The biggest Rezdy product releases in 2021

2021 was a year full of highs and lows, especially for those of us in the travel industry.
And as 2021 draws to a close, we want to thank you, and all our customers for your continued support.

With your feedback, we were able to make improvements designed to help your business weather the lows and capitalize on the highs of 2021. In case you missed them, here are a few of the Rezdy updates and improvements we made in 2021.

Making the most of direct bookings

One of the biggest trends in 2021 was an increased desire for more direct bookings.

Google Things to do

As an approved Google connectivity provider, we worked closely with Google this year as they prepared to release Google Things to do, knowing that it would be key to support direct booking growth (unsure what direct booking is? (Find out more about direct booking meaning). We launched the first self-serve integration available to operators, where Rezdy users are able to connect and manage their own products seamlessly and without the need to contact support.

Google Things to do is Google’s new search experience for tours and activities, which showcases your tours and activities in the form of listings that guests can use to go directly to your booking page. Rezdy’s best-in-class integration with Google brings with it the benefits of:

An official site badge to help your listing stand out
Better SEO
Free direct bookings

You can learn more about Google Things to do here.

Google Pay, Apple Pay and Alipay

To maximize your direct bookings and improve booking conversion rates, we wanted to ensure the guests visiting your website have a frictionless booking experience.

To do this, we released Google Pay, Apple Pay and Alipay – mobile wallets which allow potential guests to complete their booking and pay for your tours and activities with the tap of a button.

In addition to the convenience, mobile wallets are known to be the most secure form of payment, so your guests will be more comfortable completing the booking.

In fact, with mobile wallets, RezdyPay users are already seeing a 12% higher average booking conversion rate compared to other payment gateways.

Improved checkouts

We improved our checkout to display the breakdown of taxes, fees and discounts. This previously was a pain point that affected conversion rates – brought to our attention by many of our operators.

Promo codes by day of the week

This was a highly requested improvement to Promo codes which now allow you to create promo codes for specific days of the week. This allowed our operators to run campaigns for the quieter sessions of the week, maximizing revenue.

The good news: Rezdy operators on average grew direct bookings by 57% when compared to 2020 – although 2020 wasn’t a high bar, this is still a testament to the resilience and amazing work operators have been doing to achieve this result.

Maximizing your sales channels and ease of connecting

While direct bookings are of course important, many believe that a diverse set of sales channels is the fastest way to grow a tour and activities business and can help maximize sales within available capacities to new customers. In fact, 60% of Rezdy tour operators sell through at least one reseller.

Rezdy places a big emphasis on ensuring that these connections are reliable and easily manageable. As a result, we’re glad that in 2021 we were awarded the:

GetYourGuide Premium Partner Status

This status is awarded to only the best 4 out of 150 GetYourGuide partners. The ranking is based on the partner’s API Performance, API Features, and Business Value & Engagement with GetYourGuide.

We were honored to be given this award by GetYourGuide, but of course we continue to ensure that our connections with all our partners are maintained at the highest level.

Giving your business the exposure it deserves

Getting the most out of existing partnerships is an important focus for any business, but continually diversifying your sales channels can be even better. To ensure that your business is exposed to as much opportunity as possible, we released a few improvements to the Rezdy Marketplace.

The new Marketplace search delivers faster and more relevant search results for resellers, ensuring that the right reseller will be able to find you more easily.
The new Marketplace Map View puts your products on a map, so resellers in the area can more easily find you. This was a tool many resellers relied upon this year to find more local experiences, given the emphasis on local travel this year.

Growing in-destination communities

Many of our operators are in distinct regions with a true sense of community – picture a popular wine region, or a beach holiday destination. A collaborative in-destination strategy means not only more bookings for those activities, but crucially it also means a more enriched customer experience – so the traveler is more likely to return to that destination, and tell their friends.

Supporting those communities and helping them to work together to the benefit of all has been a key goal of Rezdy this year. Engaging with operators, accommodation providers, information centers and local tourism boards has given us invaluable insights, and product development opportunities.

Affiliate links and QR Codes

You can now easily share affiliate links accompanied by QR codes with agents and resellers. This means your local resellers, whether they are hotels, Airbnbs, caravan parks, information centers or even other tour operators can simply display the QR code, sending you bookings directly to your website and enabling easy tracking and payout of commission.

“How it works: When a guest scans the QR code, they are brought to your booking page; and if they book your tour or activity, the commission is automatically recorded for the reseller.”

This process helps to digitize your offline partners, making it easier for you to manage multiple resellers, especially since these local reseller bookings will now be automated.

Your local resellers can now start reselling your product immediately through your website without any set-up time.

Saving more time with automation

As tour operators continue to navigate these challenging times, one of the most important resources is time. This year we released multiple automation features to help Rezdy operators save time so they can instead focus on their business.

You can now enable automated booking confirmation, which allows you to automatically confirm bookings for a session when the minimum number of participants for the session is met. We also added the ability to override or increase quantities for the session when the minimum participant numbers are met, which helps you capture those last minute bookings and increase your revenue for products with longer lead times.

Additionally, we released an upgrade to automated payment requests, which now allows you to request fixed amounts on specific dates. For example, $100 every week in the four weeks leading up to the session.

We hope that these features have helped free up some time for operators to focus on growing their business.

Making more informed business decisions with data

In addition to time, data is an extremely important resource to growing your business; which is why we released a suite of new reports. At a glance, you can now see your best-performing agents and products, demographics, refunds, and booking lead times, which helps you better analyze your data and capitalize on the future markets.

The new reports were designed to provide you with deeper insights into the business you already know so well, and we hope they provide a quicker way for you to identify the best areas to invest in for the future.

Increased support with Live Chat

As the industry continues to evolve and change during these challenging times, what’s most important to us is you, and that we are able to continually communicate with you whenever issues arise.

In an effort to continually improve our lines of communication with you, we launched Live Chat. Where you can now go for immediate responses to your questions, queries or feedback.

To a bigger and better 2022

As mentioned before, none of this would be possible without your continued feedback and support. So once again, thank you.

From everyone here at Rezdy, we hope you enjoy the holiday season and we wish you nothing but happiness, health and good fortune coming into the new year.

Here’s to a bigger and better 2022, where we’ll continue to bring you products and features to save time, maximize your revenue and grow your business.