Revolution Release 1.12.3

Optimization and improvement of the CRX site continues, to bring you more reservations. The Revolution Manager interface is more user friendly, through a ton of improvements. We have expanded our development team to allow faster development and software release cycles.

Car Rental Express - CRX

• CRX is now using Google Analytics to improve SEO and web traffic.

• You may find your Agency featured at CRX! The Homepage has been updated and now includes dynamic data for top agencies, cities, ratings and content updates.
• The Specialty Vehicles pages are updated, with new content.
• Credit Card Deposit text has been clarified: It is tied to Pickup time, unless an Agency specifically wants to take a deposit right after booking.
• Location Specific thanks messages are now displayed for reservations.
• The Travel Guide, accessed from the footer, has been updated and simplified to have only two layers: The top page and the city pages themselves, for faster navigation.

Global Traveler Program - GT:

• We have changed the way Rate Codes are setup for GT – An Agency needs to create all post-paid rates as dependant on a Base Rate. This allows an agency to opt out of post-paid reservations, if they choose.

• Vehicles names are now being built from the Image Gallery. This creates consistent make and model name displays at GT, which looks better to airlines, and others booking your vehicles.
• Vehicles information now includes Number of Passengers, Baggage and Doors.

Traffic Exchange Program and Partners

• Interface improvements have been made for BookingBuddy.com and OneTime.com. Those traffic sources have been resumed, as of December 2011.

• Hotwire comparisons have been setup, generating more quality Traffic to agencies participating in the program. Search a city for car rental, to see the comparison options at the top and bottom of the results listing.

Kayak Program

• When an agency participating in the Kayak program creates new locations, notifications allow these locations to be submitted to Kayak.

• Locations can now add extra notes and a phone number to every Airport Shuttle setup. This improves renter information available at Kayak.
• RentCentric: Sending of vehicle data to Kayak has been enabled.

Revolution Manager

The Revolution Manager interface is more user friendly, through a ton of improvements. We have expanded our development team to allow faster development and software release cycles.

• Better Navigation: Manager’s top menu is updated and displays sub-menus for every item, which allows users to go the needed destination faster, without additional page loads.

• Age Ranges can now be setup to be Location Specific (every Location can have its own Age Ranges, with its own Vehicle restrictions).
• Extra Products limitations in OTA codes are removed. Now the same OTA codes can be assigned to extra products or coverage, as long as the extra product’s rate codes and/or vehicles are not overlapping.
• The Default “minimum time to book in advance” is set to 1 day, instead of 0 days 0 hours.
• Seasonal Rates now have two buttons to increment / decrement prices, instead of having to enter new values.
• Checking agencies for Locations that don’t have Latitude / Longitude setup is now faster, meaning faster loading times for Manager.
• Added a “Remember Me” option on Manager Login page, to remember user’s email.
• Multiple images for vehicles are allowed to be saved.
• Created a page for Agencies that displays all reviews and comments in Manager.
• A Location’s Address and Country are now mandatory when creating a Location.
• The Car Sales module allows ordering of vehicles now.
• Pickup / Dropoff Locations: Now orders locations as defined.

The Global Traveler Program is now LIVE! Major marketing additions have been made to Car Rental Express.com. The Revolution reservation system has improvements too. Read all about it …

Global Traveler Program

This exciting new Distribution Network program is now LIVE! Several beta agencies are up and running, and another dozen agencies are in the set up process. We look forward to significant traffic from European airline carriers, hotels, travel groups and other sources. Find out more about this premium program. More …

Car Rental Express.com

There are some great new features at the Car Rental Express.com website. The Homepage has been completely redesigned and updated, to reflect the site’s dedication to Independent Car Rental Agencies.Based on real reviews by real renters, Renter Ratings continue to be featured prominently. Agencies with the highest ratings in popular locations now automatically appear on the Homepage. Headers and Footers have been redesigned for the overall site.

