All posts by Neil

Online Ticketing

AddTransit’s Online Ticket Reservation System

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AddTransit’s online ticket reservation system is focussed on the  public transport, transit and travel based tourism industries.  The web based ticket reservation software provides a 24 x 7 customer sales channel allowing you to serve your passengers whenever and wherever it best suits them.

Online Ticket Reservation System

So how does it work? Let’s use the example of a bus company, but it could easily be a ferry, plane, train or travel tourism/sightseeing provider.

Online ticket reservation system set up

Firstly, the bus company adds their routes and schedule.  Then the company adds their fares.  Finally the company adds any restrictions such as vehicle capacity and preferred number of tickets for online versus offline sales.

Then the company chooses how they’d like to receive fare payments and their preferred frequency of payment.  Of course, terms & conditions, customer service contact details, and exceptions/alterations handling can be entered too!

AddTransit automatically generates a small snippet of code to include in the companies website and the company is ready to start making sales.  Tickets can be sold from the bus company’s website, through the AddTransit apps or you can even upgrade to a branded ticketing app.

Book Reservations and buy Tickets online

Customers can then make reservations and purchase tickets online.  A ticket is emailed to the purchaser with the option to print the ticket, if the customer so chooses.  The ticket includes a bar code to make it easily scannable by the AddTransit ticket management app.

The cost of the AddTransit service is borne by the customer through an additional service fee at time of purchase.

Reporting is available on the website.  Passenger manifests are also available within the AddTransit ticket management app.  Customers can also manage their tickets and update selected details online.

If you’d like to know more our online ticket reservation system, please contact us today.

GTFS

Google Maps Bus Routes

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Getting your bus route to appear on Google Maps is easy with AddTransit.  Our easy to use GTFS builder allows you to create and edit a GTFS (General Transit Feed Specification) file.  A GTFS file contains the necessary information to inform Google of your stops, schedule, routes and fares.

Google Maps Bus Routes

You then notify Google that you now have a GTFS file for them to use, and subject to you meeting Google’s criteria, the file successfully passing Google’s validation and verifying that you will maintain the file going forward, Google will give you access to their Transit Dashboard.

Google also automatically uploads changes on a regular basis to ensure that their online schedules stay up to date.

Once the Google has processed your file, your customers/passengers will be able to view your bus schedules on the web in Google maps.

And the best thing is, is that the GTFS file is used not only by Google but also by lots of other companies.  This means that by creating one file you suddenly are able to make your schedule available in many different ways to your customers.

Have a good day.

Online Ticketing

Rail ticket booking software

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Paper railway tickets sold by a conductor have now almost universally been replaced by rail ticket booking software.  The methods for sale, verification of correct purchase before and during travel and when alighting, whilst monitoring passenger numbers and sales costs  have greatly changed.

Nowadays passengers expect to be able to purchase their tickets any hour of the day, irrespective of whether they are near the train line or not.  They expect convenience.  Yet rail companies personnel  budgets are tight.  So many rail companies have adopted a high upfront cost approach by installing expensive hardware at multiple locations to sell tickets.  Unfortunately these machines also have an ongoing cost resulting from maintenance, repair, connectivity, servicing and replacement.  Sooner or later the railway looks to find a way to reduce this cost too.

Other options including selling your tickets through stores and other shops that passengers may frequently visit. However, your company is not their key focus so your brand is lost amongst their many other products.

Many larger railways have adopted electronic cards, similar to a bank card ranging from just an electronic strip where the balance is stored on a head office computer system, or with more advance electronics where the balance is stored on the card itself and then is updated to the head office computer system every now and then.  These cards have great benefits in that you can now track where the passenger boards and alights, thus giving you detailed statistics on passenger numbers.  However, they also have huge costs as trains or stations or both need to be fitted with the necessary hardware to sell, verify and process passengers.

And then there is the challenge with vending machine sales and electronic cards of end of life.  Typically the installation of all the related hardware occurred at one point in time.  It involved a massive upfront cost, significant deployment of contractors or personnel to install the machines, and costly multi-year contracts with vendors.  Then 5, 10, 15 years later they all must be reviewed again.  And the vendors now have a almost monopoly position able to lift their prices, because only they know how to fix your system.

Well, there is now a new solution to this.  The humble smartphone, mobile phone, cell phone (call it what you will) and the internet allows you a new way forward.  Your customers now carry mobile phones and using AddTransit rail ticket booking software for your sales and reservations you will be able to implement a new network wide ticketing solution almost immediately.  Mobile apps allow the purchase of tickets and the verification of tickets.  Customers have the flexibility of 24×7 purchase and reservations no matter where they are.  And you have the location based reporting so that you can improve your routes and timetables whilst monitoring your costs.

Find out more about our Railway Ticket Booking Software today.

