Getting Started with Travis Hotel Guides

High-five! You’ve taken the first step to enriching your guest’s digital experience with you. With the Travis Hotel Guides tool, you’ll be able to create a series of interactive, visual Guides - all on your own, without a tech team. 

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Here's 4 things you need to know to ace Travis Hotel Guides:

1. How to customise your Guides cover
2. How to add places to create your first Guide
3. How to get shareable URLs to your Guide
4. How to implement Guides into your guest experience

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1. How to Customise your Hotel Guides cover

The Hotel Guides cover is where all your important hotel information lies. Click into My Guides > Business Settings to access:

1. Logo
2. Brand color
3. Booking link
4. Address
5. Phone number
6. Website

Hit ‘Save’ and all changes will be reflected.

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2. How to Create your First Hotel Guide on Travis

There are two ways to add Places into your Guides.

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A. Use the Save from Site feature

This gives you most control in adding local businesses and places into your Guide - with website links.

• Open Guide, click ‘Save from Site’ button. Paste the website URL of the Place or Business. This will pre-fill the image, title and description, if any, just like Pinterest. 
• Edit pre-filled details. If the details are incomplete, or you’d like to edit any of the fields, you can!  Yes, you can also replace Photo [from the website itself, or with another photo you might have]‍
• Tag a Location. Search for the name of the place like you would on Google Maps.
• Click ‘Add Place’ to confirm. Voila! It’ll appear at the top of your Guide.

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 B. Use the Search bar

Alternatively, you can use the Search feature to explore Places shared by other travelers, or from our location database of over 25 million places. 

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Tip: Think of each Guide as a curated collection of places worth visiting - tailored for a specific guest persona, trip type, or season. We recommend between 12-18 places per Guide, so that guests don’t get overwhelmed with 60 places not knowing which ones would be suitable for them.

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3. How to get shareable URLs of Hotel Guides

Ready to make your Guides public? Just switch the toggle in your Guide from ‘draft’ to ‘public’. You can change this back anytime.

• To share all your Guides - URL format: www.travistrav.is/yourhotelname/guides. We recommend using this URL format to keep things simple in the roll out.
• To share individual Guides - Click into each Guide for their unique link and corresponding QR code.

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4. How to implement Hotel Guides into your guest experience

Hotel Guides are best integrated into key touchpoints, across your guest experience. We recommend that you have at least two Guides ready, to be implemented at a minimum of 2 touch points to start with.

• Booking confirmation email - Support your guests where they are engaged and anticipating their experience with you - especially when they’ve just locked in their stay with you! This could be added as image links to different Guides, or text links in your automated booking confirmation email.
• Website - Add as an image banner on the homepage, or enrich the “explore” section of your website with a clear call to action. E.g. Build your own trip with our interactive insider guides. 
• Reception / Front desk iPad - Follow these 4 steps to set up Hotel Guides your iPads - like a pro! Having an iPad set up on display at reception allows your guests to simply scan the QR code with their phones, or to interact with the display on their own. Your front desk staff could also be equipped with these Guides on iPads, to support your guests without fiddling with photocopied paper maps. 

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Prefer a video?

Watch this 3-minute video for an overview of the Hotel Guides, and how to create one.

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The Travis Hotel Guides is designed for hotel marketers and managers of all sizes, looking to:

• Provide curated, personalized insider guides for guests - inspiring them with what their experience could look like, way before they step foot on site!
• Allow guests functionality to save places to visit, right from your Guides - making it easier for them to plan trips with you
• Empower your guest-facing staff digital tools - no more photocopied maps and scribbled notes.

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‍If you’re a Pro user, you will have more flexibility and control over your Guides, including:

• Unlimited guest guides
• Upload your own logo 
• Choose your own brand color
• Customise your Book Now link

Want to start a free Pro trial, or have our team curate your first Guides, especially tailored for your guests? Let us know!

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Questions, feedback, or suggestions?

Need help curating your Guides quick, or deciding how best to roll them out across your guest experience? We’re here to help! Email hotels@travistravis.co. 

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