Shared Responsibility Model

This phase is our launching pad for greatness! We want to closely align with your goals and be sure to provide your team with the tools to drive your destination and business forward. In order to make this work seamlessly, we need to have an open exchange of information.

Your responsibilities:

• Communicate your goals for this partnership.
• Understand the timeline for delivering the deliverables you will be receiving.
• Provide the information needed in a timely manner so we can hit your targets. Ripe will provide you with an easy-to-use template that includes all of the information we need.

Prominent placement of booking paths and "why book here" communication is essential. Website implementation is an ongoing art that requires vigilance and creativity.

Client responsibilities:

• Provide the subdomain on your consumer website.
• Make sure the website implementation team is ready to turn on the ITA Platform within 2-4 weeks of delivery.
• Provide a strong call to action, including an easy-to-find search widget and a lodging landing page.
• On the lodging landing page, craft a clearly stated "Why Book Here" message that emphasizes the benefits of booking with you.
• Use "deeplinks" to guide travelers to the most effective search path based on their site behavior. For example, if you have a blog about how pet-friendly your town is, you can link to a pre-filtered search path for pet-friendly lodging.
• Connect your main site GA4 account to the sub-domain where Ripe operates GA4 account for reporting purposes.
• Allow us access to your website development team to troubleshoot search issues if they arise during implementation or new feature releases.
• Acknowledge that you (the DMO) own the sub-domain. Any traffic that comes to the sub-domain is your traffic and is additive to your main site traffic. It is important to maintain security/PCI compliance as we pass payment details to lodging suppliers.

The most successful clients have integrated our ITA Platform in many ways within the community.

Your responsibilities:

• Help to identify events in your market that help drive overnight visitation.
• Provide outreach to these events or allow us to contact them on your behalf.
• Connect your ITA Platform to overnight demand drivers, both on the DMO site and on the event site.
• Build and host custom landing pages for these events through our landing page builder or your own design.

Why are guests traveling to your area? Think: sporting events, colleges/universities, park and fly/cruise, attractions (theme parks, ski areas).

Drive traffic to your ITA Platform. Use your current and future marketing and campaign messaging to drive traffic to your site and include a call to action that includes a lodging push.

Your responsibilities:

• Work with your lodging community to understand how you can best drive lodging demand.
• Set a marketing calendar based on these needs.
• Provide engaging promotions and/or value adds to give travelers a reason to book on your site.
• Procure value adds and provide a deposit if Ripe is to operate fulfillment.

Attend meetings and work with the Client Success Manager. Staying connected ensures that you stay informed with the latest opportunities and best practices across our client base. Likewise, it helps Ripe to know what is important to you.

Your responsibilities:

• Attend regularly scheduled meetings to discuss progress and new product development releases.
• Align with and explore your marketing calendar and upcoming campaigns.
• Continue engagement around event partnerships and other demand drivers that bring travelers into your community.

Introductions and communication needs. Keep your lodging partners happy and engaged.

Your responsibilities:

• Provide lodging supplier contact details.
• Arrange for a lodging supplier webinar so Ripe can present our offerings to your lodging stakeholders and help them understand how to best work with us and optimize their listing.
• Assist in hotel communications if they become unresponsive for service or other needs.

Clients are responsible for managing and securing all user-level access to their Ripe account.

Your responsibilities:

• Assign user access based on role and least-privilege principles (assign access appropriate to their role as needed).
• Regularly review and update user permissions.
• Immediately revoke access when roles change or relationships end.
• Oversee third-party users (developers, agencies, partners) and ensure compliance with Ripe’s Terms of Service.
• Use named user accounts and avoid shared logins.

We take this phase of our partnership very seriously and want to make sure we kick off our partnership with a strong representation. We take this time to align on goals and collection of materials. It is also important at this time to make sure we have a clear understanding of our timeline and expected delivery targets.

Our responsibilities:

• Provide an easy-to-follow information template and support the collection of information.
• Clearly map out the activation timeline and provide an estimated completion date to the client & client's website development team.
• Communicate any changes to this timeline.
• Work directly with lodging suppliers to optimize content and connectivity according to their needs.

Once onboarded, you will enjoy a fully supported custom booking engine that provides booking services to the Lodging partners you choose and supports your valued guests in the process.