Online Ticketing

Ticket booking software (Bus, Train, Ferry, Tours)

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Online Ticket Reservations (Bus, Ferry, Train, Tours)

Online ticket booking software for bus, train, ferries and tours is now available at AddTransit.  Easily add your schedule, key stops and fares, add a link to your website and you are up and running!

In the past, you had to hire web specialists to create custom ticketing systems for you, but now with AddTransit you can be set up and running quickly.  You can focus on the things  that matter, while tickets are sold online.  Of course, there are administration functions that allow you to monitor bookings, capacity and make changes to bookings if passengers need assistance.

The benefits of online ticket booking software means that reservations for your bus, train or ferry service or bookings for your tours, can be managed by the customers themselves.  This allows them 24×7 flexibility in booking 365 days of the year,  removes the need to queue at your ticket counters, and allows your staff to focus on providing greater value.

We encourage you to try AddTransit for yourself.

Have a great day.

GTFS

General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS Spec)

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Creating a General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS Spec) file can be done a number of ways. If it is a small company with only one or two routes with only a few trips a month, then you can use a simple editor.  You can limit the file to just the route, stop, and timetable information.

If it is a little more complex, then you can use a product like excel or an excel tool to create the file.  This helps, but very quickly can be challenging as you need to ensure all the relevant files that get zipped up to make a GTFS file are all aligned.  e.g. You need to make sure there are no typos and consistency is key.

Of course with these first two methods you will need to learn the General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS Spec) in detail.  For most people who are small, this is definitely not their core business.  Your real business is ensuring passengers get from A to B, comfortable and efficiently with good financial outcomes, and anything that takes you away from  this function is a needless distraction.

The next solution is a GTFS Editor such as AddTransit.  These take away the complexity of the General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS Spec), leave you to enter the data that matters to you and are low cost.  e.g. Your stops, your routes, your timetable.  Additionally, it makes consistency and updates easier, reduces the time to create and maintain the GTFS file, and offers the fare, transfer and detail information for when your ready.  And if you want to take your business to the next level, you could add on real time status updates and vehicle tracking.

Of course, if you have budgets in the hundreds of thousands, there are also the premium products which offer good solutions but at many times the price.

Obviously, we are a little biased here at AddTransit, as we think an online GTFS Editor is the best solution for most companies and that’s why we work hard each day to make it easier for you.

Have a good weekend

GTFS

AddTransit: The GTFS tool to create GTFS feeds

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When we designed AddTransit, we wanted the easiest possible tool to create GTFS feeds.

After our initial reading of the General Transit Feed Specification, it became obvious that the GTFS standard was a simple solution that got complex very quickly.  Additionally, for big transport companies with their large IT departments, the standard seemed cumbersome as it used zipped comma delimited text files for documenting the schedule and route information, whereas for small companies even these simple technicalities were often too large a learning curve for them to climb.

Our vision, at AddTransit, was to build a simple GTFS tool that could make the GTFS format and it’s promise of easily communicating timetables and offering journey planning in multiple ways both affordable and simple.  We took the specification and broke it down into it’s key components,  designed screens that we believe are inherently intuitive and looked for opportunities for improvement in terminology and data entry.

We realise that creating and maintaining schedules is a challenging task by itself, even before you get around producing and updating GTFS  files.  That’s why we try to give you simple and straightforward solution to the complexities of GTFS.

Of course, the technical nature of the GTFS spec is still behind it all, but we hope that our great user interface, responsive customer service and affordable product will make your job of communicating and marketing a bus, train, ferry or shuttle schedules, so much easier.

Have a great day!

GTFS

GTFS – Why you are missing out on Passengers

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Increasingly, online maps and journey planning apps are the new “someone to ask” about how to get somewhere and it’s highly likely your business is not the answer they are giving…

It used to be enough just to get to #1 on Google search results.  However, that’s changed with the advent of Location Based Searches and Journey Planning smartphone Apps.  If your business involves taking passengers from A to B (and maybe back again), then to compete properly you now need your timetable, pickup and drop-offs appearing in these search results and journey apps.

More and more, tourists and irregular travellers are relying on these online mapping services to find their way around unfamiliar places and if your business is missing from these search results, then it’s highly likely they’ll choose one of the other alternatives offered.

To see if you or a business you know is missing out try this quick test.  Go to the following page (https://addtransit.com/missing-out.php) and enter one of the business’s pickup and destination locations.  If the business’s timetable and services do appear, then well done!  Otherwise, read on.

So, how do you get onto the online maps and journey planners?  Unfortunately, the schedule or timetable on your webpage, or your own custom built journey planner is just not enough.

You will need to create a GTFS file.  A GTFS file is a special type of file that contains information about your business, its schedule and timetable, and its routes and stops including their latitudes and longitudes.  The GTFS file is used by the online maps and journey planners to add your data to their systems.  There’s a number of ways to create a GTFS file, but if you have limited time or technical skills then getting a company such as AddTransit.com to do it for you, is a quick and cost effective solution.

