OTA policy support features explained
If you receive bookings from the major online travel agents (OTAs), such as Airbnb, you should be aware of the policies they have in place around the content of messages and links sent using their platforms. To help you remain compliant with OTA policy, whilst still providing the best experience to your guests, Touch Stay offers settings to modify certain features in the guidebook when shared via OTAs with restrictive policies.
Note the information in this article was correct at the time of writing but should not be considered exhaustive, and it is your responsibility to check the terms and conditions that you have agreed to with any OTA that you take bookings from. Touch Stay is not liable for any loss or damage from the sharing of Touch Stay guides via the OTA messaging platforms.
Relevant OTA policies
The main OTA policies, regarding messages with guests and links shared with guests, that may be relevant to your Touch Stay guide's features are:
- Not promoting booking sources other than the OTA (such as your own, “book direct” website).
- Not collecting guest contact details for reasons not connected with their stay (such as for future marketing activities).
- Not soliciting reviews on platforms other than the OTA.
Touch Stay features affected
- The following features in Touch Stay have an option for the guest to submit their contact details, with an option to ask for permission to use the contact details for marketing purposes. There is now a setting to hide the marketing consent checkbox, and all contacts submitted through these features will be labelled as not for marketing purposes.
- First Impressions topic
- Rating topic
- Email capture topic
- Contact collection pop-up
- The “Leave a review pop-up” will suggest to guests leaving 4 or 5 stars to leave a review on Google Maps, there is now a setting to have the suggested review location being the OTA instead.
- Certain content in your guidebook may also be in breach of OTA policy, such as a topic on direct booking or joining mailing lists. There is now a setting to hide topics where the content is not suitable for sharing via an OTA.
How do the restrictions work?
Firstly, the restrictions are only ever applied to invitation links, the Quick Share link will continue to be the full unrestricted guide.
Invitations now have a new standard field code for "Booking Source". When activating the OTA Compliance features, you choose which Booking Sources should be considered restricted and which of the above features you wish to restrict.
Any invitations with a Booking Source value that matches your chosen restrictions will have the selected features restricted.
Any invitations that do not have a restricted Booking Source will show the full unrestricted guide as normal.
How do I set this up?
The OTA Compliance Centre is found on the Preferences tab of the Settings page. Click the Edit button to open the options screen.
The first selection to make is the Booking Sources that you want to be considered restricted. Any invitations with a Booking Source value which matches the values you choose here will have the relevant features modified.
Next, select the features to be modified. For the features listed in the first section "Marketing consent settings", when "Hide" is chosen, they will have the marketing consent box hidden and all contacts collected labelled as not for marketing.
For the "External reviews settings", when "Disabled" is chosen, any 4 or 5 star reviews will not redirect the user to Google Maps, instead they will be asked to leave a review on the OTA where they made the booking.
Finally, for the "Hide sensitive topics" section, select any Topics where the content is not suitable for sharing via the OTA. Consider topics such as "Looking to Book Again", if you suggest a booking method different to the OTA, or "Join our Mailing List" if you have one.
Once you have made your choices, click Save.
Need any assistance?
If you have questions or need further help, we are ready to assist. Please reach out via the help widget, located in the bottom left corner of any Touch Stay page (whilst logged in), or directly via support@touchstay.com.