Our responsibilities:

• Work with your web development team for any ongoing technical integration.
• Provide the latest technology to keep your site lightning fast.

We support your lodging stakeholders from onboarding and building out their listing through to support, payments, and billing. We are here to support content changes, connectivity, promotions, and booking-related traveler intervention.

Our responsibilities:

• We automatically connect to all of the lodging partners on your list through existing retail connections (GDS or OTA if GDS is not available).
• Content is generated from a mix of publicly and privately sourced information. The lodging supplier is encouraged to review and update on their own or request changes if needed.
• Once initial onboarding is complete, we will work with your lodging suppliers to optimize connectivity as they prefer. We connect to many channel managers and PMS systems that allow lodging suppliers to transmit their inventory directly to Ripe. In turn, these reservations are integrated into their systems. Ripe is always improving connectivity options for our lodging partners.

At Ripe, we act as the liaison between traveler and supplier and service escalation. We are here to support the lodging suppliers, not just as we connect for the first time, but throughout the booking process during the lifetime of our agreement.

Our responsibilities:

• Provide an easy-to-use CRS/Extranet to lodging suppliers to help them self-manage their content, inventory, rates, and availability, confirm reservations, and view payment details.
• Provide direct connectivity to offer the most accurate, efficient, and cost-effective inventory management possible.
• Strive to ensure lodging supplier rate integrity with other online retailers and provide parity control tools to ensure rate integrity on your site. This boosts trust with lodging suppliers and travelers alike.
• Provide live support and email to lodging suppliers to assist with updates, troubleshooting, and questions.
• Lodging supplier is the merchant of record (MOR) and responsible for charging the guest. This also allows the lodging supplier full control of the booking from the time it is made so they can feel comfortable contacting the guest, making changes with them directly, or establishing an ongoing relationship with them for future bookings. We are happy to assist the traveler with these changes as well.

We are here to support your travelers from the dreaming phase through to booking and beyond.

Our responsibilities:

• Send confirmation letters for each booking to guests with the client's branding.
• Provide a customer service phone number to assist travelers in their booking journey, open for live calls 7 days a week based on call volume and demand. Messages left will be answered within 2 business hours.
• Liaise between traveler and lodging suppliers for any booking needs.
• Collect traveler payment information and pass details along to hotels who will be the merchant of record.
• Value add fulfillment services can be added for a small fee.

We are in it with you! In addition to technical support, we provide access to our Client Success Team to help you make the most of your investment in our systems.

Our responsibilities:

• Communicate new features and updates.
• Provide support email to clients to assist with troubleshooting and questions.
• Integrate with 3rd party vendors, like Bandwango, Google Analytics, Adara, and Yiftee to provide additional value. See the full list of integrations here in the product hub.
• Provide an easy-to-use CRS/Extranet to clients to help you review reports, look at reservations, edit content, integrate with relevant vendors, and mine first-party data.
• Keep clients updated with best practices and recommendations to make the most of their experience with our ITA platform.
• Technical assistance with website implementation and troubleshooting.
• Regular meetings with your dedicated Client Success Manager at a cadence that works for you to assist with best practices, event and affiliate implementation, and review production.

We provide tools to fuel your decision-making process and provide value to your stakeholders. Reporting located within your CRS provides travel intelligence, analytics, and first-party data. We can also integrate with your data vendors to provide additional depth to your travel insights.

Our responsibilities:

• Provide an easy-to-use CRS/Extranet to clients to help you review reports, look at reservations, edit content, integrate with relevant vendors, and mine first-party data.
• Connect to powerful 3rd party data services like Google Analytics, Adara, and Rove.
• Have a custom request? We have experts on hand to help make your data dreams come true!

We are connected with the systems and have the team to help collect commission from hotels and pay out any negotiated revenue shares according to our contracts.

Our responsibilities:

• Send monthly statements to lodging suppliers who owe commissions.
• Give the suppliers a 10-day reconciliation period to let us know if the traveler's plans changed. Ripe is due commission on any dollar amount collected for the booking.
• Invoices are sent on the 10th of the month and due by the end of that month.
• Collect commission from hotels and follow up for payment.
• Ripe will pay out any negotiated revenue shares according to our contracts on commissions collected on a quarterly basis.
• Note: Commissions and revenue shares are subject to contract. If you have questions about this model, please contact your Ripe representative.