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RESX HELPFUL HINTS

PROFILE

• PERSONAL INFORMATION

• First Name and Last Name should appear as you have it on your frequent flyer cards, frequent guest cards and ID. Hyphenated last names should be separated with a period rather than the hyphen. Example: smith.blauw
• Box under the email addresses enter LAST NAME/FIRST NAME. It’s important that you include the slash and do not leave any spaces
• Employee Number Required – Your Employee ID number can be found on the bottom of your Employee ID Card. It is digits 8-12 (total 5 digits)

• BILLING INFORMATION

• Name of Credit Card – You can name the card anything you’d like. Example: Company Card, Karen’s Card, Personal Card
• Type – This is where you select Visa/Diners Club etc.
• Make sure to check the boxes for which types of reservations the card may be used and also check the boxes below as ‘my preferred’

• TRAVEL PREFERENCES

• Under Extended Options, you have several boxes to check to enhance your flight availability display. If you increase the Time Window to 8 or 12 hours, RESX will search for flights all day regardless of your flight request input. By leaving Check here for least expensive fares, blank RESX will search for low fare penalty tickets. Most of these fares are nonrefundable and carry a change/cancellation penalty. If you are looking for a fully refundable and changeable ticket, uncheck this box. Search for fares using multiple airports. If you want to expand your search to area airports such as BWI/DCA/IAD or JFK/LGA/EWR, leave this box checked. If you want to narrow it down to the exact airport that you have requested in your search, uncheck this box. Search for Internet fares. If you would like to see Expedia, Orbitz and Travelocity fares, check this box.
• Hotel Settings – Special Request – This is where you will indicate any information that you want each and every hotel to have. Example: Rqst NS King Room

• MEMBERSHIP NUMBERS

• Even though you may have indicated a ‘preferred airline’ in the previous section, you still must go through and add all of your frequent flyer numbers and car and hotel id numbers.
• Hotel Membership Numbers – Individual chains are located alphabetically in the select display. Groups of chains such as Starwood Preferred or all Marriott Reward Hotels are located at the very top of the select display.

• TRAVEL PLANNERS

• If someone beside yourself will need access to your profile or may plan your travel for you, you must include their member id. All member ids are first initial last name with no spaces. Example: kblauw

AIR

• Enter your city pairs using either the name of the city or an airport code. Note that NYC should not be used as this is not an airport code nor is it a city name. You should enter New York City or one of the three airport codes, which are LGA-LaGuardia, EWR-Newark or JFK-Kennedy.
• Below the departure and arrival times you will see a link for Travel Preferences. If you click on this and then on the Advanced Travel Preferences link you will have the opportunity to change your normal preferences for this particular flight search. Perhaps you want to change your Time Window for this trip, or maybe you don’t want to search multiple airports. You can make changes on this screen and then click on ‘USE’. Those changes will be made for that particular trip only. Click on Search.

CAR

• RESX will ask if you want a car. Clicking Yes assumes you want the car when you arrive and for the exact dates of your flights. Clicking Modify allows you to change the arrival/departure city and/or the day and time of your pick up or return.
• Note that there is again a Travel Preference link so that you can change any preferences for this particular trip.

HOTEL

• RESX will ask if you want a hotel. Clicking Yes assumes you want the hotel when you arrive and for the exact dates of your flights. Clicking Modify allows you to change the arrival/departure city and/or the day and time of your stay.
• By leaving selection on Airport/City and reducing your mileage to 5, RESX will search for airport hotels.
• By clicking on Address/Zip, you can search for hotels by an exact address, downtown location or city, state, and zip code. Increasing the mileage gives you a more options, decreasing the mileage narrows your search. Example: If you want to find hotels in downtown Chicago, click over to Address/Zip, enter Chicago IL, reduce your mileage to say 3 miles and then click Yes or Search. This will locate hotels in the downtown area of Chicago. Increasing the mileage to 20 gives you surrounding suburbs.
• Click on the Travel Preference link to enhance your search even more. If you know that you want to stay at a Hampton Inn or a Holiday Inn, click on ‘limit to preferred chains and enter those two chains. It narrows down your search significantly.
• If you need to book a conference hotel, wait until you hit Purchase Now. A box will display that states ‘Include detailed instructions if additional assistance is required by a travel specialist.’ This box is free flow and you can ask for exactly what you need. By entering something in this box it takes it out of auto ticketing and drops it into an agent assistance queue. Example: Please book Marriott Downtown at Education rate of $69.00.

AIR SEARCH

• When the flight schedules come up you can sort by various options including price, airline, and departure time.
• If you do not see the flight schedule that you want click on View Flight Schedule and this will allow you to select exactly which outbound and which return you would like. You can then Price Option.

OTHER INFORMATION

• After you have selected your air, car and hotel, you can either Save as Research, Reserve Itinerary or Purchase Now. Save as Research is located in the upper right hand corner of the screen below the profile link. This saves your research but does not actually book the air, car and hotel. In your Trips & Templates you will then see this researched trip and you will be able to go back and either reserve or purchase the trip at a later date. Reserve Itinerary does make the reservations for air, car and hotel. The airfare is not guaranteed until the ticket is purchased and most penalty fares require ticketing within 24 hours of making the reservations. Once an itinerary is reserved, you must go back and hit Purchase Now within the ticketing time limit of the fare. You can View Rules for flights you have held. This link is located right next to the airfare at the top of your displayed itinerary. Purchase Now will generate an electronic ticket.
• Purchased or Reserved itineraries can be Saved as a Template to facilitate the ease of booking the same trip for future dates. View your reservation and then click on the Save as a Template link in the upper right hand corner of the screen. To return to a trip that was saved go to Trips & Templates and then click on Templates.
• If you have Reserved or Purchased your itinerary you can select your seat assignments. RESX automatically assigns seats based on your preferences but you can view a seat map and change your seats if you wish.

The Seat Map is located to the right of the flights. If your frequent flyer number is entered into your RESX profile, it does read your status. As an example, if you are a Silver, Gold or Platinum Elite Member of Northwest Worldperks, the system will allow you to reserved the preferred seats.

• Confirmations will be emailed to you. Once you Reserve or Purchase a ticket in RESX, you will receive a confirmation from itinerary@carlsontravel.com. Once you hit purchase now and the ticket has been issued, you will receive a confirmation from mailconnect@carlsontravel.com. This confirmation will have your electronic ticket number and airfare and is suitable to print out for an expense report.