Can One Type Of Booking Solution Serve All Customers?

All online booking engines are not created equal. Today's online booking solution needs to be a mobile booking engine with flexibility in how business rules are applied and where content is sourced. It is also becoming increasingly important for many successful online retailers to have greater control in customizing their travel booking engine's user interface and overall branding.

Let's face it, the internet is full of websites with online booking solutions, many of which look the same and access the same exact content as the others. So how can your travel agency compete and succeed in the crowded online travel marketplace? One way is by offering something different or extra to your customers and incorporating that distinguishing factor into your overall branding.

Online travel booking engines are designed to reduce the time and effort required to complete a booking by automating much of the process. Many of the air booking engines available in the market today offer live access to airline pricing and availability to be sure the most up to date information is used as well as live booking capability to book an airline seat on the spot. However, finding an affordable booking solution that protects your businesses unique brand identity can be a challenge.

The typical "out of the box" online booking engine provides some minimal capability for customization or branding. Some offer the ability to change booking engine elements like headers, footers or even the colors and font used. Others provide the ability change certain features in the template such as adding a customer or membership number, an additional phone field or even a promotional code input box depending upon your specific business needs. Complete private label versions are also available where you can design the complete layout of the booking engine to meet your specific requirements.

There are even XML Booking Engine options for those business owners who want to completely control their own User Interface while taking advantage of the powerful business logic and connections to multiple content sources that an established online booking engine can provide. More than just a "Live connection", an XML Booking Engine can help your business take full advantage of powerful administrative features such as the ability to easily mark up or mark down selling fares and include "value add" offers in the display.

Robust reporting capabilities that can help you easily track and analyze your business are often available. And some XML Booking Engines offer the ability to simultaneously search multiple content sources for the best airfare. There are even a few that can serve as a tool for clients to integrate their own negotiated airfares into some of the most popular online meta search engines. And remember to consider a mobile booking engine so that no matter what device your customers use to research and eventually book their travel plans, your booking engine will be available and ready to help you serve them.

A little research will go a long way when you're looking for the best booking solution to serve all your customers.

Different Customers Require Different Hotel Content

Picking the right hotel is one of the most important aspects of planning a trip. Different types of travelers will look for different features in a hotel. Understanding the different types of traveler is critical to identifying the hotel that meets their specific needs.

There is so much more to booking a hotel room than simply availability and price. Luckily, easy to use hotel reservation software is available to help agents as well as consumers research and book the right hotel based on a customer's individual needs and preferences.

Business travelers may look for a hotel close to the city business center that provides access to conference rooms & business services.Onsite catering and ballroom facilities combined with a large number of guest rooms may be important for those planning a conference or large family gathering. Proximity to sporting venues or concert facilities may be important for leisure travelers looking for a long weekend getaway to support their team or seea favorite artist perform live. And those planning their annual vacation will look for hotels and resorts that offer the activities they enjoy most whether that beeasy access to the Ski slopes or being steps away from the beach.

Just like each hotel is different, so are the different hotel content options available. Many content providers specialize in certain geographic locations or type of hotels, while others may focus primarily on room rates or special amenities. Even travel agency consortia agreements may impact which content provider your hotel booking engine should use to best to meet your customer's needs.

Today's hotel reservation software combines a variety of tools and content to make the process of researching and booking a hotel much easier than even just a few years ago. Most have some type of Geographic Coding to help find a hotel in exactly the right location. You can check a hotel's proximity to anything from a city convention center to a favorite beach.

Searches can be performedby property "star" rating and special amenitiescan even be booked for your guests. For the budget conscious, most have the ability to easily search for a hotel room by price.

If you do plan to compete on price, you'll need to keep a close eye on the market and make sure your hotel booking engine has access to the best room rates at the right hotels. Here the key is for you to identify the provider with the hotel content your customers are looking and negotiate the best price. Hotel booking software with reporting capabilities that help easily track what customers are booking as well as searching for will be helpful with this endeavor. This type of information can be extremely valuable when considering hotel content providers and help you determine what hotels are most important to your business.

The key to success is finding a technology partner that offers a hotel booking engine with the right features combined with the flexibility to access the content your clients are looking for. With a little research, you can find an online booking solution that will have your business working smarter and earning more. 

In this article author writes about Odysseus Solutions. Some of the more advanced hotel booking engine  available today will even track the number of searches made for a specific cruise line or itinerary, helping travel agents identify what their customers are looking for online.