Our honesty system and tracking bookings
Our business model is based entirely on an honesty system. We put complete trust in you, our partners, to declare the bookings that happen after we have generated an enquiry for you. As all the communication with a customer is directly with you, we do not know when someone has booked.
Having a great tracking system in place means you can confidently find bookings and declare them promptly. This will improve your conversion rate, and may increase your visibility, both on the site and with our Travel Team.
We give customers a small gift if they tell us they've booked. If we have any of these 'incentive requests' that haven't been declared as bookings yet, we'll flag this in your monthly stats email. From time to time we might contact you about these incentive requests; this doesn't mean we don't trust you, just that we may need to help you improve your tracking.
We've created a step-by-step video on how you can track bookings using our console, a list of all the bookings from your system and some Excel magic. If you need any further help, please contact your partnership manager.
What is a tracking system?
We rely on our partners to have an excellent tracking system in place to ensure all bookings are declared. This means, ideally, you would regularly check the email addresses and, separately, the names of the people we have sent to you against all your bookings to find matches.
What if the customer used a different email address or booked much later?
We know it can be difficult to track; people have more than one email address, others use a different name than is in their passport and sometimes one person will enquire and another person pays for it so the lead booking name is different. Other people take ages to decide, years even, and then phone up and book rather than continuing the email trail.
An excellent tracking system will pick up most, if not all, of these scenarios. We work with many of our partners to help with their tracking system, including providing instructions on how to run a check using Excel.
When should I declare bookings?
There are advantages to declaring your bookings as early as possible. Our reports are based on conversion levels so you're more likely to be higher up in results and get leads from our Travel Team if you're declaring soon after the customer has booked.
This also ensures your customers get timely emails, including the chance to write a review for your trip, which may encourage other travellers to book with you.
You won't be invoiced until the customer's departure month. As a minimum, you should declare your bookings monthly.
What are incentive requests?
Although we don't know when a person has booked, we do ask our customers to let us know if they book in exchange for a small gift. Between 25% - 30% take us up on this offer and create an incentive request. We understand that not all of these incentive requests will end up being confirmed bookings; some people will cancel and others decide not to go ahead once they have made an incentive request.
How do I know if there is an incentive request for my enquiries?
On the partners stats email, which is sent to you on the first Monday of every month, we let you know how many incentive requests we have for you. Many of our partners use this time to declare all the bookings they know about (if they don't do this as a weekly task or as soon as a booking is confirmed).
If an incentive request is for a trip departing soon your partnership manger will contact you and ask you to declare all the bookings you know about.
If there are 2 or more incentive requests for your company and they have been there a while we may ask you to declare all the bookings you know about.
If we contact you we are not questioning your honesty or commitment, it's just helping us to understand the level of future income we have.
Will you tell me who made the incentive request?
We don't give you the name of the customer who said they booked in their incentive request until you are sure that you have declared all bookings. That way, we can be confident that your tracking system is working and there aren't any missed bookings.
What happens if I miss a booking?
If an incentive request that hasn't been declared turns out to be a booking, it is marked as a missed booking and we always look at the missed booking ratio (missed booking incentive requests against all incentive requests) for all our partners.
If a booking is missed your partnership manger will always ask how it was missed. It's not that we don't trust you or think that you were trying to not pay the commission. Human error happens. What they are looking for is system error and ways in which your tracking system can be improved.
We have 20 years of data concerning conversion rates and what a particular type of partner's conversion rate could and should be. Over the last 100 incentive requests we have received for our top partner they have a 3% missed booking ratio. Some will always slip through, but single figures is the level we'd expect.
How can I improve my tracking system?
We recommend that you use the console to download a list of customers who have enquired, including names and email addresses. You can then run a 'duplicate check' against all your bookings to find those that came from Responsible Travel. Watch our step by step video on how to run this check.
What do I do with bookings when I find them?
