It is important to keep the information within your advertisement up to date for the benefit of potential guests and to ensure quality and accuracy in your advertising.

Your contact details for enquiries and bookings:

These details are the primary link between yourself and potential guests. Displaying an old telephone number or an email address that is no longer working may result in a prospective guest trying somewhere else if they can't get in contact with you quickly and easily.

Phone numbers:

Multiple phone numbers can be listed, for example both landline and mobile, to ensure potential guests can try a few options if they need to speak with you directly. If you have a toll free number, you may also wish to list that to encourage people to make contact.

Email address:

We only permit one email address to be displayed within your advertisement. Listing multiple addresses may confuse potential guests as to whether they should send an email to one of the addresses or separate individual emails to each of the addresses listed. If you need each email enquiry to go to multiple people or addresses at once, create an email list of addresses (consult your email provider for help setting it up) and we will display the address of the email list for enquiries.

The email address published within your advertisement is spam protected by using an image to represent part of the address. This image is clearly readable by humans, but fools those automatic internet harvesters that scour web pages to build up databases of email addresses for the purposes of sending out spam email.

Accommodation rates:

Please pay close attention to these. While we try and cover variations within your tariff with a "conditions may apply" clause displayed next to your published rates, you should ensure your tariffs are relevant and up to date. You can either specify a simple base rate, a broad range of rates, or provide a more detailed schedule which lists rates for different room types or particular times of year.

Specials:

If you have any accommodation specials which run for a fixed period of time, say a specific month or a particular holiday period, please notify us so we can display them on the accommodation specials page. Brief details of your special are displayed, and more information can be featured within your full page accommodation advertisement under the "nightly rates" section. Simply notify us if you have a special you'd like promoted. Once specials expire, we will remove them for you.

Star rating:

The star rating scheme for accommodation is a certified trademark of AAA Tourism. Only AAA Tourism, on behalf of the RACV and Australia's other automobile clubs, is permitted to certify a star rating for an accommodation property. This means that we can only display official star ratings within your advertisement - not star ratings that you have assigned yourself or star ratings that have expired. Further information about star ratings can be found on the Star Ratings Australia web site.

Property facilities:

There are two areas within your advertisement that you can specify the facilities you offer to guests. They can be mentioned within the descriptive paragraphs of text within your advertisement, providing as much detail as you like. Additionally, there is a dedicated "property facilities" box (just above the nightly rates section) which is a check-box list of selected facilities available to guests. This is a fixed list that can only contain the facilities people can specifically search for on the advanced accommodation search page. Any other facilities not on the list that you would like to highlight should be included within your property's free-format descriptive paragraphs.

Photos:

As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, so you should try to ensure the photos displayed within your advertisement are clear, up to date and give a true indication of the accommodation offered and facilities provided. Poor or inadequate photos may discourage people from enquiring about your accommodation, so it can be quite a worthwhile investment to organise good photos to showcase your property. While there are no hard limits to the number of photographs you can display within your advertisement, most providers tend to supply between 5 and 10 of them.

Videos and virtual tours:

Videos or virtual tours of your accommodation property can be included in your advertisement. We do this by including link to your video or virtual tour which people can click on to bring it up in a pop-up window.

Accommodation location map:

We use Google Maps to provide an interactive map allowing people to locate your accommodation property if you wish to make public its exact location. The pointer showing the location of your property is usually defined using the street address, but if that results in the pointer showing your property in the wrong spot, let us know as we can move the location marker. Unfortunately we can't change the actual contents of the map, such as street names or locations of roads, although Google Maps are updated regularly with changes and corrections. If you don't include a street number with your property's location (some holiday house owners prefer not to make public the precise location), the location map will show a general pointer to the street rather than your exact location. A traditional location map (as an image) can also be included within your advertisement if you prefer, but you must supply us with one.

Your property's own web site:

If you have a dedicated web site for your accommodation property, a link can be provided to it within your advertisement. This allows prospective guests to click through to it and find our more about your accommodation. It also provides a good source of traffic for your own web site. Please be aware that while approximately 60% of visitors to the Travel Victoria web site are using the Internet Explorer web browser, the remaining 40% are actually using other web browsers such as Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera. If your web site only works properly with Internet Explorer, then you are effectively blocking out 40% of visitors to your accommodation's own web site.

Real-time on-line availability and booking link:

If your property is managed using a real-time availability and booking system with an interface that prospective guests can use over the internet, notify us so we can include a link to it within your advertisement. This will enable guests to instantly check for vacancies themselves without telephoning or emailing you, thus saving you time.

