The Smart Trip tool can be used to allow event goers to plan a trip to the event.  It can be configured differently for each of your Connect.Space clients, with multiple templates to match your various color schemes.

In each case, it will dynamically take the address from the event venue and find the available hotels nearby, plus find driving time and directions and optionally rent a car or buy an airline ticket.

This is accomplished with a one-time configuration effort that should literally take less than a couple of hours to map your data elements to our dynamic variables and have your tool(s) live on your system for testing.  We jump in and help with the testing so that you can implement literally within days of making your decision to become the “smarter” Event Ticketing and Registration system.

Anywhere that you would normally put a map, you can now have our Smart Map.  This allows you to provide even more value to the end user who is planning how to get to the event.  Once they know where it is being held, they can get driving directions, optionally rent a car or buy and airline ticket and if they need or want a hotel room, it is all right there.

Using our dynamic widget or the CLONE feature in our portal, you can take a widget for a specific event and clone it to feature Keynote speakers and exhibitors.  The individual pages can then be used in conjunction with our Social Sharing feature to allow the PR person from your speakers and exhibitors to promote the event on your behalf.  This provides the added benefit of allowing the event manager to track the referral traffic from those that actually attend the event as a result of seeing the Smart Event tool.

Connect.Space can add the Smart Trip tool to your website as a VISIT US page.  This will allow anyone that is traveling to your offices, whether driving or flying to get driving directions and book a hotel nearby.  In just minutes, you can have a custom tool for each of your facilities, using our “cloning” feature.

The Smart Trip tool can be added to any non-profit event  landing pages on any of your sites to allow anyone traveling to an event to find a hotel nearby.   Best of all, we donate 25% of our revenues to the 501c3 in your name.  This is in addition to the 10% royalty on all revenues from the use of the tool for all of your clients.

TripProximity can co-exist with Blocked Space as a part of the Connect Space offering.  You can give event managers the choice of whether they want to do an RFP for space, which is a guessing game at best, or whether they want to let attendees book their own room nearby and receive a percentage of the revenues back in a royalty.  As a third option, if they choose blocked space, the TripProximity capability can be added to their site once the block expires.

Blocked space in a hotel is a mechanism that has allowed event managers to take greater control of the logistics of their event, but in some ways that sense of control is hollow.

• Event attendees often book outside the block to get their preferred brand/points and/or a better rate . #ChoiceMatters
• Blocked room rates are often similar to the discounted rates offered by online travel sites (TripProximity gives a 110% best rate guarantee that our rates are the lowest published rates online) #GuaranteesMatter
• The inventory for blocked rates often is not available when the event date is announced and the block is closed out often a week or two in advance of the event, not allowing for last minute registrations/ticket sales (we can book rooms 330 days out from the event and until the last day of the event) #AvailabilityMatters
• Managing blocked room RFPs and the block itself is time consuming #TimeMatters

For more background on why a better mousetrap is needed for event housing, click HERE.

You will have your own portal with TripProximity, which provides you access to your usage statistics, the Smart Tool builder, which allows you to create, edit and clone, plus a tool to help you estimate the revenue stream from the royalty for your client base.

If the user wishes to travel to a different destination, they can type in their destination using the pencil.

Once the Smart Trip Tool is displayed, the user can choose to share the widget with friends/family.  The widget can be linked back to the ticket purchase page.

 

TripProximity now handles multi-day trip planning by allowing the user to define the number of hours per day that they would like to drive.  This then calculates the actual driving time, versus the driving straight throughmethod that Google uses.

 

TripProximity now allows the user to specify whether they want to drive or fly to their destination, which changes where you would pick up your car rental.

The Event widget is one of our Smart Trip tools.  It allows you to dynamically embed trip planning in any event in your system.

It is distinct from the Venue widget in that it has a specific date range for the event and a location where the event is held.

The next section includes your snippet.  Then you will find the instructions for our Dynamic tool, which shows you how to substitute your data for our variables in real time, so that you only have to install the widget snippet once.  Once it is installed, if you wish to make changes, you can edit the base elements of the widget in the Portal and you do not have to reinstall the snippet.  See the defaults in the last section.

<script type="text/javascript" data-id="tp-widget" data-token="UzijjiFiGyc882Biw3d4e26vRE70n2506fV5luQ466uIQmhl511U1Y484lCXgXT2" 

src="https://widget.tripproximity.com/js/widget.min.js"></script><div class="tp-widget" id="tp-widget"></div>

Add the dynamic variable elements that you wish to pass at display time to the appropriate widget snippet.  They should be preceded by the following two lines. Follow the variables with the closing code segment, shown in green.

