Ventrata features a pickup engine that automatically assigns a pickup location to customers and dispatches it to your drivers, particularly for hotel pickups. The core components are hotels and pickups, which together form a route.
Create a New Pickup
Prerequisites:
Make sure that the following features are enabled on the products which will feature pickups:
Pickup Required if a pickup point must be selected to complete the booking
Allow Custom Pickup if you want to allow the customer to select a pickup point from the list of available pickup points
Custom Pickup Required if the customer must select a pickup point from the list of available pickup points
Hotel Search to allow customers search their hotel and the nearest pickup point is assigned
Address Search to allow customers search an address and the nearest pickup point is assigned
Pickup Allowed / Required on the product options as appropriate
Pickup Allowed on the product tours as appropriate
In the Ventrata dashboard, go to Pickups > Pickups.
Make sure the correct destination is selected.
Press the + New Pickup button.
Enter a name for the pickup point.
📗 TIP
Customers will see the pickup name when making a booking.
Select a zone or start typing and press Enter to create a new zone.
Start typing the pickup address and select the correct address from the list of Google results.
Enter directions that can help customers locate the pickup point.
Check the 'Hotel required' box if a hotel address must be entered to complete a booking. The system then finds the closest pickup point to the hotel.
📗 TIP
Ventrata uses the Google auto-complete according to the Google Place ID to offer hotels anywhere in the world as long as they have a Google Place ID.
📒 NOTE
Make sure that 'Allow Custom Pickup' and 'Custom Pickup Required' are disabled on the product detail if 'Hotel required' is enabled on the pickup as the customer will be unable to select a hotel when custom pickup is enabled. See Prerequisites above.
Add a phone number where customers can reach your employees if they have trouble finding the pickup point.
Add a date range if the pickup point is only available on certain dates.
Check the 'Exact match' box if the customer must enter the precise address of the pickup point when booking the event.
If an exact match is not required, enter a pickup radius (in miles). The address or hotel entered by the customer serves as the central point and pickup points within the radius will be selected.
📗 TIP
1 mile = 1.60934 kilometres
If you use the metric system, use this formula to calculate the pickup radius.
Press the Create Pickup button.
Pickup Flow
This example product has the following setup:
Product
Pickup Required ✅
Allow Custom Pickup ❌
Custom Pickup Required ❌
Hotel Search ✅
Address Search ✅
Options ❌
Tours
Pickup Available ✅
Routes ✅ - along 2 pickup points
Pickups
Hotel Required ❌
Exact Match ❌
Pickup Radius ✅ - 1 mile radius
The customer selects a product that requires a pickup, then chooses the number of tickets, a date, and a tour time.
Next, the customer can either search their hotel/address or choose a pickup point from the available options. Pickup points are offered based on the assigned route for the selected tour time.
When the customer searches for their hotel address, Google auto-complete, using the hotel's Google Place ID, provides an address that the Ventrata system matches to the nearest pickup point within the pickup point's radius.
If no pickup point is within the radius, the system offers the three closest alternatives. Regardless of the route assigned to the tour or the chosen hotel, the system always tries to find the most convenient pickup for the customer.
📗 TIP
Each pickup point must have an address or latitude and longitude. Google will provide directions from the customer's chosen hotel or address to the nearest pickup point and recommend modes of transport (e.g., walking, taxi, or train), similar to Google Maps.