Updating your advertisement:

Updates are done personally by staff at Travel Victoria on your behalf. Simply contact us with the details you need changed. New photos can be emailed to us, posted out to us on a CD, or we can copy them from your web site. Ensure you have copyright ownership or usage permission for any material you provide us with to use within your advertisement.

Simple updates, such as changes to your tariffs, facilities or the wording within your advertisement, are in most cases implemented within 24 hours of being sent to us. More complex changes, such as updating or replacing photo galleries, may possibly require an extra day for us to process. Updates are performed 7 days a week except on public holidays.

If you view your advertisement and the changes we have made don't appear to show up (particularly when it comes to updating photos), you may need to press the "refresh" or "reload" button in your web browser to force your computer to bypass its cache (local storage of previously downloaded documents) so it fetches the newly updated page. If you need further help, see bypassing your cache.

Please note that there are no self-serve facilities whereby advertisers can change the contents of their advertisement themselves using a password.

Travel Victoria operates a little differently to many of the other web sites out there that advertise accommodation. All your contact details are displayed within your advertisement, allowing prospective guests to contact you directly and instantly, even if they don't wish to use email. Because of this, we obviously can't track how many people have telephoned you directly or those that made an enquiry from your own web site which they may have found to begin with because of your advertisement with us. But we do have the facilities to record statistics related to some basic aspects of your advertisement's performance.

Your advertisement's monthly performance statistics are accessed by clicking on the magnifying glass within your advertisement as shown in the example below:

The statistics displayed are updated each month and show the following information.

Full page ad views

This shows how many people looked at your full page advertisement. Given that your phone number is clearly displayed, some of those people may then have telephoned you directly to enquire or make a booking.

Visits to your web site

If you have a web site listed in your advertisement, this shows the number of people that wanted further information about your property and then clicked on the link to take them to your own web site. These people may have then submitted an enquiry or booking from your web site. So while that enquiry or booking may have come directly from your own web site, they may have gotten there in the first place due to your advertisement on Travel Victoria.

On-line booking link clicks

If you have set up a real-time on-line availability and booking system for your property, we generally would have provided a link into this facility within your advertisement. Shown here are the number of people that have clicked directly through to your booking system. Some of those people may then check availability or make a booking from there, which they got to because of the direct link to your on-line booking system on Travel Victoria.

Email messages sent

This records how many people sent you an email enquiry by filling in the message window that pops up when they click on your email address. The email will be sent to you with a subject line that begins with "Enquiry via Travel Victoria". Note that we cannot track email messages that people have sent by simply cutting and pasting your displayed email address into their email application. We also cannot track email messages people have sent using an enquiry form or email address you display on your own web site (if you have one).

Towards the end of your current 12 month advertising period, a renewal invitation is sent out in the mail to your designated postal address. It includes a cover letter, an invoice for the next 12 months of advertising, and a summary of how your advertisement has been performing recently.

Renewals are optional of course, although if you don't intend to renew or your establishment is no longer operating, we would appreciate you letting us know as soon as possible.

Full details of payment options are included on your invoice and include:

• Cheque or money order. Please make these out to our business trading name of "JBlue Technologies".

• Internet banking payment or bank branch deposit. Our BSB number and account number are shown on your invoice. Please include your invoice number or property name in the transaction description with your payment otherwise we won't know who the payment is from.

• Credit card. We accept only Visa or Mastercard. Either FAX, post or telephone your credit card details through to us. Never email credit card numbers as email messages are not secure. Credit card payments will show up on your bank statement with the description "JBlue Technologies Pakenham Aus".

Receipts for payments are only provided on request as your payment (if made by credit card, cheque or internet/telephone banking) will appear as a transaction on your bank statement.

If your advertisement is not renewed by about a month after the due date displayed on your invoice, a final renewal invitation letter is posted out to you in case the original was lost in the mail, misplaced, or if you were away when it was first sent out. Advertisements not renewed shortly after then are then removed from the Travel Victoria web site.

You can check when your advertising is paid up to and verify a renewal payment has been received by viewing your advertisement's statistics. They are accessed by clicking on the magnifying glass shown within your advertisement as shown in the example below:

Those details are updated within a few days of us receiving your renewal payment.

If you're about to sell your accommodation property, the new owners will be pleased to know that your advertisement is transferable to them at no cost, and it will continue to run until the end of its advertising period, at which time it can be renewed if the new owners desire.

