FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions
- What is Big Concierge and how many concierges are using it?
- Big Concierge is a private website for hotel employees that allows them to earn a referral income when they book their guests reseravations at Reservation Genie venues. It works in conjunction with Reservation Genie in that reservations booked by concierges show up in your reservations screen of Reservation Genie.↑
- How is BigConceirge.com better than my current referral system?
- There are several advantages to using Big Concierge as your referral program. One, hotel staff is constantly turning over. The social networking components of Big Concierge allow them to invite new employees to the join the site. Two, most referral programs offer gift certificates to concierges for sending them traffic. Our program pays concierges cash, which many simply prefer. Three, most referral programs only pay concierges when they have sent a certain number of reservations to the business. Our program allows them to send traffic to any participating venue and still receive their payout at the end of the month. Collectively, these features encourage concierges to book traffic through Big Concierge to participating Reservation Genie venues.
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- Why should I invite concierges to join Big Concierge?
- When you invite concierges to join Big Concierge we charge you less for traffic from the members you invited. This discount ranges from 25% - 50% depending on how long Big Concierge has been active in your city. To invite concierges visit your Settings > Concierges > Invite Concierges page. Here you can enter their name and email and hit the send button. This will send them an email that says: Your Restaurant Name has invited you to join Big Concierge (where Your Restaurant Name is the actual name of your restaurant). It also explains the Big Concierge model and notes that you offer their guests a perk (if you do). Registered users are those that have responded to your invitation and joined Big Concierge. They are now permanently connected to your account. Unregistered users are those that have not responded to your invitation to join Big Concierge. They remain connected to your account for 30 days to give them time to respond. Other venues will not be able to invite them as long as they are connected to your account. You may resend them an invitation periodically to remind them if they have not responded by using the resend link. Please limit the use of the resend link to a maximum of two times so as to avoid the appearance of spamming.
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- What is Affiliate traffic and why should I use it?
- Affiliate traffic is reservation traffic that comes from our Affiliate partner websites. By using Affiliates you encourage local websites to market your business in exchange for reservation revenues. This can be more effective than purchasing advertising as you only pay for confirmed business.↑
- How much does it cost to use Big Concierge and Affiliate sites?
- Prices vary depending on the type of venue. We currently charge $2 per person for restaurants and 10% of the average tour price per person for tours. We then share 50% of that amount with concierges and affiliate partners.
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- Can I tell from where the reservations are coming?
- Traffic is labeled in your Reservations Screen with codes that indicate it is from your website (web), our Website (rg), Big Concierge (concierge), Affiliate Sites (aff), and entered directly when customers call in reservations (direct). You can access Reservation Details for any reservation to find the source of individual reservations. We also offer reports of traffic from patrons, affiliate sites, and concierges. You can sort these reports by name, most recent activity, total activity, etc. You can also filter these reports for any particular time period by entering a date range.
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- What are perks and how do I use them properly?
- Perks are incentives attached to reservation times. Your regular perks schedule is available to regular members during the booking process that come from our website, your website, and affiliate sites. This perk schedule is used to encourage traffic during off peak hours. We also have special perks for concierges. Using concierge perks helps them book formal reservations and encourages them to send guests to your business as opposed to a business that does not offer perks. It also helps minimize No Shows.
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- What is Lead Time and why do I have different Lead Time options?
- Lead time is the amount of advance notice required when booking a reservation. If you require a lead time of 60 minutes, then the 8pm reservation will no longer be available after 7:00pm. By using different lead times you may effectively hold reservation capacity for concierges. For example, suppose your schedule offers 40 spots at 8pm on Friday night and 25 of them are booked before 7pm. By using a regular lead time of 60 minutes and concierge lead times of 10 minutes, regular members will no longer be able to access those spots after 7pm. However capacity will still be available to concierges until 7:50, effectively holding 15 available spots for concierges from 7:00pm to 7:50pm.
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- What are VIP Rewards and why should I use them?
- VIP Rewards is a tool that encourages your customers to patronize your restaurant frequently by offering them discounts and short notice reservations if they become VIPs. VIP status is based on a points system. Each completed reservation will earn 50 points per reservation and 10 additional points for each person in the reservation. If the customer earns 200 points in a month, they will have access to VIP discounts and VIP leads times for that month and the following month. They may maintain VIP status by returning to your venue frequently each month. We will also be giving points to customers for promoting your venue on Facebook as well as for filling out surveys that that help you understand the changing perception of your customer. These surveys can be used by owners to measure the effect of new managers as well as to compare your scores to industry averages and identify areas that may need improvement. We will also use the survey scores to encourage customers to write positive reviews on Yelp and CitySearch if the scores are high. If the scores are low, we will direct the user to email the manager and give you a chance to resolve the issue before a negative review is written. If you want to boost your presence on Facebook, Yelp, and CitySearch, we encourage you to use VIP Rewards.
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