THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS A SILLY QUESTION.

You can go directly to the distributors; however, Tourism Exchange USA allows you to access a global network of distributors in one place at the click of a button. By connecting to the Exchange, you can manage your availability, pricing, bookings, and content across multiple distribution channels and also access a wide range of analytical data.

For SMEs, getting distributed via some of the larger, or niche, distributors can be a daunting task. Tourism Exchange USA offers all the benefits as outlined above in an accessible way for businesses of all sizes.

Simply put, Tourism Exchange USA offers much more functionality than a channel manager, and we have solutions for suppliers, distributors and technology systems.  

Tourism Exchange USA is a digital toolkit designed to help improve connectivity and expand distribution opportunities for US-based travel businesses. TXUSA includes some channel management capabilities, because connected suppliers have the ability to opt-in to specific distribution channels to share rates and availability. However, our platform offers more functionality in total, including the ability for offline suppliers to start taking bookings online using customizable booking pages, manage inventory and product content via TXLoad, and enable creation of new distribution channels via API integration or out-of-the-box tools. 

Channel management solutions are often add-on subscriptions to a booking management tool, or they may be standalone products that integrate with a supplier’s booking system. As with most software, these tools require a subscription while TXUSA only charges suppliers a small commission on bookings they receive directly from their Exchange connections. This reduces risk and upfront costs for suppliers.

The booking fee is paid directly to Tourism Exchange USA and is used for the ongoing operation, maintenance, and development of the platform.

Tourism Exchange USA can support any size of tourism business, from small boutique bed & breakfasts to hotels to the biggest attractions in the country by helping expand their distribution to more channels and international markets. 

That said, TXUSA offers the most immediate value to smaller businesses and independent businesses who lack the ability to take bookings online, or who have very limited access (or no access) to distribution of their products. 

If you’re curious about how TXUSA can help your travel business, we’d love to talk and answer any questions you may have. Even if we’re not a great fit for you today, we might be in the future, and there’s no obligation or sales pitch because we’re not trying to get you to buy anything. ​

That’s no problem. You could use Tourism Exchange USA to setup your products and availability, then use a customizable booking page to generate bookings via your Facebook page, Google My Business listing, or other online presence. 

Ultimately, we would suggest having a website for your business, and adding a booking link there to help maximize your online presence, but it’s not required. We’re happy to help figure out how you can make the most of our online tools based on your current digital presence.

If you don’t have your own booking system we can still get you up and running on the TxLoad part of the system. This allows you to upload your availability and prices manually.

We recommend that you sign up for a booking system in the future, but if you don’t have one yet TxLoad is a good starting point.

TxLoad is a part of the Tourism Exchange USA platform designed for suppliers who don’t have a booking system. It allows you to enter your prices, availability, and content manually into the Exchange. If you also take offline bookings for your tourism product, you need to remember to update the inventory on TxLoad as any changes wouldn’t be automatically recorded in the system.

If your booking system hasn’t been connected to Tourism Exchange USA yet, you can use TxLoad to get connected. As soon as your booking system is connected, you’ll be able to switch to the connected booking system.

For direct bookings, the money goes straight into your account. Distributor commissions and booking fees are automatically settled by Tourism Exchange USA in the following month.

For bookings through online travel agent (OTA) websites or distributors such as the National Travel Trade Portal that use ‘on account’ payment, you’ll receive your money according to their individual processes. Some will issue payment automatically to you in a monthly reconciliation and others will require an invoice for the amount due. Requirements will be outlined in the terms and conditions for a distributor channel when you opt-in. You always have control over what channels can access and sell your product.

The Tourism Exchange USA booking pages allow multiple tickets to be booked at once but will only allow a user to book what’s available in a supplier’s booking system. Our system is generally best suited to FIT or small groups (~10-15 people) rather than large tour groups.. Our system doesn’t allow more than 20 tickets to be booked for a supplier in a single reservation, so booking a large group isn’t ideal. 