Once the GTFS file is created, then you need to get the companies that use GTFS files to use it.  This normally involves adding a link on your website and submitting it to both GTFS directories and to the various search engines and journey planning app companies.  Each company has different submission forms, timeframes, and acceptance conditions.  If you got a company to create the GTFS file for you, then they should submit it for you.  Otherwise you’ll have to learn how to do it yourself.

Of course your timetable, stops and routes will change, so like all your marketing and customer service information, it’s important to keep the GTFS file up to date.  That way your passengers should be able to see your latest information.

Best of luck and have a great day.

Online Ticketing

Tour Reservation Software – Bookings and Tickets

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If your tour involves travelling with multiple pick-ups and drop-offs, then you should have a look at AddTransit’s online tour reservation software.

AddTransit - Tour Reservation Software

We know that when running a tourism operation that has multiple pick-ups from different locations, that it is important to obtain this pick-up information at the time of booking.  If you don’t have a online tour reservation software or system that captures this information automatically, then you’ll to collect and compile this list manually later.. and you’ve got better things to do.

AddTransit gives you the ability to create an on-boarding manifest, understand capacity, forecast potential delays, and at the end of the tour know who needs to depart at each location.

You don’t want passengers missing their pick-up or at the end of a great tour, finding that sleeping passenger has missed their stop!

Have a good day.

 

GTFS

GTFS Benefits – Easy for Tourists!

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One of the reasons that GTFS is great is that it makes it easier for tourists.  This is one of the “soft” passenger GTFS benefits.

Before GTFS, when tourists visited a new city, if they wanted to use public transport they would need to learn how to use the cities public transport website, app or paper based schedules.  Each cities information was displayed differently, so even if they were regular public transport users at home, they still had a learning challenge when they went somewhere new.

GTFS Benefits -Tourism: Before GTFS

After GTFS is made available for a city, it means that tourists can use their preferred journey planner (e.g. Google Maps, Rome2Rio, etc.) to see the cities local information.  Now the tourists can focus on navigating their way around the city instead of learning how to navigate their way around the website, app or paper schedules.  An additional benefit, is that a number of these GTFS journey planners are multi-lingual, meaning that now the city is far more friendly to tourists whose primary language is different to the primary language of the city.

GTFS Benefits - Tourism- After GTFS

Of course, some may say that it makes cities less unique, however GTFS gives smaller cities the ability to present themselves in a way that their budget would never normally stretch to, and less face it.. not many people travel with the aim of experiencing/coming to grips with a cities public transport website/app.

So in summary, one of the GTFS benefits is that it’s a great way for making your city friendlier for tourists.  And for tourists, the benefit is they now can explore so many more places with a sense of confidence that they will get where they want to go, knowing when they have to leave and when they will arrive.

Happy travelling!

 

 

Online Ticketing

Bus Ticketing Software – 7 Keys to Success

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Here are 7 key things that your Online Bus Ticketing Software should have for you to be successful.

1. Journey planner

You software should allow your passengers to review a number of different journey options to allow them to determine the best route and time to accomplish their journey.

2. Online Ticket Payments

The system should allow passengers to make payment immediately whilst they are online booking the tickets.  Online ticket payments provides passengers the convenience and comfort of knowing their journey is secured, whilst at the same time reduces the likelihood of them looking at at alternative travel options.  Online payments is likely to increase your revenue whilst at the same time reduces the cash/payment handling at the front line.

3. Email Confirmation of Ticket Bookings and Reservations

The passengers should receive an email confirmation so that they fully understand what travel they have booked.  An email also allows them to refer back to their booking at a later date and will reduce the number of customer queries.

4. Passenger Manifest

A passenger manifest must be able to be produced for the driver or if available, the bus conductor or host.  This makes it quicker and easier for them to verify the correct passengers are boarding and departing the bus at each stop.

5. Customer Service Functionality

Passengers will consider online booking as just one more channel for them to communicate and transact with your business.  This means that customer service staff who answer telephones, work at ticket desks, etc. need to be able to review booking and travel information and make any necessary changes that are allowable within your bookings and reservation policy.

6. Reports (e.g. Forward Capacity, Historical Capacity Reports)

Your bus ticketing software should provide a number reports that allow you to plan both short and long term.  Such reports include capacity reports, that allow you to see how much spare capacity a vehicle has today or in the retrospective sense, how much capacity a vehicle had for a similar trip in the past.  This allows you to determine if additional capacity needs to be made available.

7. Payments

Of course online bus ticketing software is only a success if you get paid quickly.  You need to be able to ensure that the passengers fares gets to you quickly while at the same time maintaining a small float for any refunds that may need to be issued.

Well that’s the 7 keys to success.  There’s plenty of other things to consider, but having these 7 fulfilled will put you in a good position.

Have a great day!