Transportation basics

First, make sure transportation is enabled for the company.

From the company’s Dashboard, type Shift + , to go to the advanced settings. Find and enable the transportation feature.

Once saved, you should see the Transportation section located in the Settings sidebar.

Get a list of hotels, pickup locations, and pickup times from the company.

Check that the hotels are on the master list here. Remember that hotel names may vary slightly in FareHarbor than what you were given; doing a quick search is always a good idea.

If any hotels are not on the list, click + New hotel and add it in.

Next, create pickup locations that can be added to routes. To create pickup locations on a company’s Dashboard, go to Settings > Transportation > Pickup locations.

Click + New pickup location and enter the following:

• Name: Name of the pickup location, shown to customers
• SKU (optional): Abbreviated or internal name, shown in the company’s Dashboard only (his is useful for manifest purposes)
• Instructions: Instructions to customers on where to wait, what to look for, etc. Included in the customer’s confirmation email (see photo below for standard language)
• Map URL: Also included in the customer’s confirmation email. To get a map URL, search for the pickup location in Google Maps, click the Share icon, and copy the Short URL.
• Adding latitude and longitude to the pickup location is highly recommended (use the instructions below to find this information)

Click Create pickup location and repeat the above steps for each new pickup location.

Latitude and longitude

Adding latitude and longitude ensuries accuracy of your pickups. Although you can create a pickup location without entering this info, we highly recommend including it. To find a location’s latitude and longitude, follow the below steps.

From your computer:

1. Open Google Maps and find the desired location
2. Right-click the location
3. Select What’s here?
4. At the bottom of the screen, you’ll see a card with the coordinates
5. Copy these coordinates and paste them into the latitude/longitude fields in FareHarbor

From your mobile device:

1. Open the Google Maps app and find the desired location
2. Hold down your finger on the location
3. At the bottom of the screen, you’ll see a card with basic location information. Swipe up to see the location’s coordinates.
4. Hold down your finger on the coordinates until you see the word “Copy”
5. Tap “Copy” to copy the coordinates, then paste them into FareHarbor

In this step you are choosing all the hotel/lodging accommodations that will be shown to customers on your book form, and mapping them to a pickup location. Repeat the below steps for each lodging option.

Go to Settings > Transportation > Lodging, then click + Add lodging option:

• Hotel: Choose from the master list.
• SKU (optional): Abbreviated or internal name for the hotel, shown in the company’s Dashboard only.
• Preferred pickup: Choose a pickup location from the dropdown.
• Self-transportation notes (optional): If the customer indicates they do not need to be picked up, these notes will be included in their confirmation email. If self-transportation notes have already been set up at the item or settings level, any notes specified here will override the existing notes. It is best practice to add any self-transportation notes on the Dashboard settings level when possible.

Once you’re done, click Add lodging.

Adding a hotel manually

It is best practice to update the FareHarbor master hotel list instead of adding a hotel manually. This helps avoid inconsistencies and repeat hotels.

Navigate the master hotel list and follow the steps below to successfully add a hotel:

1. Select New Hotel.
2. Fill out the name, phone, fax, address, and website fields.
3. Select Create Hotel.

If the location you’re adding is something like Other or Private Residence, check the box next to “For customers arranging their own non-hotel lodging.” When this box is checked, the following changes will be made on the book form:

• Online customers will see a “Tell us how to contact you” box and self-transportation notes, instead of pickup information
• The lodging option is moved to the top of the dropdown list
• The “room number” box is removed

Adding multiple pickup locations

In some cases, multiple pickup locations may need to be added to a lodging option. This allows you to create routes with alternate pickup locations, if needed.

To add an additional pickup location for a hotel, click Edit next to the lodging option name and add a pickup location.

You do not need to worry about the order of the locations, unless there will be situations where two or more pickup locations tied to the same lodging option are in the same route (in that case, make sure to order the locations as they should appear on the route).

Next, create a route made up of your pickup locations.

Click + New route, enter the name of the route and its starting time (for example, “Morning Route 6AM”), then click Create route. Click Edit next to your new route to add stops. For each stop, you’ll need to include a time and a pickup location.