We’ve included the recommended variables for Connect Space (shown encased in %VARIABLENAME% signs, which you will strip out in your actual entry):

<script type=”text/javascript”>

tripWidget({

eventStart: ‘YYYY/MM/DD’,

eventEnd: ‘YYYY/MM/DD’,

headerText: ‘Plan your trip to ‘,

appendPOI: ‘Y’,

poiName: ‘%EVENTNAME%’,

address: ‘%STREET%, %CITY%,%STATE%,%POSTCODE%’,

mapTab: ‘0’,

trackingCode: ‘%CUSTOMERTRACKINGINFO%’,

imageUrl: ‘%IMAGEURL%’,

imageLink: ‘%IMAGELINK%’,

})

</script>

Once you have the code installed, contact us with the test link and we will help to test on multiple platforms and on multiple browsers.

The tool type is set to EVENT

The header text is set to “Plan my trip to “

Pass the Event Name as a variable

The POI name will be appended to the header text

We have stored a default image that you can override at display time

Pass the Tracking number at display time from your customer information

Pass the location information in the address field at display time

We default to the US and USD for currency

The booking brand will default to the hotels nearby

The color scheme can be modified to your chosen palette.  We support multiple palettes.

The widget is set to display the MAP in front.  If you would like a HOTEL widget as the default, we can change it or we can provide a separate widget for that purpose, which could be called based on a business rule

We have enabled the Air and Driving tabs

The user can enter the departure and arrival airports at transaction time

The event dates should be passed to us at transaction time

The Venue widget is one of our Smart Trip tools.  It allows you to embed trip planning on any page in your system or on your site or blog where there is a contact with an address.  A venue can be a physical place, like a company or a museum, or it can be a location like a park or a beach.  As long as we can pinpoint a latitude/longitude, we can “trip enable” the contact record.

This tool is distinct from the Event widget in that the dates of travel are relative to the date that the tool is displayed, e.g. travel 7 days from today for 1 night.

Click the HDQ widget above to see the widget for the Connect.Space corporate website for people traveling to see your HDQ staff.

The next section includes your snippet.  Then you will find the instructions for our Dynamic tool, which shows you how to substitute your data for our variables in real time, so that you only have to install the widget snippet once.  Once it is installed, if you wish to make changes, you can edit the base elements of the widget in the Portal and you do not have to reinstall the snippet. See the defaults in the last section.

<script type="text/javascript" data-id="tp-widget" data-token=

"aWR5NdVH6nj72uo4XL4bQ1wUB0XF562W0z0Oui1D2ab46y56gIy7rGLq0Snl1G03" 

src="https://widget.tripproximity.com/js/widget.min.js" async onload

="tripWidget()"></script><div class="tp-widget" id="tp-widget"></div>

<script type="text/javascript" data-id="tp-widget" 

data-token="zbVJV58WC27143U47cK2XVJ52J5kHbJCmixZ380bt93ZRWNb51s0dL7wm32UX3gW" 

src="https://widget.tripproximity.com/js/widget.min.js"></script>

<div class="tp-widget" id="tp-widget"></div>

Add to the widget snippet the dynamic variable elements that you wish to pass at display time, preceded by the following two lines (your snippet). Follow the variables with the closing code segment.

We’ve included the recommended variables for Connect Space (shown encased in %VARIABLENAME% signs, which you will strip out in your actual entry):

<script type=”text/javascript”>

tripWidget({

daysFromToday: ‘7’,

numberOfDays: ‘1’,

headerText: ‘Plan your trip to ‘,

appendPOI: ‘Y’,

poiName: ‘%CONTACTNAME%’,

address: ‘%STREET%, %CITY%,%STATE%,%POSTCODE%’,

mapTab: ‘1’,

trackingCode: ‘%CUSTOMERTRACKINGINFO%’,

imageUrl: ‘%IMAGEURL%’,

imageLink: ‘%IMAGELINK%’,

})

</script>

The conditional MapTab flag is new.

1.  If there is no address in the contact record, set to 0.  The system will display the hotel page which will allow them to look up the company name or start typing an address and it will complete.

2.  If you have a full address or just city/state, set to 1,  it will default to the map.  If there is no %STREET%, the hotel widget will default to the text in the portal for address, which is instructional on looking up the exact address.

Once you have the code installed, contact us with the test link and we will help to test on multiple platforms and on multiple browsers.

The tool type is set to VENUE

The header text is set to “Plan my trip to “

Pass the Company or Venue Name as a variable

The POI name will be appended to the header text

We have stored a default image that you can override at display time

Pass the Tracking number at display time from your customer information

Pass the location information in the address field at display time

We default to the US and USD for currency

The booking brand will default to the hotels nearby

The color scheme can be configured based on your palette(s)

The widget is set to display the MAP in front.  If you would like a HOTEL widget as the default, we can change it or we can provide a separate widget for that purpose, which could be called based on a business rule

We have enabled the Air and Driving tabs

The user can enter the departure and arrival airports at transaction time

The travel dates will default to 7 days from the day that the widget is displayed

The default trip length is 1 night

These can both be overriden by the traveler