ATDW Category Mapping - How it works?

Roam Categories

Roam Tourism Products are organised into themed categories which we refer to as "Roam Categories". These are accessible in the left hand side menu under Categories > Tourism. These are used to group Products into useful categories and controls how they are displayed on your site.

Roam Categories are used in your navigation, on the search page, and elsewhere in the site. There are completely custom and defined by you according to your needs, and can be changed or consolidated at any time. It is the most essential feature after creating Products and is used by many other ROAM features, such as:

• Showing Tourism Products on the Search page
• Showing Tourism Products on the Product Map

ATDW Mapping

ATDW (Australian Tourism Data Warehouse) is a very popular data source for Australian tourism content. Many Roam customers use ATDW to source Product data and save time on entering and maintaining Products. However ATDW has it's own categories, and these don't necessarily match up with what you might want to display on your site, and they also cannot be changed.

To get around these limitations and to provide Roam customers with maximum flexibility, we have Roam Categories. So if you are using ATDW and synchronising with it's data feed, we have to setup ATDW category mapping which essentially tells Roam "Products from ATDW category X go into Roam category Y". This then helps to automate the synch process by mapping ATDW products into the right category on your site.

So to recap:

1. Roam Categories

These are the categories that you create. You can name the categories however you like. Roam categories are displayed on your website. When you create a Roam Category (e.g. Stay), you will then map it to its ATDW Category (e.g. Accommodation).

Roam Categories are also split between:

• Top-level categories e.g. Stay
• Second-level categories e.g. Backpackers & Budget, Bed and Breakfast etc.

Mapping the Roam Category with ATDW Category will, at import, assign product listings to their relevant Roam Categories. The logic is flexible enough to allow a rich mapping but there are also limitations.

2. ATDW Categories

These are the exact categories that come from ATDW. These categories are not displayed on Roam websites. They only serve a mapping purpose, and cannot be changed

ATDW Categories are also split between:

• Top-level categories e.g. Accommodation
• Second-level categories e.g. Hostels, Motels, Apartments, Cottages, Farmstays, Hotels etc.

Rules & Limitations:

1. Assigning a second-level ATDW category to the top-level Roam Category has no effect. You have to create a second-level Roam category and assign it a second-level ATDW category.

2. Two or more top-level Roam Categories cannot map to the same ATDW top-level categories, it has to be a unique mapping.

As an example here, we have two top-level categories See & Do and Plan. These cannot be mapped to the same ATDW top-level categories, it has to be a unique mapping.

Correct

The top-level ATDW categories Destination Information, Journey or Transport are mapped to only one top-level Roam category Plan. The import will pick the Plan category for any Products that are either Destination Information, Journey or Transport in ATDW.

Incorrect

As you can see below, both See & Do and the Plan categories have identical top-level ATDW categories assigned to them - Destination Information, Journey and Transport. This is incorrect. You can have ATDW categories Destination Information, Journey and Transport assigned to either See & Do or Plan, but not both.

It is also incorrect because the second-level ATDW category has been assigned to the top-level Roam category: Second-level ATDW General Services category is mapped to the top-level Roam See & Do category - incorrect. As mentioned above, assigning a second-level ATDW category to the top-level Roam Category has no effect. You have to create a second-level Roam category and assign it a second-level ATDW category.

3. Two or more second-level Roam Categories can map to the same second-level ATDW categories

In our example above, this is how we can have the same Products showing in See & Do and Plan on the Search Page. Roam Tours, under See & Do, can map to all the second-level ATDW Tours

4. Assigning top-level ATDW categories to the second-level Roam Categories has no effect. Only second-level ATDW categories can be assigned to the second-level Roam Categories.

5. The mapping can be updated at any time but it will require a re-import in order for existing Products to be re-organised under the right categories and show on the website's Search page. The re-import has to be done on our end. If you need to make any changes to the mapping, please let us know.