Reordering stops

Pickups are ordered by time, then SKU, then ID. For companies that have multiple pickups at the same time, the best way to reorder these existing pickups is to adjust their SKUs. Watch a video example.

Pickups with blank SKUs will be shown first, followed by the rest of the pickups in alphabetical order (note that SKUs beginning with numbers will come before those beginning with letters).

Duplicating routes

You can also duplicate routes, which comes in handy when you want to use the same route starting at different times. Click Edit next to the route you want to duplicate, then click the gear icon from the toolbar.

Go to Settings > Custom fields and click + New custom field. Read more about this at How to create a custom field.

Choose Lodging and transportation as the field type, then fill in the internal name, SKU, title, and description as needed. You can use the standard language below when creating the custom field.

Title: Please select your accommodations from the list below Description: If your hotel is not listed please select “Private Residence | Condo | Other”

After creating the custom field, you can also set visibility and pricing as needed. In this example, you’d want to adjust pricing by $25.00. In this example, you’d want to adjust pricing by $25.00. You can hide the room number input on the transportation custom field by selecting Edit Field > Hide Room Input.

Note: Transportation fields will always be required on the book form. However, depending on the client’s needs you can allow or remove the option for self-transportation by adjusting the custom field visibility. See options below:

• Default Required Transportation: The default setting for every transportation custom field. This setting is used when getting picked up is not mandatory to enjoy the activity. Instead, it gives guests the option of self transportation or getting picked up by the provider. Self-transportation notes need to be used for this setup.
• Required Required Transportation: Setting the custom field to “required”. This setting is used when a guest must get picked up by the tour provider. Guests are not given the self-transportation option, only the information on where to meet in order to get picked up.

Go to the item you want to add the transportation field to, click Options & Prices, then add the field under Whole-booking fields. How to add a custom field to an item.

The last step is to attach the route to an item’s availabilities. Add the route to existing availabilities or create new availabilities and specify the pickup route under Advanced.

Note: When creating new availabilities, the first route in your route list will be added by default. Be sure to go to the Advanced settings to confirm the correct pickup route.

Once you’re done with this step, transportation is all set up! Test out the online book form for one of the items that requires transportation, and double check that the flow is correct.

FareHarbor Admins can duplicate lodgings, pickup locations, and routes from one Dashboard to another. The destination company must be a charter company, and must have Transportation enabled in their settings.

To duplicate transportation:

1. Go to the Dashboard’s Settings
2. From the sidebar, choose from Lodgings, Pickup Locations, or Routes

3. From the toolbar, open the Duplicate menu

   

4. Enter the name or shortname of the company you want to copy to, and select the company

5. Click Duplicate

After duplicating is finished, you’ll be redirected to the destination company’s transportation page. An admin-only activity will be logged in the destination company’s Recent Activity.

Notes

• Transportation cannot be copied to an affiliate or admin Dashboard, and cannot be copied to a Dashboard that doesn’t have Transportation enabled.

• When duplicating a route, the stops, pickups, and lodgings associated with the route will also be duplicated. Similarly, when duplicating a pickup location, all lodgings associated with the pickup location will also be duplicated. Lodgings just copy themselves.

  • This means that if you want to guarantee that you copy ALL transportation from a Dashboard, you should duplicate its Lodgings, Pickups, and Routes (order does not matter).

• If a lodging, pickup location, or route already exists in the destination company, a duplicate is not created.

• If a company has two locations and a different list of accommodations is needed for each, they will need to have two separate Dashboards.

• The transportation flow varies slightly for logged-in Dashboard users making direct bookings:

  • Certain lines of text are abbreviated
  • The “no transportation needed” option is selected by default
  • Dashboard users have the option to change the route and pickup location

• Here is a list of the master transportation dashes for Hawaii:

  • Big Island
  • Kauai
  • Maui
  • Oahu

Good Live Client Examples:

• Default Required: Germaine’s Luau
• Default Required: Catamaran Spread Eagle II
• Required Required: Mauna Kea Summit Adventures

• Easily customizable for clients to create and manage pickup routes
• Gathers second form of contact from the customers
• Detailed pickup instructions in confirmation emails
• Routes can be added to different availabilities
• FareHarbor hotel list
• Customers have the option to use transportation or provide their own
• Helpful manifest grouping and sorting for clients