GLOSSARY
The language of rate contracting
The travel trade runs on vocabulary that nobody writes down. These are the terms you will meet when you contract rates in Southern Africa, defined plainly, plus the words we use inside Tourium.
Travel trade terms
Words the trade uses whether or not you use Tourium.
- STO agreement
- Sales Terms and Operations agreement — the contract between a supplier and an agent covering commissions, cancellation terms and booking conditions.
- Rack rate
- The published price a guest would pay direct, before any agent discount.
- Nett rate
- The price the agent pays you. The agent adds their own margin on top when quoting the guest.
- Rate sheet
- The document listing what you charge — usually a PDF or spreadsheet with your seasons, room types and prices. Upload it and Tourium reads the prices out of it for you.
- Season
- A date range with its own prices — for example high season, low season or a festive period.
- Special
- A time-limited offer, such as stay-4-pay-3 or a percentage discount, that applies on top of your normal rates.
- Single supplement
- The extra charged when one person occupies a room priced for two.
- Fact sheet
- A short document describing a property: where it is, what's included, room descriptions. Tourium uses it to fill in details your rate sheet doesn't mention.
- Agent
- A travel agency or tour operator that sells trips. Agents receive rates from suppliers and build itineraries for their clients.
- Supplier
- A lodge, hotel, camp, activity or transport provider — a business that sells its own product to agents.
- eSignature
- A legally binding signature collected inside Tourium, so agreements can be signed without printing or posting anything.
- Tourplan
- A reservations system many tour operators run their bookings in. If you use it, Tourium can push your rates straight into it instead of you loading them by hand.
Tourium terms
Concepts specific to the platform.
- Brand
- A trading name you sell under. Most businesses have one. If you run several lodges or agencies under different names, each one is a brand, and rates, images and documents are kept separate per brand.
- Connection
- A confirmed link between your business and another business on Tourium. You share rates with your connections, and they can see what you've shared with them.
- Connection list
- A saved group of connections, so you can share a rate sheet with a whole group in one action instead of picking people one at a time.
- Seat
- One person's paid access. You only pay for seats people actually hold, and you can add or remove them at any time.
- Scoped seat
- A team member whose access has been deliberately restricted. Tourium charges for restriction, not for people — unlimited full-access users are always free.
- Chat token
- The unit that AI usage is measured in. Asking Touri a question spends tokens. Every plan includes an allowance, and you can top up if you run out.
- Module
- An optional part of Tourium you can switch on or off. You are only billed for the modules you turn on.
- Extraction
- Tourium reading your uploaded rate sheet and pulling the prices, seasons and room types out of it automatically, so you don't have to type them in.
- Review
- The step where you check what Tourium read out of your document and correct anything it got wrong, before it goes live.
- Itinerary template
- The branded design your client-facing itineraries are built from — your colours, fonts, logo and layout. Set it up once and every itinerary uses it.
- Discoverable
- Whether other Tourium businesses can find you when they search the network. Turn it off to stay private and connect by invitation only.
Looking for how something works rather than what it means? The help centre covers the product step by step.