Next, you log in to our console and declare them. Find out how in our guide to declaring bookings.
Please do get in touch with your partnership manager if you have any other questions.
Having a great tracking system in place means you can confidently find bookings and declare them promptly. This will improve your conversion rate, and may increase your visibility, both on the site and with our Travel Team.
We give customers a small gift if they tell us they've booked. If we have any of these 'incentive requests' that haven't been declared as bookings yet, we'll flag this in your monthly stats email. From time to time we might contact you about these incentive requests; this doesn't mean we don't trust you, just that we may need to help you improve your tracking.
We've created a step-by-step video on how you can track bookings using our console, a list of all the bookings from your system and some Excel magic. If you need any further help, please contact your partnership manager.
FAQs
What is a tracking system?
We rely on our partners to have an excellent tracking system in place to ensure all bookings are declared. This means, ideally, you would regularly check the email addresses and, separately, the names of the people we have sent to you against all your bookings to find matches.
What if the customer used a different email address or booked much later?
We know it can be difficult to track; people have more than one email address, others use a different name than is in their passport and sometimes one person will enquire and another person pays for it so the lead booking name is different. Other people take ages to decide, years even, and then phone up and book rather than continuing the email trail.
An excellent tracking system will pick up most, if not all, of these scenarios. We work with many of our partners to help with their tracking system, including providing instructions on how to run a check using Excel.
When should I declare bookings?
There are advantages to declaring your bookings as early as possible. Our reports are based on conversion levels so you're more likely to be higher up in results and get leads from our Travel Team if you're declaring soon after the customer has booked.
This also ensures your customers get timely emails, including the chance to write a review for your trip, which may encourage other travellers to book with you.
You won't be invoiced until the customer's departure month. As a minimum, you should declare your bookings monthly.
What are incentive requests?
Although we don't know when a person has booked, we do ask our customers to let us know if they book in exchange for a small gift. Between 25% - 30% take us up on this offer and create an incentive request. We understand that not all of these incentive requests will end up being confirmed bookings; some people will cancel and others decide not to go ahead once they have made an incentive request.
How do I know if there is an incentive request for my enquiries?
On the partners stats email, which is sent to you on the first Monday of every month, we let you know how many incentive requests we have for you. Many of our partners use this time to declare all the bookings they know about (if they don't do this as a weekly task or as soon as a booking is confirmed).
If an incentive request is for a trip departing soon your partnership manger will contact you and ask you to declare all the bookings you know about.
If there are 2 or more incentive requests for your company and they have been there a while we may ask you to declare all the bookings you know about.
If we contact you we are not questioning your honesty or commitment, it's just helping us to understand the level of future income we have.
Will you tell me who made the incentive request?
We don't give you the name of the customer who said they booked in their incentive request until you are sure that you have declared all bookings. That way, we can be confident that your tracking system is working and there aren't any missed bookings.
What happens if I miss a booking?
If an incentive request that hasn't been declared turns out to be a booking, it is marked as a missed booking and we always look at the missed booking ratio (missed booking incentive requests against all incentive requests) for all our partners.
If a booking is missed your partnership manger will always ask how it was missed. It's not that we don't trust you or think that you were trying to not pay the commission. Human error happens. What they are looking for is system error and ways in which your tracking system can be improved.
We have 20 years of data concerning conversion rates and what a particular type of partner's conversion rate could and should be. Over the last 100 incentive requests we have received for our top partner they have a 3% missed booking ratio. Some will always slip through, but single figures is the level we'd expect.
How can I improve my tracking system?
We recommend that you use the console to download a list of customers who have enquired, including names and email addresses. You can then run a 'duplicate check' against all your bookings to find those that came from Responsible Travel. Watch our step by step video on how to run this check.
What do I do with bookings when I find them?
Next, you log in to our console and declare them. Find out how in our guide to declaring bookings.
Please do get in touch with your partnership manager if you have any other questions.
