Summer’s heating up, and so is Ripe. We’re excited to drop the Lemonade Release, live now, which includes a refreshing mix of features and UX improvements built exclusively for our new ITA Platform. That enhance the traveler experience, empower DMOs, and give your destinations a stronger local edge. If you're already on the ITA platform there is nothing else to do. If you are still no our legacy platform these are just seven more reasons to move over now. Contact your client success manager with any question and to make the (free) upgrade.

Bandwango Integration

Now live for curated add-ons, the Ripe <> Bandwango integration lets travelers seamlessly book local experiences—tours, passes, and perks—alongside their lodging. This is the perfect opportunity to create exclusive offers, only available when purchased together with lodging on your site. This brings real-time, event-based product packaging to life and allows DMOs to drive greater per-visitor spend with destination-branded experiences.

Cart Preview

A new convenience: travelers can now add properties to cart, making the booking process more flexible and user-friendly. This is especially valuable for trip planners comparing multiple options or coordinating with travel partners.

♡ Favorites

Introducing Favorites Available now, travelers can add multiple properties to their favorites with the ♡ icon, then easily find them later on the same device. We know the research and booking window for travel is measured in days and weeks, so the ability to save these for later in one place will keep users on your site for the research and conversion.

Share

Speaking of planning, to make it even easier a simple and intuitive Share is now available for all properties. The native share function will preserve affiliate attribution, dates and more when sharing with others. With one click, users can push trip links using their device’s native sharing tools—whether via text, email, or apps. It’s simple, seamless, and keeps trip-planning conversations in motion.

Exclusive Offer Improvements

We’ve rebuilt and reworded Exclusive Offers to improve clarity, highlight value, and create urgency. From updated PDP copy to enhanced logic on room types and messaging, travelers now better understand what makes an offer “exclusive.” These improvements increase transparency and help close bookings with confidence.

Promotion & Room Block Pricing Display

We’ve leveled up how promotional messaging and room block rates are displayed on both the search results and property detail pages:
• Before/after pricing is shown consistently across all listings. • Live rate promotions (e.g., via Expedia) now display branded labels like “Save 20%. if offered” • Room block messages now clearly show the negotiated rate name and exclusivity messaging (e.g., “Exclusive Event Rate”), reinforcing value perception and DMO authority.

Clearer Savings, Smarter Booking – Live Promotions & Room Block Rate Display Enhancements

We’re excited to introduce an upgrade to how we present live promotional rates and exclusive room block pricing on the traveler booking experience. These improvements make savings crystal clear—helping travelers instantly see the value of booking direct through your Ripe-powered site.

🛎️ What’s New?

If a lodging property is offering:
• A live promotional rate through a connected channel (like Expedia), or an exclusive negotiated rate tied to an event or room block, travelers will now see improved before-and-after price display. This includes: • The original (crossed-out) rate • The new discounted rate • Total price savings for their stay • A helpful badge like “Exclusive Event Only Rate" which is configurable by you, for room blocks.

This change isn’t just cosmetic. It’s built to convert. By making the value proposition obvious, we’re creating urgency and transparency—two key drivers of conversion. More bookings mean more production for your destination, more revenue for suppliers, and stronger attribution for your marketing.

🌐 Where You’ll See It

This pricing presentation now displays automatically on:
• On the DMO/Client level engine, when available • Any event or DMO-affiliate site using connected inventory with live or block pricing

🔧 No Action Required (But Make Sure Your Rates Are Optimized)

If you’re already offering negotiated rates or leveraging ARI connections, this enhancement is live. Want to start using event-only pricing or need help getting a rate promotion synced? Reach out to our Client Success team and we’ll get you set up.

You can now embed Threshold 360 interactive maps directly into your Ripe landing pages.

This feature is a natural fit for DMOs, sports tournaments, concerts, and any event that benefits from a clear visual layout. Threshold’s immersive, navigable maps help travelers orient themselves before they even arrive—boosting confidence, planning, and engagement.

To use it, just drop your Threshold 360 embed code into the landing page editor via the <> source code button. That’s it.

Learn more and get started with by reading over the Product Hub article.

The all new Ripe ITA Platform is live. All existing clients will get this upgrade, free of charge, and all new clients will default to use the new platform. Our legacy platform will begin to be sunset.

Ripe is the architect and leading platform of a new category in travel and tourism: the In-Market Travel Agency (ITA). We exist to help destinations realize the full value of tourism— keeping revenue, data, and opportunity within the local ecosystem rather than letting them leak away to third-party platforms.

Ripe partners with DMOs, event producers, and local stakeholders to create vertically aligned travel ecosystems where visitors and communities thrive together.

At our core, we believe that destinations should own their future—a future where tourism strengthens the health and well-being of local economies, preserves cultural authenticity, and creates sustainable growth for generations to come.

Highlights

Search Results

We’ve doubled the number of properties displayed above the fold on desktop—without sacrificing key details. User can flip through property images & better understand rates and total price. Infinite scroll gives better representation to properties that previously lives on pages 2, 3 and beyond. Mobile visitors account for more than 65% of traffic so we’ve improved every interaction point from search & browse to auto-fill capabilities during checkout.

Improved Information Architecture

Backed by extensive research, the new layout prioritizes what matters most to travelers, making it easier to compare properties and book with confidence.

Local Highlights, a proprietary feature or Ripe now get even more prominence allowing the destination to showcase their unique character.