If you’re an operator who books large groups, we’d be happy to discuss how we could better meet your needs in the future, but in its current state, our solution probably isn’t the right fit for you. ​

If you’re a business owner or manager who is interested in getting connected to the Exchange, you can start with our Get Connected form. From there our team can help you get set up. You’ll need to provide some basic information about your business, including Tax ID or EIN. If you want to accept direct payments (highly recommended), you’ll also need to have a Stripe account set up. You’ll also want to know what, if any, booking or reservation management systems you use so we can check whether they are among the systems currently connected, or if you want to use TXLoad to manage product and inventory for our system. 

Yes.

You can continue with your existing distributor and opt into only additional, unique distributor channels via Tourism Exchange USA. Alternatively, you can choose to stop working with that distributor directly and go through the Exchange instead.

Yes. Any booking system/channel manager can request to integrate with Tourism Exchange USA as a connected booking system so that their suppliers can connect.

The sooner you get connected, the sooner you’ll have access to an ever-growing range of distributors who can package and sell your product globally.

Live allocation is usually controlled via your own connected booking system, but you can also separately control the cut-off time for bookings before arrival for Tourism Exchange USA reservations. For example, you can choose to cut off bookings 24 hours before the check-in time.

The booking will be entered into your connected booking system, which will be the main record. In most cases, the booking system will then issue its own booking confirmation email. However, depending on the distributor channel, Tourism Exchange USA may also send a booking notification to the consumer and to you.

For OTA distributor bookings such as Booking.com, the consumer will receive their normal confirmation from the distributor.

For bookings through direct distributor channels, you’ll receive payment in full at the time of booking, so there’s nothing more you need to do.
For Online Travel Agent/On Account bookings, no-shows are handled in accordance with the individual distributor’s terms and conditions.

You set your own cancellation policy within the booking terms entered via your dashboard or booking system. This is applied to all direct bookings, and the consumer must agree to these terms before being able to confirm the booking.

For Online Travel Agent distributor bookings, the cancellation policy is set as part of the registration/setup with the specific Online Travel Agent.

For bookings through direct distributor channels, you’ll already have received payment in full at the time of booking. You may process a full or partial refund, or no refund at all, depending on your defined booking terms.
For bookings via Online Travel Agent Distributor channels, the funds received for a canceled booking are as per the cancellation policy you defined when signing up.

Yes, absolutely. If you want to manage a separate allocation for TXUSA and have an option to accept a booking before it’s confirmed, you can do that using TXLoad. Offering inventory On Request will limit some of the channels where you can distribute your product, but if you were mainly focused on accessing opportunities via the National Travel Trade Portal and wanted to set an allocation to try and fill off-peak travel seasons, that would be a viable strategy.

The sooner you get connected, the sooner you can access a growing range of products available from suppliers. We’re working with dozens of state and local tourism offices to onboard and connect their industry, so connected distributors have greater visibility and brand awareness with engaged suppliers. 

Also, there is no cost for distributors to connect to the Exchange. There’s no monthly fee, no setup fee, and no costs to access our APIs, so getting connected doesn’t create new overhead. You get visibility and access to unique supply without increasing costs.

Any supplier with travel product can get connected to Tourism Exchange USA, but that doesn’t mean every supplier will show up in your channel. Suppliers must opt-in to a distribution channel, and distributors can curate what suppliers are able to present product in their channel.  Distributors have the ability to approve suppliers, if desired,, so it’s not a free-for-all. When you set up a channel with Tourism Exchange USA, there’s a setting that can be adjusted to auto-approve any supplier or to create an approval queue for review. How much control you want is up to you. 

All suppliers who sign up for the Exchange agree that their product complies with all relevant laws, regulations and legally required standards.

Either way is free for distributors, and gives you access to product from suppliers who opt-in to your channel. The biggest differences come down to how you want to integrate and present product from the Exchange to your customers or internal team(s). 

