It’s self-service 101 time!
We know that nothing is more important for you as travel advisors than your time; it’s an important commodity, and one that you can often spend on activities other than what’s most crucial – your clients!
For this reason, we just wanted to remind you of some of the key features of our self-service tools, which are 100% online and are a comprehensive suite of tools as part of our powerful Booking Engine.
You can access these self-service tools at any time, simply by accessing into the ‘Bookings’ panel, once you’ve logged in to the Booking Engine itself!
These handy self-service tools allow you to completely take control of your own bookings, from managing special requests, to performing multiple cancellations should you need to, and much more. And quite often, using our self-service tools instead of trying to contact our support teams - who experience a high volume of calls and emails! - means you can resolve any queries or modifications faster than you would through any other means.
But today, we thought we’d lay out 3 key features of our self-service tools:
These are 3 of the most common topics that our support staff are contacted about, so we wanted to make sure this blog covers not only the basics of how to do this, but why using our self-service tools is faster and easier than phoning or emailing our teams!
Each booking made with Bedsonline will provide you with two crucial booking numbers – your Bedsonline booking number, and your Hotel Confirmation Number which is provided by our hotel partners.
Navigating to your ‘Bookings’ panel is the fastest way of checking for this crucial Hotel Confirmation Number, before raising a ticket with our online Help Desk, or contacting our support staff via phone or email.
To find your Hotel Confirmation Number simply:
And that’s it!
However, it’s worth noting that your Hotel Confirmation will not be available if there are more than 14 days before the check-in date remaining. This includes via email, phone, or our self-service tools!
If there are fewer than 14 days before the booked check-in date, and for any reason the Hotel Confirmation Number is not displayed alongside the booking in question, then the next thing you need to do is open a support ticket using our Help Desk.
You can find the Help Desk in the ‘Bookings’ panel as well, for easy access.
All tickets raised within our online Help Desk are given priority over phone calls and emails, so using this support portal is the best way to ensure that your query is handled in a timely manner!
We understand that customer needs are fickle things, and that traveler requirements change after the fact of booking – sometimes frequently!
This is why we’ve made it possible for you as travel advisors to log any special requests on your clients’ behalf at any time during the booking process, not just at the point of booking.
How? You guessed it – with our self-service tools in the Booking Engine!
Common special requests that you can easily make within the ‘Bookings’ panel include anything from asking for non-smoking rooms, proximity to lifts or escalators, early/late check-in, or check-out, as well as extra bedding or pillows, or amenities for young children and babies.
Of course, even working with hotels directly, any special requests cannot be 100% guaranteed, and are always subject to availability, but using our self-service tools is the best way to communicate these requests to the hotel itself, and therefore meet the needs of your travelers.
As ever, using our Help Desk to open a ticket for further assistance should you need it, guarantees that your query will be handled with priority over any phone calls or emails our teams receive.
Although the case could be made that all the functions of our self-service tools are equally important, one of the most valuable features is the ability to make modifications to your bookings at any time, at your convenience – all you need is the relevant booking number.
From the ‘Bookings’ panel, you can make any desired changes including adding/removing room nights; changing the number of rooms; modifying guest names; altering the board basis, such as from half-board to full-board; modifying how many guests are allocated to the booked rooms, and more!
However, an important factor to note is the status of the booking rate.
If, for example, the booking in question is a non-amendable rate, this means that changes cannot be made to this booking at any time after it is finalized. This also means that contacting our support teams via phone, email or using our Help Desk will not alter the status of the booking as non-amendable.
So, this is something to be mindful of when you’re processing your bookings!
Of course, if you have any questions or concerns or even if you’d like more training and resources for our self-service tools, then the best thing to do is to contact your Account Manager.
Log into your account now to re-introduce yourself to our self-service tools, by navigating to the ‘Bookings’ panel, and discovering all the handy features there!
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