Emails to travellers
Every email Travel Orbit sends travellers in your name, when it goes, how to change its words under Email templates, which language it is in, who it comes from and where replies end up.
Reference9 min read
Travel Orbit emails travellers for you at each step of a booking. Every email comes in your brand: your logo or brand name and your colour at the top, and your legal name, registration number, address and travel guarantee at the bottom, from Booking settings. The words are yours to change under Email templates, under Settings in the sidebar.
Emails about a booking go to the lead traveller's email address, and most have a button to their booking in the traveller portal.
The emails
| Subject, for example | When it is sent | |
|---|---|---|
| Booking confirmed | Booking confirmed: Lofoten ridge walk (NW-7KQ2PM) | When the first payment goes through, or the card is saved when nothing is due yet. When you confirm a request. When your team books with New booking. When you select Send confirmation again on the booking. |
| Request received | Request received: Lofoten ridge walk (NW-7KQ2PM) | When a traveller asks to book. It says nothing has been charged and you will get back to them. |
| Payment received | Payment received: NW-7KQ2PM | After each payment that isn't the first, by card or recorded by your team. |
| Upcoming payment | Upcoming payment: NW-7KQ2PM | Up to 5 days before a payment the traveller pays themselves is due, and on the due date. |
| Automatic payment coming up | Upcoming payment: NW-7KQ2PM | Up to 5 days before a payment is taken from the saved card. |
| Overdue payment | Overdue payment: NW-7KQ2PM | Every 3 days while a payment is past its due date. |
| Payment failed | Payment failed: NW-7KQ2PM | When an automatic payment fails. It asks the traveller to pay another way from their booking. |
| Booking cancelled | Booking cancelled: NW-7KQ2PM | When you cancel with Email the traveller that the booking is cancelled on, and when you decline a request without writing your own message. It says how much is refunded, if anything. |
| A message from your team | A message from Northwilds about NW-7KQ2PM | When your team writes to the traveller from the booking's Conversation. |
| Sign-in code | 482913 is your code for Northwilds | When a traveller asks for a code to sign in to the traveller portal. |
Under the message, Travel Orbit adds the booking details, such as the booking reference, trip, departure, travellers, total and what is paid, and a button: See your booking, Pay now or Answer on your booking page. The request, cancellation and sign-in code emails have no button.
A refund on its own sends no email. See Payments and reminders for when reminders and automatic payments happen.
Card payments go through your Stripe account with the traveller's email address, so Stripe may also send its own receipt, depending on your Stripe settings.
Email templates
Admins change the words under Settings › Email templates; everyone else can read them. The list on the left has two groups:
- Sent by Travel Orbit: the emails above, marked with a lock. You can change their name, subject and message, but not move them to the bin.
- Your templates: replies your team starts from in a booking's Conversation. Four come ready: Places available, Link to book, Ask for details and Fully booked. Choose New template to add your own.
Select a template, change the Subject and Message, and choose Save template. Under it, a preview shows the email as travellers get it, with your brand and example details from a Northwilds booking, on a desktop or a phone.
- Reset to default puts back Travel Orbit's own words for an email it sends, in every language they come in.
- Send me a test emails the version you see, saved or not, to your own address only, filled in with the example details. The subject starts with Test:.
- Move to bin removes one of your own templates. You can restore it from the Bin.
An empty line starts a new paragraph. A subject can be up to 200 characters and a message up to 8,000.
Variables
Words in curly brackets are filled in for each booking. Select one above the message to insert it where the cursor is. Each email offers the variables it can fill in, and a variable it doesn't know, such as {phone}, can't be saved.
