Overview
Areas form a significant component of the itineraries as they're used as itinerary stops. They delimit the area where customers can overnight, allowing them to choose from the available activities and accommodations.
They include several descriptive elements, as well as pictures, to give an overview of the route of the tour.
Areas must be created in the Inventory before they can be used in templates and products to be referenced to the exact geographical location and displayed correctly on the map.
Article Available in Video
The information in this article is available in 2 videos: Explaining the usage of Areas, and how to create them. You will find additional details below.
Explaining the Usage of Areas
Creating Areas
Where are areas used?
Within a template, as area descriptions:
to offer a specific area as a stop in Template Management.
to create an area description for a stop in a template and to display that specific description on Discovery Details, Planner, and Travel Documentation.
Within a product, as a stop indication for activities:
to pull the exact start/end location of activities.
to add additional areas as indicators of the overall activity.
Within a product, as a radius for accommodation and activity search:
to define the radius of a stop where accommodation and activities can be searched (accommodations outside of the area's radius are not displayed on the Planner).
Note: The list of airports is automatically populated based on a generic-purpose airport list. Please ensure only the touristically relevant airports are associated with the area.
Steps to Create Areas
Go to Inventory.
Click on Package Builder.
Click on Areas.
Note:All TripBuilder customers are enabled for the Nezasa Global Content Marketplace featuring 32,500+ areas and location descriptions. Initially created based on WikiVoyage touristic locations, this general library has evolved through the years with additional areas according to customer feedback, travel guides or Destination Tourism Boards.
The area library is curated internally by Nezasa on the areas that are made available to customers as their rating classification.
Individual customers can always create custom areas (tailor-made to their needs and communication) that are used instead of the general purpose areas.
Click the button Create New Area on the right-hand side.
Enter the desired location and choose the correct suggestion from the dropdown menu.
Click Advanced Information to see the exact location of the pin on the map.
If the location is set correctly, and you want to create a custom area, click the Create button.
Know more:
How do we avoid area duplication?
Before creating a custom area, please check whether it already exists in the Inventory and if it suits your TripBuilder instance.
How do you adjust an Area?
After creating an Area, a new window opens automatically, showing the details of the newly created area.
Click Advanced Information for further information on the location, including a map where geo-coordinates can be defined by interacting with the map pin.
An area can also be chosen from the overview to adjust details later.
The most common adjustments are:
adjusting the Short Name to be displayed as desired on the Discovery, Planner, and Travel Documentation
adding or adjusting the kilometres, that is, Radius, to get hotels and activities within that proximity
adjusting the Location point of the area to optimise the hotel and activity search radius
It's possible to adjust other options as well:
Rating | Area ratings are used within the Route Builder and determine the importance of an area displayed on the map using the red toggle.
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Full Name | The full name is automatically pulled from the external location service. It's the exact indication of where the pin was set. Please note: the full name isn't displayed on the Discovery, Planner or Travel Documentation. |
Short Name | The short name shall be displayed in the customer-facing application. It can be adjusted as desired; for example, New York can be adjusted to New York City. |
Alias Names | Common names for which the area is also known and only used for search purposes. |
Metropolitan Area | The IATA code for the metropolitan area (if available/existing). Important: when conducting a flight search, if an IATA Metropolitan code is available, it'll be used instead of individual airport IATA codes. |
Nearby airports | The system automatically generates a list of nearby airports using a general-purpose airport database. Important: review the list of referenced airports and optimise it so that the list of IATA codes only contains touristically relevant airports. |
Hotel Search Radius | The maximal distance determines which accommodations are offered to the customer in that area. If not defined, defaults to 30km, independently of the supplier. Please note: accommodations outside the radius won't be displayed on the Planner. |
Activity Search Radius | The maximal distance determines which activities are offered to the customer in that area. If not defined, defaults to 30km, independently of the supplier. Please note: activities outside the radius won't be displayed on the Planner. |
Location | This is the location entered during creation. |
Know more:
In addition to individual-airport codes, IATA, the FAA, and various booking engines have assigned metropolitan area codes representing several airports serving a metropolitan area.
Metropolitan area airport codes are handy for simplifying flight searches into or out of a region. Some booking engines, which include airports based on distance from a point, can extend the search of airports by using a metropolitan code.
Integrations
Many data model entities managed in TripBuilder support external references. Areas are one example. External references represent an identifier stored in TripBuilder from an external system.
Each area has a single external reference accessible via API or by an Inventory User in the Integrations tab. Particularly for areas, the external reference indicates the data source used in the automatic area creation in TripBuilder (e.g. Wikivoyage) and the internal ID at that platform (e.g. 40481).
Translations
Click the Translate tab to manage the translations for the editable textual fields of an Area, namely Short Name, Full Name, and Alias Names. The number of languages displayed for translation depends on which have been configured to present user content on TripBuilder.
Click the Save button after concluding all changes to translations.
Note: In the case where a selected UI language has no available translation for a specific area/destination, the following rules apply:
In Discovery: The text area will appear blank. No substitution with content in another language will occur.
In Planner: Regardless of the selected UI language, the text will default to English content (considering this is available).