Using the API will allow you to pull in product content, inventory and availability to showcase alongside existing products and your own user interface. However, that effort will require more development resources to complete the build. 

Using the white-label booking pages is relatively quick and easy, but ultimately limits some of your flexibility with how product is displayed. There is CSS customization available to Exchange-generated booking pages, which allows you to align with your brand standards, but the interface and transaction flow cannot be heavily customized. 

For smaller distributors or new distributors who are integrating bookable product for the first time, the white-label pages give you an easy way to handle transactions without having to worry about PCI compliance. 

Ultimately, whichever path you choose, your access to product will be dictated by the suppliers who opt-in based on your channels terms and conditions, commission rate, and so on. 

It’s a data connection that shares product content, rates and inventory from connected suppliers with connected distributors. It allows distributors to use a variety of methods to call data, confirm bookings and complete transactions quickly and efficiently. 

Only one connection can be made between a supplier and a distributor. This is controlled via the supplier’s connected booking system/channel manager or via the Tourism Exchange USA dashboard. For a direct distributor, the distributor can block a supplier via their dashboard if needed and/or liaise with the supplier to choose their connection type according to the distributor’s own policies and procedures.

If you have a booking system that acts as an aggregator to the market and would like to distribute your products through Tourism Exchange USA, please contact us for more details at [email protected] or 1-800-348-3809.

There are a few different ways that DMOs, tourism offices and similar organizations can participate with the Exchange, depending on your bandwidth and goals. 

1. Destination Licensee: This provides access to unique data and insights that are generated by getting suppliers connected with distributors through the Exchange. This is the highest tier of participation and is currently only open to state tourism offices, but we will expand opportunities to additional organizations soon, so please contact us if you’d like more information.  
2. Destination Distributor: This enables organizations to add booking of local travel businesses to a website or visitor information center. Being a distributor allows destinations to create new value for their community, generate new sources of revenue from owned audiences, and access unique transaction data insights from your distribution channel.
3. Destination Advocate:  If your community would benefit from increasing connectivity and distribution of local tourism product to global OTAs and international travel trade, we can provide you with a communications toolkit to promote opportunities to your local businesses. It’s easy, impactful and has no cost. You can decide whether additional opportunities make sense in the future with no further obligation.

If your organization is considering how to best engage in promoting responsible tourism and balancing the needs of your community with the needs of visitors, the Exchange can be an impactful part of your approach. 

Our mission at Tourism Exchange USA is to increase the availability, diversity and reach of US-based travel products globally by expanding access to online booking and distribution tools. 

The digital tools we offer to destinations, travel businesses and distributors can positively influence multiple aspects of your strategic objectives:

•  Consumer perception can be improved by ensuring products and services from more businesses in your community are showing up in popular planning and booking platforms. 
• Visitor dispersal can be improved by ensuring that more activities and accommodations in your community are easy to find and book. 
• The equity of economic impact from tourism can be improved by ensuring that more of your businesses are easy to book for consumers and travel trade alike. 
• Community relationships can be improved by providing impactful tools and educational support to your local industry. 

Whether you want to add product or distribute product, there is no cost for our connectivity partners. Your only investment would be the internal time required to develop the connection to our platform. 

We are funded through industry partnerships and supplier booking fees rather than trying to monetize access to our APIs. We’d love to discuss potential opportunities for innovative partnerships with your company. 

If you’re a technology company that is looking to expand the amount of travel product you have available, or you’re looking for ways to get the product you have into more channels, working with Tourism Exchange USA may be beneficial. 

We are continually expanding the amount of product we have available from suppliers across the USA, and can offer tens of thousands of products with live rates and availability, depending on the commercial terms of your marketplace. 

If you offer bookable product for travelers, we can also help connect you to wider distribution channels through our existing connectivity, which can help accelerate your product roadmap with less friction and investment.