Zones, hotels and pickup times

How a pickup time is decided

Three pieces work together. Zones are the stretches of coast the van drives through, kept in driving order. Every hotel belongs to one zone. And for every tour, the pickup times grid holds one time per zone: where the tour collects, and when.

When a booking is saved with a hotel, TourCockpit follows the chain: the hotel's zone, then that tour's time for that zone, and writes the answer onto the booking. If any link is missing (the hotel is not on the list, has no zone yet, or the tour does not stop in that zone) the time is simply left empty and the office sets it by hand.

Setting up zones, hotels and the grid

Everything lives in Reference Data (a manager screen), on three tabs: Zones, Hotels and Pickup times.

1. On the Zones tab, add your zones and put them in the order the van actually drives them, using the up and down arrows. A zone is never deleted: retiring it keeps its history and its hotels.
2. On the Hotels tab, give each hotel its zone. The zone dropdown on each row saves the moment you change it; there is no separate save step.
3. On the Pickup times tab, fill the grid: one row per published tour, one column per zone. Pick a time in each cell where the tour collects; every change saves immediately.

A hotel with no zone yet behaves the same way: its bookings arrive with the pickup time empty, and the office fills it in. Assign the zone once and every future booking from that hotel resolves by itself.

Booking from the office

On the board's booking row, start typing the hotel. As soon as the hotel is recognised, the pickup field fills itself with the grid's answer for that tour and zone. You can always pick or type a different time; a time you set yourself always wins.

• A time you typed is never overwritten, not by the grid and not by editing the booking later.
• The grid only offers times from the company's preset list, but on a booking you may type any time at all, for example an unusual private pickup.
• Moving a booking to another tour fills an empty time from the new tour's grid, but never replaces a time that is already set. After a move, glance at the pickup column.

In the tour operator portal

A tour operator never sets a pickup time; only the office knows the routes. On the booking form the pickup time is shown as a fact, right under the hotel field.

• The moment the operator picks a hotel with a known zone and time, the line reads the resolved time, for example "Pickup at 09:00". That is the same answer the booking will be saved with.
• While the answer is being looked up, the line briefly reads that it is checking.
• If the hotel is not on the list, has no zone, or the tour does not stop there, the line says the office will set the pickup time. The booking still goes through.

In My bookings, a booking whose time the office has not set yet shows Set by office until it is filled in. Operators are not notified separately when the office sets it; the time appears on the booking.

Changing the grid later

Editing a grid cell changes future bookings only. Every booking already taken keeps the time the guest was told. Renaming a zone keeps all its hotels and times; retiring a zone hides it from new choices but changes nothing that already exists.

Every pickup-time change on a booking is recorded in the history, with who changed it and when, so a moved time can always be traced on the Activity screen or in the booking's own history.