An “In The News” page has been added, linked from trusted news sources on the main page, like Trip Advisor. A “CRX Connections Newsletter” page has been added. Benefits of renter participation include car rental advice and special deals. In the Rental Center, credit card deposits are now clearly associated with car pickup at the counter, to promote more bookings.

In the Comparison Guide, nearby locations (within 50 miles) have been added to the primary page for a location, so that visitors can shop around for the best rates at their destination. Ongoing search engine optimization continues, to bring more organic traffic to the Comparison Guide or Places pages.

Revolution Manager

• Passwords are no longer e-mailed following change in Manager, for better security.
• Administrative improvements make Kayak set up and new Business Partner additions more efficient.
• Kayak e-mail notifications have been improved; Agency logo uploading too.
• It is now possible to reorder Rental Length restrictions lists as desired.
• Age range displays have been corrected.

RMS Connectors

Improvements have been made to RentCentric, Bluebird and TSD/Weblink connectors. Agencies using those systems will find better data transfer and conductivity to Kayak.

Announcing Revolution Release 1.12.1

Global Traveler additions and Car Rental Express.com improvements are just part of this release. Read all about it, and Manager improvements as well.

Car Rental Express

Our flagship site is now reaching out to more renters through social media. An invitation to the CRX Connections newsletter is available to renters. The Facebook “Like” button has a few hundred hits already, and you can visit our Facebook page for car rental tips and updates. Follow us at twitter.com/CarRentalXpress.

Best of all, there is a Vegas Sweepstakes contest featured at our Facebook site. Entry is free, and the prize includes airfare, hotel, car rental, and cash, for a luxury weekend in Las Vegas.

The Car Rental Express.com rate search results page has a clean new look, for easier use by renters and better conversions. Likewise, the city and airport pages have a new call to action and feature best rates. You can see these in the world directory or car rental comparison section.

Revolution Manager

The Revolution Rental Center has a great new option, the Extra Products “Group Type”. Every extra can be assigned to one of the following now: “Equipment”, “Coverage” or “Misc”. By default all existing and new extras are placed into “Misc” category. If the “Equipment” or “Coverage” option is chosen, a new dropdown will appear with options from the OTA standards list. Extra products are available to Global Traveler program participants also. Additional Manager improvements are listed below.

Global Traveler (GT) Program Launch

The GT Connector is completed, tested and ready to go live. It includes the Extra Products option described in Revolution Manager. Four agencies will participate in the program startup, and another 10 are standing by, waiting to go live soon after that. Don’t miss this great opportunity to get prepaid rentals from Europeans and postpaid rentals from North Americans. The program caters to airline travelers, so your car rental agency will get great vacation and business rentals.

The car rental comparison and rate search updates designed for Car Rental Express.com have also been applied to the Global Traveler Program, to help turn visitors into renters. Agency profiles, reviews and comments are also available.

Global Traveler Prepaid and Postpaid reports have been created for administrative users, who can easily see total billing results for each agency. These snapshots help with accurate invoicing. There is convenient no-show reporting built-in to postpaid reservation reports. Agency administration is easy for the GT program.

Traffic Exchange (TE) Program Additions

There is a Connector update for TE partners. The new version uses familiar variables and values, for ease-of-use by Partners, our sources of TE traffic. The previous version of the connector is still in use also - Partners do not need to make changes. The correct vehicle type is now retained on transfer from partner pages.

Car rental comparison and rate search updates have also been applied to the Traffic Exchange Program. Agency profiles, reviews and comments are also available.

Current TE program partners include the following: BookingBuddy.com, LowFares.com, LeapConcepts.com, OneTime.com, BookingWiz.com, TravelZoo.com, HelloMetro.com, and Sojern.com.