Maps are better than ever with live hover preview and, search by location and coming soon, new map styling options.

Room availability and preview better supports room images, pricing clarity and a simple preview to choose the rate when there are multiple options for a single room type.

Expanded Reviews

Travelers want to know the experience of other travelers, not what a magazine or paid publication has to say. With our new Google Reviews integration, we’ve nearly quadrupled review coverage for many clients, at no additional cost, providing fresher, more detailed feedback to help travelers set better expectations.

More “Why Book Here” Moments

Exclusive Offers are now seamlessly integrated into the property details and checkout pages, making it easier for travelers to select perks at the right moment in their booking journey—boosting engagement and conversion.

The Future is Bright

This is just the beginning. With our new codebase, we’re unlocking self-serve customization for branding, new features, and enhanced support for events, groups, and demand generators—ensuring long-term success for DMOs and their communities.

🎉 New Feature Release: Rich Text Editor for Better Customization 📝

We’re excited to announce the addition of our new Rich Text Editor—a game-changer for anyone looking to elevate their content within the Ripe platform!

What’s New?
Our Rich Text Editor is now seamlessly integrated into both the Reservation Email Builder and the Ripe Landing Page Builder. This update allows you to customize your content with greater ease and flexibility. Here’s what you can do:

• Enhanced Formatting: Customize your text with bold, italics, and underline to make your content pop.
• Hyperlinking: Easily add links to important pages, driving engagement and directing users where they need to go.
• Streamlined Editing: With a more intuitive interface, editing your content is now faster and more efficient.

Why This Matters:
Whether you’re crafting the perfect reservation email or creating a compelling landing page, our Rich Text Editor makes it simpler than ever to create professional, visually appealing content that resonates with your guests and visitors.

Email Reservation Template

We recommend you only include links for evergreen content, for example, a link to the general events page is good, but don't link to a specific event as it becomes dated and a dead-end page. Other helpful links could include airport shuttle information, or unique and rich content specific to families.

Landing Pages

These are often event-specific, so it can be helpful to link to event-specific content on your website. However, keep in mind that users are in the conversion funnel for booking their lodging so the ultimate goal is to not distract too much so they can find the perfect hotel or home for them.

How to Get Started:
Simply head to the Reservation Email Builder or Landing Page Builder within your Ripe dashboard, and start exploring the new text formatting options. No learning curve, just more power at your fingertips.

Thank you for your continued trust in Ripe. We’re committed to delivering features that enhance your experience and empower you to achieve more. Stay tuned for more exciting updates!

We’re excited to announce our integration with Mailchimp. This new feature connects your Ripe platform seamlessly with Mailchimp, making it easier than ever to manage and optimize your email marketing campaigns.

What’s New:

• Effortless Synchronization: Automatically sync opt-in guest email addresses between Ripe and Mailchimp, ensuring your mailing lists are always up-to-date.

• Targeted Campaigns: Use rich guest data already found within Ripe to to create personalized, targeted email campaigns that drive engagement and bookings.
• Real-Time Analytics: Leveraging the power of Mailchimp you already have access to powerful insights into your email performance.
• Navigate to the booking engine settings within Ripe to quickly setup the integration.

Read more, including detailed setup instructions here.

As always, if you have any questions or need support, our team is here to help.

We're excited to announce a new feature update to our search results page. Previously, we only displayed the per-night rate for reservations. Now, in compliance with CA Bill 537, we will also show the total amount due, including taxes and fees for all nights. The total will remain on the checkout page where it is itemized but this change will introduce it earlier in the user experience.

This enhancement ensures transparency and makes it easier for travelers to understand the full cost of their stay. We're rolling this out for all clients and connectivity providers, not just those in California. We are doing this because it's a better practice overall and helps prevent surprises at checkout with hidden fees. We've already made this update for properties connected via Expedia and Sabre and are actively adding all other connections now.

Attention affiliates and events -- one of our most requested features is now available.

Ripe offers an add-on feature to assist with event housing for teams, meetings & conventions, or festivals. Once rates have been contracted with the hotel (we can help do this) we use the Ripe CRS to load negotiated rates & room blocks for the specified hotels.

Event Housing is an add-on feature where the cost is based on the room revenue booked. Rates vary depending on the size of your event, but generally, we use per-room night rebates to be included in the negotiated rate. If you're interested reach out to your client success manager to learn more.

Learn more about Event Housing here

We've made some improvements in our platform to return properties on the main Search Results Page even faster. Most clients and affiliates will show property listings within 4s now.

In some cases, if you are using the random sort order for the search results page the user will see a refresh and re-ordering of results about 10-15 seconds in. This is being addressed for the future, but to resolve it now we recommend switching to manual sort order within the CRS and this will no longer happen.

Prior to today once a Ripe hosted reservation was made you could only modify certain parts of it like contact information. Now, as a client, support or property manager you can also modify the dates and rates of the reservation, plus guest name, email and contact info. The ability to edit reservations within RIpe is specific to properties and rooms hosted on Ripe in our CRS, and does not apply to live connections to Sabre, Expedia, Streamline and other global distribution system or connectivity partners.

Primary use case: The primary reservation type this will benefit is group and block reservations where a negotiated rate and room block was used. Example, a soccer team originally booked Thursday-Sunday for a local tournament using a Ripe hosted group block. If that team lost and was out of the tournament a day early on Saturday morning, that reservation can now be modified in Ripe to match the actual check-out of the hotel, keeping all systems in-sync.