Hi everyone!

We hope you all enjoyed the 'tournament of the year' - we certainly saw increased tourist activity both through BookIt and around BookIt HQ on Wellington waterfront at the Fanzone. Most importantly though, our boys in black have managed to pull out another history-making performance and bring the Webb Ellis Cup home!

Things are settling down a bit now, so it might be a good time to take a load off and relax. This month we've got some interesting facts and figures, insight into what we're working on here and more. Enjoy!

Interesting stats throughout the 'Tournament of the Year'

You won't be surpirsed to learn that we've seen an increase in booking activity over the past few months. Tourists have flocked from around the world to support their respective motherlands and New Zealanders have played host in a fantastic way.

We noticed large increases in bookings and arrivals over 2010 as per the charts below. We've also seen big lifts in international travellers with a suspicious rugby bias:

Christmas and New Year - Updating your inventory

With the festive season fast approaching, it's worth making sure that your BookIt inventory manager is up to date to avoid double-bookings.

If you're using a channel manager to facilitate your BookIt inventory, that's great. If you update it manually but need a refresher course, here's how to do it:

1. Login to your BookIt account and click on 'Inventory Manager' at the top
2. Scroll down to see a list of your products along with its allocation on each date
3. Find the dates using the calendar on the top-left or the '1 Week/2 Weeks' buttons at the bottom
4. Inside the corresponding box for the product and date, put the number 0 to show no availability
5. Click 'Save' underneath the calendar to lock in the changes

This should ensure that travellers aren't able to book for dates you're unavailable. Have questions about this process? You'll find our customer support contact details at the bottom of this newsletter.

Well, that’s it for another month. Before we go, we wanted to share this brilliant news from Tourism Dunedin's annual report: "...we integrated the country's best online booking service (BookIt)... within the first 6 months of 2011 Tourism Dunedin had already surpassed end of year online targets."

Awesome!

Thanks for reading, and remember - if you have any questions about your BookIt account, please feel free to contact our support stars on support@bookit.co.nz or 0508 BOOKIT.


Kind Regards,
The BookIt team

We’ve just completed a major revamp of the Bookit booking process. The new process is cleaner, feature-rich and requires only 1 or 2 steps to complete bookings. Early indicators are that the new booking process has directly increased conversions by up to 30%.

If you use BookIt on your own website you’re already running on the new version. We’ll be sending a detailed feature summary so look out for this in your inbox soon.

It has been a busy start to the year for the BookIt development team and we've just released our new 'daily inclusions' feature.

What is daily inclusion data you may ask?

It is a short summary of what your guests will enjoy with the room/product they book. Inclusion data should describe what the customer is paying for, eg "includes buffet breakfast for two and free wi-fi internet", rather than a full room description. This information will also appear on the Travelbug confirmation page and the traveller and operator confirmation emails.

Here's how it looks on Travelbug:

How to load inclusions data

If you are a customer of Siteminder, Seekom or STAAH you just need to ensure you have loaded inclusion data at that end and BookIt will do the rest. Take a look at your listing on Travelbug to see how it looks.

If you are not using one of the channel managers above you will need to load and manage the inclusions directly in your BookIt account.

1. Login to BookIt
2. Click on the 'Inventory Manager' tab
3. Click on the 'Manage inclusions' link
4. Enter your default inclusions for each product. Where a rate includes just the room, enter "Room only"
5. Click 'Save' when you are finished

If you need to enter separate inclusions for individual dates, click on 'Override inclusions' - again don't forget to click 'Save' when you are finished.

Both the BookIt booking confirmation email and booking details pages will include the relevant inclusions data for the booking, so you and your team know what the guest has paid for and is expecting.

Login to BookIt now

If you have any questions at all, please contact us any day of the week between 9am and 5pm on 0508 BOOKIT or support@bookit.co.nz

Happy inclusion-ing!

This week, Trade Me's accommodation website Travelbug, announced the first annual Travelbug Awards for 2011. The awards recognise excellent performance by accommodation operators who list on the website. The awards winners were selected based on statistics derived from the BookIt booking engine.  Criteria for judging the awards included number of bookings, quality of guest feedback, management of real-time inventory and availability.

Travelbug has the widest range of bookable accommodation in New Zealand and all properties are automatically eligible for the awards from holiday parks to hotels.

The five categories of awards presented are as follows:

Best in Region and Best in District awards are Travelbug’s highest accolade and were received by the top operator in each of Travelbug's geographic locations. To those operators who received this award, congratulations!

The Best Reviews Award is effectively judged by guests who have stayed in the properties. Operators with a 100% "thumbs up" result across a minimum number of reviews received the award. These hard working operators can proudly display the Best Reviewed 2011 award to show potential guests that their property is a great place to stay.

