Home → Arctic Reservations → Getting Started: Configuring your Installation → Step 10: Creating Trip Types
1.11. Step 10: Creating Trip Types
Before continuing, there is an important distinction between "trip types" and "trips" in Arctic Reservations. Throughout your season, you will setup and schedule trips, which you can then book reservations on. But all trips can be grouped into trip types. In practice, trip types serve as a set of pre-configured options for creating an individual trip. As a result, you should setup trip types that represent the different tours you sell.
For example, you may have three tour options on one river: a multiday trip, a one-day trip and a guide training trip. In this instance you would create a separate "trip type" for each of these options.
Trip types in Arctic contain settings such as duration, pricing and other information necessary for quickly creating individual trips. In addition, you can run reports and browse financial data based on trip types.
Some important details to keep in mind about trip types:
- Trip types provide a fast way to create trips, without reentering details and information about the trip type repeatedly for each trip you create.
- Even after using a trip type to create a trip, you can edit settings on a trip-by-trip basis. This allows you to change prices, duration and availability of certain trips as needed (useful for holidays, charters, etc.).
- Once you create a trip, changing the trip type has no immediate effect on the existing launches. When changing a trip type, Arctic Reservations will prompt you about whether or not to apply the same change to existing trips in the system.
- Think of the trip types as a template for quickly creating individual trip dates. It is valuable to get the trip type configuration correct before creating your whole season.
- That last point cannot be overemphasized. Be sure to look over all trip type settings carefully before creating trips! If you have doubts, contact support and we can look over your trip type with you to make sure it is configured well.
To create trips, go to the "Trips" menu and choose "Types"; this will take you to the "Browse Trip Type" page. To add a new trip type, click "Create Trip Type" as shown here:
After you click "Create Trip Type", you will be presented with a six to fourteen tab form (depending on your Arctic Configuration). Each tab includes instructions, and many fields have instructions below them as well. Below, we will review each tab and point out key things to review while creating trips:
- Business Group: First you will tell Arctic which business group the new trip type will be associated with by choosing the appropriate group from the drop down menu.
- General Tab: On the general tab, you can enter basic details such as trip name, start time (if every launch for this trip type always starts at the same time you can enter that time here otherwise leave it blank), duration, openings, keywords, and color code.
- Pricing Tab: This is a very important tab. On the pricing tab, you can configure some key settings. This tab and its settings will be used for all reservations booked on the trip, so it is key to add all fees or charges (besides the primary trip costs). This tab allows you to set different pricing levels. You can specify a Payment Plan (Step 4) and Cancellation Policy (Step 5) for the trip and you can assign an "Account" (Step 1: Settings>Invoicing>Manage Accounts) to the trip type for accounting purposes. You can also add any additional fees associated with this trip type like National Park Entrance Fees, Day Use Fees, etc. If you set a default tax rate, this rate will show here as well. If the default tax rates do not apply to this trip type you can remove them by clicking the "X" next to their names.
- Add Ons Tab: This tab allows you to allocate any rental items necessary for the trip as well as any optional items that the guest can choose when making their reservation. If the items are also part of your rental program you must create the Rental Items (Step 9) first then add them to your trip type. You can save your trip progress if you need to create the rental items and then come back to finish the trip creation by clicking "Submit". Arctic will save the settings you have already completed and you will be able to go create the items needed for the "Add Ons". Once you have completed your item creation you can return to the "Browse Trip Type" page and choose "Edit" from the "Tool" menu next to the trip type and resume its creation. For more information about add ons see the "Add ons" chapter. Note: The option to tie add ons to any rental items you have is only available with the Snow Line & Summit editions. You can learn more about this feature in Add-ons section of the documentation.
- Forms Tab: The forms tab will allow you to select the registration forms (Step 8), waivers, and/or evaluation forms that you created to use for this trip type. As mentioned previously you can create custom registration forms, waivers, and evaluations for each trip type that you conduct so you will only collect the information specifically needed for each trip type. Note: Waivers & evaluations are only available with the Summit edition. To learn more checkout Online Waivers and Evaluations.