Aria / Billing System Additions and Changes

• Created Aria billing plans for Global Traveler Prepaid and Postpaid services
• Inquiries charges were increased from $3.50 to $5.50 effective June 1st

More Manager Improvements

• Image browsers and text editors are fixed throughout manager pages
• Requirement for a unique phone number for locations is removed
• Kayak Click Purchase corrected
• Rate Options for “How long is the month?” are now saved and displayed
• Notification Options for “Auto Reservation Reminder” is now saved and displayed
• RentCentric locations are now imported correctly

RentCentric Support: Improvements have been made in this connector support, to show age and vehicle preferences. Web services have been updated.

Revolution Release 1.12 - New Distribution Programs

The main focus of release 1.12 was to develop programs to build additional traffic for Car Rental Agencies using the Revolution reservation system.. This included updates to the Traffic Exchange program, the Global Travel program, and updates to our Partner Trial program. You can read more about the great new Distribution Programs here on our website.

There were many other new features for Car Rental Express.com and Revolution Manager. Find out about these great new features and functions by reading these release notes. A breakdown of the major features that are included in this release are as follows:

Distribution Networks

Global Traveler

This program brings an entirely new set of renters to ExpressITech Car Rental Agencies, through a large partner distribution network. A lot of work was put into developing reports, and tools in Manager to handle the Global Traveler program. This includes items which make the progarm easy for client agencies to use, such as no show reporting and handling of Pre-paid vs Post-paid reservations. We added usage sending to aria billing systems, and convenient reports for revenue and no shows. In addition, the distribution connector was re-tested to ensure are all capabilities are still working.

Traffic Exchange

A lot improvements were made to theTraffic Exchange program functions. As well, new reports were built for statistics and agency tracking of reservations. Transition code was built to automatically send selected trial partners to the traffic exchange endpoint for cities and airports we have activated.

Traffic Partners

Sojern

ExpressITech has exclusive Car Rental advertising with this channel. We constructed a dynamic Ad that is being used by Sojern on airline’s electronic boarding passes. This Ad has gone through several design revisions. A few updates to our Airline ID were made tables to enable this partner. Sojern works with a number of large US carriers, like Delta airlines. ExressITech is looking forward to bringing visitors from these sources to Traffic Exchange agencies.

Hello Metro

HelloMetro is an organization with 1,200+ hyper-local websites, of the form HelloChicago.com. ExpressITech has exclusive Car Rental placement on this channel, for the top cities in the US. An iframe was created to generate dynamic page integration with the Hello Metro website. That is, City comparison pages for Traffic Exchange agencies (and CRX agencies in some locations) are shown directly on the HellMetro city websites, located at the Car Rentals tab.

Car Rental Express.com

Underage Drivers Directory

This is a directory of all agencies that rent to customers under the age of 25. It is very similar to the comparison guide, in that it shows a build out based on location. On the given city page for the directory all agencies that rent to underage drivers are listed, along with their underage policies and a map showing all the locations. Car Rental Express.com has many young visitors and we want to make their reservation experience as convenient as possible.

Comments and Ratings Re-Enabled

Comments from user ratings are now enabled on the website and will show prospective renters latest ratings for agencies. We have required all reviewers who contribute to Renter Ratings to leave a comment in order to participate. This ensures that a balanced set of rental review comments will be published. You will see a new Review tab on the Rental Center, next to Profiles, Locations and other tabs.

Call to Action

A call to action was created for the mini rental center to help boost the prominence of it. Every page on Car Rental Express.com has a rental center capability and we wish to promote access.

Content Addition

Loads of content was added to the site. Comparison guide places pages, travel guide articles, tips and resources all had a boost in content. There have literally been hundred of new content pages added to the Car Rental Express.com website since its relaunch in June 2010. Local transportation, hotels, restaurants, and theatre and events are all featured, to assist our visitors to many locations.

Revolution Manager

Modify Reservation

We have added the ability for an agency to modify a reservation from Revolution Manager. This was an often requested feature from our agencies and we are pleased to include it as a new feature.

Airport or POI Requests from Agencies

Agencies now have the ability to request which Airports or POI’s they would like to associate with their locations. This request is then forwarded to support who can either accept the request or decline it.

