Author Archives: Outdoor Interlaken AG

Partnering on Grassroots Destination Marketing – Google+ Hangout – 12/7/12

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Grassroots Destination Marketing is a powerful tool for promoting tourism, especially in smaller destinations. On December 7, 2012, TrekkSoft and Destination Accelerator co-hosted via Google Hangout an online panel discussion focused on software solutions to marketing and online payment challenges, finding marketing partners, and building destination networks. For over one hour, the panelist (representing companies on three continents offering products ranging from economy to up-scale) exchanged experiences and discussed how Tour and Activities (T&A) companies in a given destination could pool their resources to attract customers.

John Fauver, co-founder of Outdoor Interlaken and Bus2alps, illustrated the successful bottom-up approach to marketing Interlaken, Switzerland as a T&A destination. He pointed out that aligned incentive structures are crucial to convincing all potential partners to work together towards the common goal.

Please have a look at the entire Hangout below and learn more about Destination Marketing from these experienced panelists:

15 % extra tax for consumption outside the country for credit cards issued by an argentinian banc

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All credit cards which are issued by an Argentinian bank are now charged with an extra 15 % tax by the Argentinian government  for any consumption outside of the country. This especially affects tourism, tour operators and activity providers. A lot of these companies are using Booking Plattforms (which counts under this perspective as a consumption outside the country). Do you have experience with this new regulation? We are happy to support you on any open question, we are currently working on possible solutions for Tour Operators & activity providers.

TrekkSoft @ ATTA World Summit Conference in Lucerne

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At the upcoming ATTA World Summit in Lucerne, Jon Fauver and Philippe Willi from TrekkSoft Ltd. will present a workshop session about the topic “Pricing in a Global Market: Strategies for Navigating Currency Risk, Value, Pricing and Commission” on Wednesday, 10th October 2012, 9.30am to 11am. If you are also attending the conference, please contact us for coffee or visit us at the workshop on Wednesday.

2012 ATWS Session pricing in a global market_jf – click on this link to download the presentation.

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TrekkSoft Update: new Dashboard Design

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Check out our fancy new dashboard design:

Dashboard statistics with the daily turnover and the amount of passengers you generate will be directly on your administrator dashboard.

Also on the administrator dashboard, you can see your Facebook statistics and your visits on the page. We encourage you to try and increase your statistics on the page.

Safari Company in Africa

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TrekkSoft.com is getting a lot of sign ups from African safari companies, and I am writting here with some tips and tricks for these kind of companies:

1) Average Basket: OK, safari trips are sometimes quite expensive and have an average basket of somewhere between USD 1000 and USD 3000.-. For an unknown company, it is  quite hard to sell online an average basket of USD 1000 to USD 3000.- , and thus we recommend to sell trips that average baskets of USD 100.- to USD 200.- If your company is getting more established, with perhaps some listings on tripadvisor.com, you can start to sell more expensive baskets online. But as a starter, we don`t recommend selling baskets online that are higher than USD 100.- to USD 200.- In any case please inform the visitors of your page about your refund policy and terms of services. If you are a member of a Travel Trade Bond Association, please inform the guests that their purchase is backed with a travel trade bond association. If you have a history, please inform the guests for how long you are successfully operating a business. You need to generate TRUST.

2) Start to build up your brand – trekksoft.com helps you to connect with Facebook and Twitter, so you can export passenger names and emails to send out newsletters etc. But it is YOUR JOB to start the marketing for your tour operator company. If you just open up a trekksoft.com account and you hope to get millions of bookings, you will be in for some disappointments. You need to advertise your page, tell your friends and business partners. If you have already an exisitng domain, make sure that you either redirect your domain to your trekksoft page or at least integrate an Iframe with the booking page or at least a booking button.

3) Photos/ Videos: please don`t forget that you sell your product/service online, so please update your page with photos and also upload photos on facebook. For example, if you have photos of a guided tour, “tag” the guests (if they are happy with it) on Facebook and all the friends of a guest of you will see your product/tour/service online. You need to convince your visitors online that you have the best tour on the world and that you are a serious business company which guarantees the best service in the world.

If you need more support or if you have more questions please send an email to support@trekksoft.com

TrekkSoft was nominated for the “PhoCusWright Travel Innovation Summit”

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TrekkSoft was nominated for the “PhoCusWright Travel Innovation Summit”    

The Matten b. Interlaken based start­‐up TrekkSoft  AG will be represented at this year’s “Travel  Innovation  Summit”  in  Scottsdale,  AZ.

Thirty start ups will have the opportunity to present their innovation ‘on  stage’ at the
“PhoCusWright Travel Innovation Summit”  conference in Scottsdale, AZ,  in front of a
large audience of industry experts, investors and industry partners. This year’s event,
which will take place from the 13 to 15 November 2012 in Scottsdale, has nominated
only our company as the “Innovator” from Switzerland, TrekkSoft AG, located in Matten b. Interlaken. This nomination is already a great honor and a huge opportunity for the young company from the Bernese Oberland. In addition to the Bernese Oberland start–up  several other companies were nominated from the United States, Germany, Russia, Australia and England.

Since the launch of the “sign up” process in May 2012 on www.trekksoft.com, around 300 tour operators and activity providers have registered on the platform. Besides the   “cloud‐based” software and free in the basic use for all users and transaction­‐based
payable, TrekkSoft AG would like to introduce an improved online payment solution and
massively expand the already existing offer so­‐called  ”TrekkSoft  gateway” worldwide.

“We will launch in October 2012 a unique payment  solution for tour operators and activity providers from all over the world,”says Philippe Willi, co­‐founder and CFO of TrekkSoft  AG.

A recently­‐hired Marketing Manager from New York City will implement the so‐called “marketing roll‐out” solution and try to offer to about 250 000 tour operators and activity  providers. (via a PhoCusWright Study)

The company is entirely self­‐funded by the founders, and a capital increase has been recently carried out in order to finance marketing operations.

TrekkSoft AG
Philippe Willi
Hauptstrasse 15
3800 Matten b. Interlaken
philippe@trekksoft.com

TrekkSoft Mandator: Leo the Lion Water Tours (Mexico)

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Lio the Lion Water Tours is a new trekksoft.com mandator and I love his page.

We built our software so that even small and congenial T&A companies like Leo could use it. Leo offers different boat trip tours in the Area of Cabo San Lucas (Mexico) with his original mexican boat. So book a trip with Leo and enjoy the coastline of this wonderful area.

New TrekkSoft Mandator: M.U.S.H.E.R.S. Dog Sled Tours

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We would like to introduce to our community to a new trekksoft.com mandator. M.U.S.H.E.R.S. Dog Sled Tours organizes dog sled tours in Canada. They decided to use TrekkSoft.com in combination with a PayPal Merchant Account to receive real time payments in CAD.

It is so amazing to see companies around the globe starting to use trekksoft.com. And we appreciate the inspiring services and products of these T & A companies.