| Variable | Becomes |
|---|---|
| {firstName} | Ingrid |
| {lastName} | Berg |
| {trip} | Lofoten ridge walk, in the traveller's language if you translated the trip |
| {date} | The departure date, such as 12 Jun 2027 |
| {reference} | NW-7KQ2PM |
| {travellers} | 2 |
| {total} | €2,480 |
| {paid} | What is paid so far, such as €744 |
| {brand} | Northwilds |
| {portalLink} | The address of their booking in the traveller portal |
| {bookingLink} | The address of the trip on your booking site |
| {senderName} | Your name, in your own templates |
Some emails have more:
| Variables | Must keep | |
|---|---|---|
| Booking confirmed | {paymentNote}: when the next payment is due, or that the trip is paid in full | |
| Payment received | {amount} | |
| Upcoming payment, Automatic payment coming up, Overdue payment | {amount}, {dueDate} | |
| Payment failed | {amount}, {failureReason}: the reason from the card provider, such as "Your card was declined." | |
| Booking cancelled | {refundNote}: how much is refunded, or that no refund is due | |
| A message from your team | {message}: what your team wrote | {message} |
| Sign-in code | {code} and {brand} only | {code} |
Your templates in a conversation
In a booking's Conversation, Templates lists your own templates, filled in for that booking in the language the traveller booked in. Pick one, change anything you like and select Send to Ingrid. The email uses the template's subject; a message you write yourself goes out as A message from your team. Edit under Email templates at the foot of the list opens this page.
Language
A booking remembers the language it was made in, and every email about it uses that language, with dates and amounts written the way that language writes them. The trip name is the translated one, if you have translated the trip.
Travel Orbit's own words come in English, Norwegian and German. For another language you offer, choose it in the language picker at the top of Email templates: the main text shows as placeholders, and the list shows how much of each template is translated. Write the translation, or choose Translate everything missing, and choose Save translation. A subject or message that isn't translated goes out in your main language. See Languages.
Who it comes from
Emails come from your brand name and your own address on Travel Orbit's mail domain, made from your booking address, such as Northwilds <northwilds@travel.bifrostorbit.com>. Each email about a booking has its own reply address for that booking, so a traveller who presses reply writes straight into the booking.
Booking settings shows the address under Emails to travellers, with a link to Email sending. To send from your own domain instead, such as Northwilds <trips@northwilds.com>, see Your own sending domain.
Your own sending domain
Email sending, under Settings in the sidebar, sets up an address on your own domain. Admins can set it up; everyone else can see it. It takes three steps:
- Choose the address: enter the part before the @, such as
trips, and your domain, such asnorthwilds.com, then press Set up. - Add the DNS records shown, wherever your domain's DNS is managed. Each name and value has a copy button. If your DNS is at Cloudflare, set them to DNS only, not proxied.
- Check and switch over: press Check now, or wait: Travel Orbit checks every 10 minutes. Records can take from a few minutes to a few hours to be found.
The badge shows where it stands: Waiting for DNS, Verified or Failed. Once it shows Verified, every email to travellers comes from your address with your brand name. Replies still come into the booking's Conversation, because each email about a booking keeps its reply address on Travel Orbit's mail domain. If the domain stops being verified, emails go back to coming from Travel Orbit's address by themselves. Remove, or Stop sending from it once verified, goes back to Travel Orbit's address. You can't use a shared email service such as Gmail, only a domain your organisation owns.
If your DNS is at Cloudflare, Travel Orbit offers to add the records for you: press Create the token at Cloudflare, choose your domain under Zone Resources, create the token, paste it and press Add the records. Records that are already there are left alone, and any clash says what to change by hand. The token is used once and never stored.
A domain you already use in Careers Orbit or Commerce Orbit
A domain is set up once for your whole organisation. If you already send from northwilds.com in Careers Orbit or Commerce Orbit, step 1 shows it as already set up: choose the part before the @ and press Use this domain. If it is verified there, emails to travellers come from it straight away, with no DNS records to add.
Stopping sending from it in Travel Orbit leaves it working in the other satellites that use it, so keep its DNS records in place. Only when no satellite uses it any more is it removed from our email provider, and then you can delete the records.
Where replies go
- Replies to an email about a booking come into the booking's Conversation in Travel Orbit, usually within a minute, marked with a small envelope. Only what the traveller wrote is kept, not the earlier messages quoted under it. The person the booking is assigned to is told, or your whole team if nobody is.
- Messages from the traveller portal come into the same conversation.
- Other email to your booking address, such as a new question without a booking, is forwarded to the Contact email in Booking settings.
See Notifications and teamwork for answering travellers and who is told.
Emails to your team
When a traveller asks to book, the Contact email in Booking settings also gets an email, Booking request: Lofoten ridge walk (NW-7KQ2PM), with a button to open the request. Replying to it writes to the traveller directly. Everything else your team hears about comes as notifications.
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