under "Online Inquiries" and click the pencil next to "Manage Inquiry Forms" as shown here:
On the "Browse Custom Inquiry Forms" page, click the green "+Create Custom Inquiry Form" button.
At the top of the "Create Custom Inquiry Form" page, you will give the form "Name" which will only be seen and used by you on the backend and a "Title" that will be used for the form itself and is seen by guests. If you have multiple guest-facing sites, you will select the guest-facing site the form should be used on. If you have business groups set up you can also assign the form to a specific business group. Then you will be able a "Header" if you would like with a message or instructions for your guests about completing the form.
In the next section of the "Create Custom Inquiry Form" page, you will see two columns, one called "Inquiry Questions" which is for the fields you want to go on your inquiry form and one called "Potential Questions" with the questions that are already on your "Built-in Inquiry" form. As with the "Rearrange Fields" section of the registration form editor, you will drag the questions and fields you would like from the "Potential Questions" column into the "Inquiry Questions".
Note: If there is a question or field you would like to have on the form you are creating that does not currently exist on your "Built-in Inquiry" form, you will have the option in the next steps to add those fields and then add them to your inquiry form.
To make a field required of your guests, if it was not set as "Required" when you created it, simply check the box inside its "blue box".
In the last section of the "Create Custom Inquiry Form" page, you will be able to add a "Footer" that is displayed at the bottom of your inquiry form. "Thank you text" that is displayed after the guest submits the form as well as a "Redirect" which allows you to specify where you want the guest to be taken to after they have completed the form. This could be back to the original page from which they accessed the form or to a different page on your website.
Once the form is complete, click "Submit" to save your new inquiry form. Don't forget if you have additional fields you wish to create for the form, you will have an opportunity to do so in the next steps.
When you click "Submit" to save your form, Arctic will take you to the "Custom Inquiry Form Created" page where if there are additional fields you would like to add to your form you can do so by clicking the "Edit Fields" button.
If you add additional fields for your form, once you click "Submit" to save your new fields, Arctic will present you with a "Rearrange Fields" button on the "Custom Inquiry Form Updated" page.
Clicking the "Rearrange Fields" page, will open your form so you can drag your new fields onto your form and arrange them in the order you would like by dragging them up and down in the column for "Inquiry Questions". Also on the "Rearrange Fields" page, you will be able to edit the other fields related to your form, like the name, title, header, footer, thank you text and the redirect.
Once the form is again set to your preferences again scroll down and click "Submit" to save your changes.
To get the link for your custom inquiry form to publish on your website, you can click the "Browse all custom inquiry Forms" link on the "Custom Inquiry Form Updated" page.
This will return you to the "Browse Custom Inquiry Forms" page. Clicking the blue "Globe" buttons will reveal the links you need for the forms you have created.
When an online inquiry is placed whether through the standard Arctic inquiry form or from a custom inquiry form, it becomes a log event and Arctic will alert you to it so that you can follow-up with the guest. The inquiries will also appear in the "Inquiries & Tasks" widget on your Dashboard if you have it enabled.
If the inquiry is from one of your custom inquiry forms, Arctic will not which form it came from. Arctic also creates a customer record with the information given (or assigns the inquiry to an existing guest, if the contact information matches). The standard Arctic inquiries have a field for the "Number of Guests", and also will contain a reference to the landing page and trip/rental item (where applicable) that the guest was inquiring about.
In the next section, we will look at the "Browse Inquiries" page.