Locations Latitude Longitude Requirement

We are now requiring agencies to have to enter latitude and longitude information for their locations. If they have not entered this information they are forwarded to the location that has blank information, to allow completion. This is much better than being found at zero lat/long, off the coast of Africa, where few website visitors actually want to rent cars.

Requests Removed

Reservation requests have been removed from the system. Requests (without confirmation) were a cause of much confusion to our renters, and sometimes for agencies, so we have removed them from our system. Agencies can now only accept confirmed reservations or inquiries.

Shopping Cart Update

The Revolution product and services shopping cart at ExpressITech.com has been updated to display all products in the recommended products section, for the convenience of our Car Rental Agency clients. This allows clients to more readily add additional products and services, without having to hunt through the ExpressITech website.

Google Maps

Maps in Manager have been updated to utilize Google Maps instead of Yahoo! Maps.

Report Printing

Printing of reports in manager was not working as expected. Full report printing has not been correctly installed. It is also possible to download a spreadsheet or CSV version of most reports.

Minor Fixes

Loads of minor fixes were made in Manager to improve saving information, report accuracy and completness of data. Presentation glitches has been cleaned up. Some discounts were not being displayed as expected. This was corrected too.

Rate Code Key Updates

Rate code keys when entered will now only display rates for that given rate code. In the past if a cheaper rate code was found it would display the rates for that rate code instead. This caused a lot of confusion and has now been corrected.

Release 1.11 was released December 5, 2010.

Much of Release 1.11 is work dedicated to the June re-launch of CarRentalExpress.Com. In addition to bug fixes, a review of the site was completed to better position the site for search engine positioning. New features were also added to the site to make it more convenient and meaningful for users:

• State and Country comparison guide pages
• Airport Directory
• Auto approval of Renter Rating comments
• Addition of rich snippets to comparison guide places and agency profiles
• Addition of lots of new content
• Performance improvements
• Styling fixes for IE6

Traffic Exchange Program

The traffic exchange program was created to allow traffic-supplying partners to deep link into the Revolution Reservation System to more quickly display rates from participating agencies.

An overview of the Traffic Exchange Features:

• Revolution Manager admin pages
• A Partners endpoint to view participating agencies’ vehicles and rates
• System to track clicks and reservations
• Agencies’ and Administrators’ reports
• Manager area for partners to view stats, edit accounts details, and help on program integration
• Partners data feeds for cities and/or airports to show agency representation

Mobile Private Label

Previously released, the development of this excellent product is part of Release 1.11. Our Revolution Private Label and CarRentalExpress adopters are greatly benefitting and showing cutting edge acceptance with Mobile Private Label.

Mass Rates Matrix Updater

The Mass Rates Matrix Updater allows agencies to quickly and easily alter their rates for all vehicle and rental periods for a given rate code. The Updater can be found under Revolution > Rental Center > Rate Administration > Mass Rates Updater.

Rate Search Location Report

A new Revolution report was added to give insight into which cities and airports are under represented by CarRentalExpress member agencies.

Booking Buddy, Low Fares and Leap Concepts

The integration of these 3 traffic partners into our website was concluded. In addition, changes were made to the rate search results to ease the integration of these and future partners.

Comment Moderation

Completing the moderation filters of Renter Rated comments in manager now allows the user/renter to easily read previous renters’ comments, favorable or not.

Billable Reservation Report

In our continuing work to make our products, either administration or reservation driven more user friendly, the billing report was updated to display reservation billing information based on an agencies current reservation plan.

Billing Changes

Usage sending issues were corrected, to allow agencies to pay their monthly invoices by check, and to still use a credit card for their PPC purchases without having their entire outstanding invoice paid on their chosen PPC credit card.

Deposit vs. Payment

Payment method has finally been renamed to what it truly is, a Deposit Method. And agencies now have the ability to hide this field for reservations on their private label websites. This can be done via the setting in Revolution > Rental Center > Rental Center Options.