Customizing the Venue Trip Tool for DYNAMIC use for multiple venues
The Venue Trip Tool supports Smart Trip Planning to a specific site. Enterprise system providers and publishers may use our dynamic tool to render the tool using the data from your content, for listing companies, venues and other places that your users may visit.
To use this tool, you will build a MASTER smart trip tool on our portal and obtain the dynamic venue widget embed code by checking the “Dynamic tool for my enterprise system” option on the Preview/Quick Edit screen.
For the dynamic version of the trip tool, you will pass the variables to us in real time in order to display the trip tool, customizing literally hundreds of thousands or even millions of companies or venues. You will do that by writing a short script, substituting our variables with your data elements.
Here is an example of the snippet that is generated by the portal for a Dynamic Widget:
<script type=”text/javascript” data-id=”tp-widget” data-token=”2v5X28Ox418Y5n4538M9aQ3m6ZFRKYg9dDEb18wYviSQ0g1KLug4NmvjN95teSxq” src=”https://widget.tripproximity.com/js/widget.min.js”></script><div class=”tp-widget” id=”tp-widget”></div>
You will provide the values for the variables at run time via a script that maps the values for this rendition of the widget to the variables listed below.
Here is a sample script from one of our clients:
<script type=”text/javascript”>if ($(‘#tp-widget’).html() == ”) { tripWidget({daysFromToday: ‘7’,numberOfDays: ‘1’,headerText: ‘Plan your trip to visit ‘,appendPOI: ‘Y’,poiName: ‘San Diego Civic Center‘,address: ‘3rd Ave & B St, San Diego, CA, United States‘,trackingCode: ‘45048_Event8‘,imageUrl: ‘http://tripproximity.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/sandiegociviccenter.jpg‘,imageLink: ‘https://sandiegotheatres.org/‘}) }</script>
In the above script, their data has already been passed using a variable name from their system that translates into the data that you see.
The Parameters
There are several parameters that need to be passed to the Dynamic Venue Trip Tool to operate correctly. These must be rendered in the web page as JSON data dictionary within an HTML script tag. The JavaScript variable name must be set to widgetVars.
If the trip tool is being used for a system that has multiple venues, you will substitute the VARIABLE NAMES in the Dynamic Venue widget with the correct data from your venue/location page at transaction time.
The variable name must be followed by a colon : and the variable will be ensconced in straight, plain quotation marks.
PORTAL SETTINGS FOR MASTER WIDGET
The base variables are set in the master widget, which is built and maintained in the TripProximity portal. Those elements that must be set in the master widget include:
- Widget Type
- Marketing Message
- Widget Name
- Charity
NOTE: Any variables that are then used from the dynamic section below will override the base variables.
Function |
Variable Name |
Purpose |
Enterprise Variable |
Required |
Description |
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| Default Tab | active_tab | Determines which tab will orient as the front window in a multi-tab format. | N | Y | This is set as a default in the base widget in the TripProximity Portal. The HOTEL tab is the default front tab. The tabs remain in the same physical order. This just changes the logical first tab. The alternative is the MAP tab, but this setting requires that you insert your GoogleAPI code before launching. Air and Car tabs cannot be “Active” tabs. | |||
| Country | country | Two-digit country code | N | Y | This is set as a default in the base widget in the TripProximity Portal. Two-digit code for the country. Defaults to US. | |||
| Currency | currency | Currency code (ie. USD, CAD) | N | N | This is set as a default in the base widget in the TripProximity Portal. The default is USD. The traveler can change the pricing currency when the results are displayed. | |||
The Venue Trip Tool VariablesTo use the dynamic version of the smart trip tool, your developer will write a script that passes the variables from your system in real time into the widget code at the time the widget is rendered. |
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Date VariablesThe venue trip tool variables drive the hotel check-in and checkout dates, the car rental pickup and dropoff dates, and air departure and return dates. If the hotel dates are changed, the car rental and air dates will reflect the change.
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Other Dynamic Venue Variables
Following are the variables that can be entered into your script and can be populated at run time.
| Function | Variable Name | Purpose and example | Enterpr. Variable | Mandatory | Description |
| Widget Header Text | headerText | Widget title that appears in a transparent container above the widget. headerText: “Plan your trip to “, | Y | Y | This can also be a more complete description of an event or venue, in which case you would ensure that the append poi flag is set to N. This flag is controlled in the Portal as a default in the setup of your widgets, but can also be included as a variable. |
| Short Name (venue or event) | poiName | Name of the venue to appear as “I need a hotel near” and also on the booking results page (as the POI and the “0.1 miles away from POI NAME” field for each hotel listed. poiName: ‘Billy Joel Concert’, | Y | Y | This should be the short version of the name of the venue. |
| Combine Header Text and Venue or Event Name | appendPOI | Append the POI to the widget title. appendPOI: ‘Y’, | N | N | This is set as a default in the base widget in the TripProximity Portal. If set to Yes, the header text and poi_name will be appended. |
| Image | imageUrl | The URL for the image on the graphical widget. imageUrl: ‘https://onpointexecutivecenter.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/offices.jpg’, | Y | N | Optional. If you do not have your own image, the default image is the Where Should I Stay button from TripProximity. Your image can be up to 350 pixels tall and up to 670 pixels wide. |
| Image Link | imageLink | The URL for the link from the image. imageLink: ‘https://www.solutionz.com’, | Y | N | This is the link for where the user will go when they click on the image. The link can take you to any other website, blog, page represented by a URL. |
| Branding | refId | This field determines the branding on the booking back end header and footer. In this example, this is the code for theHotelsNearby. refId: 6832, | Y | Y | The default is 6832 for the TripProximity brand. There are a number of optional niche brands available. See the portal. |
| Branding | refClickid2 | This allows you to choose one of our niche brands, coupled with the use of refid 6832. refClickId2: ‘hotelsbycompanies’, | Y | Y | If the refid is set to 6832 to take advantage of one of our brands, you would use the refClickID2 from the full brand list, see the portal. |
| Tracking | trackingCode | Your internal tracking code for your customers or business segments. trackingCode: ‘HDQ’, | Y | Y | Can be up to 50 characters, alpha-numeric |
| Latitude | latitude | The numeric latitude of the location | Y | Y | If you provide the lat/long, you will not need an address. Example: 28.4203991 |
| Longitude | longitude | The numeric longitude of the location | Y | Y | If you provide the lat/long, you will not need an address. Example: -81.502967799999968 |
| Address | address | If no geographic coordinates are provided these parameters will be used to calculate the proximity for the hotel search. address: ‘118 Rue du 4 Septembre, Paris’, | Y | N | Optional if geographic coordinates were provided. For enterprise clients, this field can contain the entire address (see example), or can be just the street address if you are using city, state/province, postcode. |
| Address | city | The address must be searchable on Google Maps API in order to result in a valid search. city: ‘Atlanta’ | Y | Y | Only mandatory if you do NOT use the entire address as the override in the %address% variable field. |
| Address | state | The state or province for US or Canadian addresses. | Y | N | Optional (initial lookup is in the address and city, so in most cases, state/province is not needed) |
| Address | postcode | The zip or postal code for the address. | Y | N | Optional (initial lookup is in the address and city, so in most cases, postcode is not needed) |
| Airport | airport | Three-character airport code airport: ‘ORD’ | Y | N | IATA 3-character code representing the closest airport. |
| Token | dataToken | The token number from the widget that you wish to use for tracking | Y | N | If you have multiple widgets that you have created so that you can track placement source, you can write one script and substitute the correct dataToken at display time. |