When you sell your property, please notify us so we can update our internal records accordingly. Please also inform the new owners that they do have an advertisement running on Travel Victoria and that it can be updated at any time by them once they take over.

If you've recently taken over an accommodation property that is advertised on Travel Victoria, please feel free to contact us to introduce yourself and to ensure we have your contact details up to date.

As an accommodation provider displaying your property and contact details on the internet, you may be the target of internet scams in which people attempt to defraud you by posing as legitimate travellers or travel agents.

These scams typically originate as emails from overseas sources. Some tell-tale signs that you may be dealing with a scammer include:

• They will not refer to your accommodation title in their correspondence (that's because it's a generic email sent out to masses of people)
• The email originates from a free email service like gmail.com, hotmail.com or yahoo.com
• They request stays that are quite lengthy - often a week or more
• They are very flexible with the booking dates
• There is no request for pricing details or discounts - they are happy to pay whatever price you want to charge
• They have no questions about the actual accommodation, facilities available, or how to get there

The scammer may then employ a number of methods to defraud you of money.

Money transfer scam

You receive a booking and are asked to deduct from the supplied credit card the cost of accommodation, plus an extra amount (typically several thousand dollars) to cover other services they are booking as part of their trip. You'll be given some excuse as to why they can't pay for those additional services themselves, and you'll be asked to send those extra funds to a third party via Western Union or a bank transfer.

What may be happening is that you've been given stolen credit card details and you're being tricked into transferring funds from it to the scammer directly (i.e. the cost of their supposed additional travel arrangements). When the real credit card owner eventually disputes the transaction and the payment is reversed, you will be required to make a full refund. This full refund includes the the extra amount you charged for those additional travel arrangements, which is now in the hands of the scammer and which you have to fund out of your own pocket.

To avoid these scams, only charge credit cards for just the services you're supplying, and never act as an intermediary by billing credit cards and transferring the funds to someone else.

Booking cancellation scam

You receive a booking and it is paid for using a credit card or cheque. The booking is cancelled shortly afterwards, and you're asked to refund some or all of the payment by sending the funds via a bank transfer or some other method.

What may be happening is that you've been given either stolen credit card details or a cheque that that cannot be honoured (it may be fake or it may bounce). However, the scammer is hoping that before you realise that, you've transferred your money to them.

In cases like this, you should refund the credit card transaction back to the actual credit card that was initially used, or return the cheque you were given. If you've banked the cheque, never send a refund until the cheque has been cleared by your bank.

Cheque overpayment scam

You receive a booking, but instead of receiving the amount agreed on, you receive a cheque well in excess of that figure. You are asked to immediately refund the overpayment via a bank transfer or some other method.

In this case, you may have been given a cheque that cannot be honoured. However, it will usually take a few days after you deposit it for your bank to notify you about this. In the meantime, you've given the overpaid amount to the scammers, leaving you with no booking and out of pocket by the overpayment amount.

To avoid this happening, ensure cheques have been cleared by your bank before transferring any funds back to the sender.

More about scams

For further information, please visit Scam Watch - the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) web site which provides information on how to recognise, avoid and report scams.

The Travel Victoria web site is privately owned and receives no government funding. It is run by a small and dedicated team who are passionate about Victoria and promoting its many destinations, attractions and experiences to visitors from within Australia and overseas.

While we are not associated with the government authority Tourism Victoria nor its official travel web site "Visit Victoria", we do share the common goal of showcasing Victoria to visitors and encouraging people to tour the state.

In order to offer low advertising rates to accommodation providers, we operate quite differently to many other organisations as we are able to remove some of the more expensive components in a business's operation without causing detriment to our end product for travellers. In particular:

• Travel Victoria has no "shop front" where advertisers or tourists can come in off the street and interact face to face with us. Our services are run from a private dedicated office. To communicate with us, you will need to use either email, telephone, FAX or the postal service.

• We have no dedicated receptionist to handle telephone calls. The team who run the Travel Victoria web site are the ones you deal with directly when you phone or email us. As such, there may not always be someone available to answer the phone right away when you call, particularly if one of us is on a field trip, at a conference or running errands. That's why email is our preferred method of contact as it is read by us 7 days a week, wherever we are. If you do phone and we cannot take your call, simply leave your details on our answering service and we will endeavour to get back to you as soon as we can, usually on the same day. If your enquiry is of an urgent nature, or needs to be dealt with after hours, the direct mobile phone number for one of our staff is provided by the answering service when calling our main office's 1300 number.