The Platinum Award is received by only the very best performing operators. The benchmark for this award is very high with only around 5% of properties being successful in receiving the Platinum Award, so well done to the winners! 

The Gold Award recognises excellent achievement within the judging criteria and again only awarded to the very top performers. This award was presented to properties who performed within the top 10%.

Daniel Bridges, Head of Travel at Trade Me, explains that the awards have been gratefully received by the properties.

"The response has been overwhelming. With a range of large and small properties on Travelbug, we have received some really great feedback from operators who are thrilled to be recognised for their hard work."

"To recognise the winners further, we will be adding a notice on the winners’ pages on Travelbug over the coming weeks. This will be a useful tool for visitors to Travelbug when selecting accommodation.  The team here also has some great ideas for the 2012 awards and work is underway to build on this great first round of awards." explains Daniel.

An announcement of Awards for Christchurch operators has been delayed due to the earthquake and these will be presented in the coming months.

For more information please contact support@travelbug.co.nz or call toll free on 0508 266548.

Best in District 2011 Winners

Trevor, our trusty Travelbug, turned three this year and we thought he deserved an upgrade. Everyday kiwis will now find it even easier to find and book great accommodation deals at over 2500 properties throughout New Zealand. The list of changes Trev' has seen to his home is a bit long for this blog post, but the results speak for themselves. Shoot over to Travelbug now and check it out for yourself. Trev says it's looking fantastic and we're sure travellers using the site will think so too.

When you're visiting the new site, keep an eye out for Trevor in the photos of one of the hotels featured on the homepage and you can go in the draw to win some U2 tickets.

Visit www.travelbug.co.nz now!

We've been running auctions for a little while, but until now one auction meant one winner and therefore one booking. Well, no more. Today we're pleased to announce the release of a fixed price offer feature that lets you turn one auction into many bookings.

When your BookIt-generated auction closes, you'll get a 'successful auction' email that contains a link to enter your fixed price offer details.

This takes you to BookIt where you complete just two fields and then click continue.

We then email all the Trade Me members that placed a bid on your auction (or added it to their watchlist) offering them the deal. As soon as the number you have offered have been redeemed on Travelbug, the offer expires.

But you can't make fixed price offers without first running auctions that generate interest, and the best way to do that is load cool, fun packages that grab attention.

The good people at SKYCITY Grand ran a $1 reserve auction for their Superior Suite package, created in their BookIt account. It sold for $275, had 1,880 pageviews and 196 bidders and watchers! If the fixed price offer had been available, they could have sent an offer at whatever price they wanted to those 196 people - that they already knew were interested in the auction - and nobody else would have been able to see the offer price.

And remember - Travelbug handles the bookings and sends the traveller emails, and BookIt takes care of the invoicing for you. Once you've loaded the auction you can just let the auction run its course and answer any questions that come through.

• use $1 reserves like SKYCITY - these get more views and more bids
• use a detailed description - you'll get fewer questions and bidders will be more comfortable
• load lots of photos - photos are free with BookIt auctions
• make the auction title interesting - use your business name and list the inclusions

Auctions are fun, but now they can generate a lot of exposure for your property and they can even sell a lot of rooms. The only thing limiting your success is how exciting you make your auctions. Login to BookIt and load some auctions today and try this new sales channel out for yourself.

Login to BookIt now

Here are a couple of comments from businesses that have been using BookIt-run auctions:

"The number of bids and views we get on our Trade Me auctions are awesome - it's great exposure for our hotel" - Briana Jellyman, Copthorne Hotel and Resort Bay of Islands

"Auctions have been great for our resort, to auction off distressed inventory but equally for exposure to Trade Me's very large audience: an audience we could not otherwise afford to market to! The auctions are very easy to set up and manage. And last but not least the team at BookIt are great to deal with!" - Jon Doherty, Terrace Downs Resort

If you have any questions, our support team is available 9am - 5pm, 7 days per week.

Unless you have been living under a rock you will know that as of midnight tonight the New Zealand GST rate is changing to 15%. We've been working hard to make sure the new rate is calculated correctly on bookings, amendments, cancellations and all GST invoices that we issue.

Below is the effect this change will have on your bookings:

Operators

• If you are GST registered, travellers will be invoiced at the new rate of 15% from midnight on 1 October (invoices are sent to customers with your name and GST number)
• Trade Me's booking fee/commission will be invoiced to you at the new rate of 15% from midnight on 1 October
• However the rate of 12.5% will apply for credit notes issued for cancellations of bookings confirmed prior to 1 October