- Online Reservation Tab: If you turn on online reservations, then you can use this tab to create a online booking name, a description and image, as well as setting cut off times for taking last minute online reservations and a minimum number of guests required before a trip opens. You can also tell Arctic to only allow guests to make inquiries if you want guests to know you offer the trip but do not want them to be able to book the trip online.
- TripAdvisor Tab: This tab is only available if you contact support to set up integration with TripAdvisor. If you are interested in connecting your trip offerings with TripAdvisor please contact support for further assistance.
- Attachments: Here you can select previously uploaded attachments (Step 6). These attachments will be available when e-mailing trip details and invoices. In addition, they will be available in the complete reservation module for users to download at their discretion.
- Tasks: The task tab is available if you have the Snow Line or Summit editions and have enabled the "Manage Trip Tasks" feature. To enable this feature, go to the "Settings" page under "Trips" and click the "Pencil" next to "Manage Trip Tasks". The task tab will allow you to create trip specific tasks. This is a great tool for managing the small details involved in running your trips. You can create tasks for things like obtaining permits, ordering food, securing chartered bus or flight services, etc. You can tell Arctic when these tasks need to be completed either prior to or after the trip. Arctic will remind you when you have upcoming tasks that need to be completed for your trip based on the trip date. To learn more check out Tasks.
- Cost: The cost tab is available if you have the Summit edition and have enabled the trip cost feature. To enable this tab, go to the "Settings" page under "Trips" and click the "Pencil" next to "Estimate Trip Costs & Margins". The cost tab is where you will enter your trip costs. You can choose from several cost options, i.e. fixed, per guest, costs per user day, etc. To add costs, click "Add Cost Line-Item", choose the type of cost and then enter the cost details. You can add as many cost items as are applicable for the trip type.
- Guides: The guides tab is available if you have the Summit edition of Arctic. The guides tab will allow you to specify your optimum guide to guest ratio as well as any scheduling offsets. To learn more check out Guide Ratios & Allocation Times for Trips.
- Trip Forms: The trip forms tab will be available if you have the Summit edition. The trip forms tab allows you to specify trip forms that you would like your staff to complete related to individual trips. These can be end of trip reports or information you want to confirm prior to a trip start date. To use this feature you will first have to create trip forms to use. You can read more about trip forms in the Trip Forms section of the documentation.
- Social Site: The social site tab is available if you have the Summit edition. The social site tab allows you to set up a social site for each trip's guests so they can interact before and after or just after the trip. If the social site is enabled guests will be able to communicate with other guests on their trip and share photos. The social site will be accessible by including the "Social Sharing URL" in your email templates which will give each guest a link to access the social site for their trip.
- Subtrips: If you enable subtrips in the account settings (Step 1: Settings > System> Trips> Subtrips), you will have access to this tab. Subtrips allow you to book and sell reservations on a portion of a larger trip. You can setup these "partial" trips under this tab. For each subtrip that you add, you will see a similar set of options to those found in the other tabs of this form. For example, you can set different pricing, durations and online reservation options for each subtrip. If your subtrip is governed by the same settings that apply to the main launch you can leave the fields that are the same blank and Arctic will govern the subtrip based on the settings for the main trip.
- Other: You can use this tab to record a pick-up and drop-off location for before and after the trip, specific trip notes, pertinent guide information etc. You can edit the fields available here by going to the "Forms Editor" (Settings > Forms > Manage Built-In Forms) and clicking the "Pencil" Icon next to "Trips". For more information on creating custom form fields see Forms Editor.
Once you have entered all the details above, you will have successfully setup your first trip type! Press "Submit" at the bottom of the page to save your new trip type.
In order to test your trip type setup, create one trip and create a test reservation on that trip. Make sure that the invoice and pricing appear as expected. If so, you can go ahead and start setting up all your trips for the season.