The WCT Ready-to-Use Travel Portal has taken on a new look to take advantage of additional merchandising features aimed at helping you sell the best product mix to the hottest destinations.

The new travel portal has been built with an emphasis on search optimization. The featured deals have been randomized in an effort to help add unique content to each page throughout our network, and they will be updated dynamically and regularly.

In addition, partners are now able to create a unique title search marketing efforts.

Some additional updates that we have added to the Travel Portal include:

• Integration of our new Multiple Product Search box. This search widget will display tabs for the products you are subscribed to in the Partner Support Center. We encourage you to utilize all WCT products to ensure the best possible product mix is available on your website(s).
• The new layout also includes lead pricing and star ratings for hotels and much more in a compact, attractive format.
• New Cascading Style Sheets (CSS): The Travel Portal now has its own Style Sheets, which allow you to alter the colors and fonts on page. To ensure your website(s) continues to function properly, please remove any Custom Style Sheet information from your header(s) and place it in the designated Style Sheets text area for the Travel Portal: Manage Your Website : Ready-To-Use Travel Portal : Cascading Style Sheets
• Hotel destinations will be randomly selected based on a combination of popularity, availability and price comparisons with competing brands. The hotel deals will be updated every four hours with a new set of properties.
• The Top 20 Featured Destination links will leverage additional promotional messaging per destination by directing customers to your Hotel Merchandising Pages.

For partners currently using the Ready-to-Use Travel Portal, you will need to recreate the code in the Partner Support Center under Manage Your Website : Ready-to-Use Travel Portal and upload the file to your hosting provider. The old travel portal will no longer be functional nor supported by WCT.

If you have any questions about this change or need assistance in recreating your Travel Portal, please contact the technical support team at tech@wctravel.com.

WCT continues to see strong sales with our dynamic packaging product CustomTrip, which allows your customers the ability to book their flight and hotel, as well as adding a car rental and Tickets & Attractions for their destination in one easy transaction. We encourage all partners to use this opportunity to upsell to your customers who may need more than just a hotel.

Our dynamic packaging engine allows you to promote the best deals available online. By bundling each component, you are able to pass along special rates that can only be sold together to your customers.

Some new enhancements to this engine include the ability to suppress Traveler Reviews and Hotel Ratings within the results path. WCT also provides marketing elements you may use to further promote CustomTrip in the form of banners located in Partner Support Center : Resource Center : Marketing Resources, as well as multiple quick search widgets you can place directly on your home page (Manage and Market Your Products : CustomTrip).

So what are you waiting for? Start earning commissions on your customers' entire trip, not just air, car or hotel. For more information on how to implement the CustomTrip booking engine into your website, please contact the partner support team today at partners@wctravel.com.
 

Gaining an understanding of your target audience is key to any marketing campaign. Many people assume that their website can be marketed to the general public, but this is not always the case. The better able you are to write unique content and optimize for your customer, the more likely they are to become repeat visitors!

Commonly, companies will review demographic information, such as age, gender, income and race to identify a typical customer. Usability tests can also be a great tool to learn about shopper's behavior once they have made it to your website. There are a myriad of third-party marketing firms that offer this type of service.

Another way to capture this valuable data would be to survey your existing customers and visitors leaving your page. Identify key questions you would like answered and welcome suggestions and feedback that you can incorporate into your current site design.

Once you have identified your target audience, it is important to optimize your site and landing pages to drive the appropriate traffic. Armed with customer information, look at other sites that cater to this audience to see what type of information they are providing and the keywords they are focusing on. Use this insight as a guide when creating your own campaigns for the intended audience.

We also encourage you to review our SEO Basics Manual in the Partner Support Center : Resource Center : Search Engine Marketing to learn more valuable tips on identifying your audience and subsequent keyword research to drive more targeted traffic to your pages.

For more information on marketing strategies for your website(s), please contact the partner support team at partners@wctravel.com.

WCT is pleased to present a fresh new look and feel to our Last Minute Deals booking engine, including new functionality to help your customer find the package deal that is perfect for them!

We have improved the search widget on the Last Minute Deals front door to allow customers to choose their departure and return dates prior to searching for packages, eliminating an extra step in the booking process.

Once a search is performed, customers will now be presented with all available package options within the next two weeks to the destination they selected, as well as alternate nearby locations. Upon selecting the package option, we now allow the customer to filter hotel choices by Hotel and Room Type, as well as by Area. Customers may also sort by Price and Rating to find the hotel that best fits their needs.

Within the hotel search results page, we have added important information on each property for customers to review, including Traveler Reviews, Maps, Photos and Overview information.

If you have any questions on these enhancements or need assistance implementing the Last Minute Deals booking engine into your website, please contact the Partner Support Team today at partners@wctravel.com.
 

WCT would like to take this opportunity to share some exciting changes occurring with our sister company, Site59, which powers the white-label version of the WCT Last Minute Deals booking engine.

As part of a new branding strategy, Site59 has announced plans to adopt the more self-explanatory name and URL: lastminute.com. The site will maintain the same great team, history of innovation and products that have made Site59 a must-visit site for people planning travel within two weeks of departure. Site59 was launched in the U.S. in May 2000 and was acquired by Travelocity in March of 2002. Lastminute.com was launched in 1998 in the UK and was purchased by Travelocity in July 2005.

The current branding efforts at Site59 will not impact WCT partners utilizing the Last Minute Deals booking engine.

If you have any questions about the Site59 branding change, or would like more information on how to being selling and promoting Last Minute Deals on your website, please contact the partner support team at partners@wctravel.com.
 

The WCT tech support team continues to log errors due to invalid date parameters entered into the booking engines. Make it easy for your customers to book! WCT reminds you to review any calendars you feature on your website(s) to ensure they are displaying the current year.

Partners using pre-written HTML code available in the Partner Support Center will have their date information updated dynamically. Partners incorporating their own forms or customized Javascript should remember to manually update the date ranges to ensure that all customers can book with ease and convenience. Some partners may also wish to add 2008 as an option.

If you need assistance with these changes, please contact the technical support team at tech@wctravel.com.
 

As the search market continues to heat up with competition, it is important to stay abreast of new options available to help you drive traffic to your website(s).

One feature to explore as part of your overall marketing efforts is Google Co-op. Launched early last year, Co-op allows webmasters to tag pages on their website(s) with relevant keywords.

Once a user is subscribed to your Co-op feed, your tagged pages will appear above the first organic listing as a Preferred Website when the relevant keyword phrase is searched.

Some of you may already be participating in Co-op, for others it might be something new. We'll walk you through the basics of what it is and how it works, then show how WCT partners can take advantage of Co-op's opportunities.

Click here to read the Global Strategies International white paper on Google Co-op
 

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