Hotel Booking Engines Bring Value

The right Hotel Booking Engine can bring additional value to the overall reservation services an agency provides whether for it is for a corporate or leisure customer. It allows agents to provide full service to their customers by making all of the travel arrangements for their trip while providing additional commission revenues for the agent.

Any online travel booking engine should be designed to reduce the time and effort required to research and complete a booking. For a Hotel Booking Engine to truly bring value, it should include access to rich content such as pictures and area maps as well as detailed descriptions of the property and room amenities to assist with selecting the right hotel property during the shopping process. For some online businesses, the need to be able to offer and book the special deals associated with a specific Agency Consortia or Agency Group can be essential. All this content needs to be fully integrated with both B2B and B2C sales channels for a business owner to avoid the headache of managing multiple booking applications to run their business.

Many Clients demand a choice deciding which content source their hotel booking application uses to access content. This allows them to offer their customers the right hotel content at the right price. A flexible online booking application should provide a variety of content sources to choose from or provide the ability to easily add a content sources for the Client.

A Hotel Booking Engine should be designed to make it quick and easy for Agents and customers alike to research and complete a hotel booking. It should include rich content such as detailed hotel descriptions, pictures and area maps to assist with selecting the right hotel property during the shopping process. And to make sure you are reaching those millennial consumers who shop for nearly everything using their smart phone, the application should use responsive technology that automatically adjusts the screen display layout based on the type of device being used.

The hotel booking application should be easily customized to match your brand identity and provide a seamless online experience for your customers. For some applications, this can be as simple as customizing the headers, footers and style sheets to match a Client’s specific branding. For others, a complete private label version may be the better choice where the layout as well as “Look & Feel” are changed to meet a Client’s specific requirements.

If you are planning to reach clients speaking multiple languages, and application with multiple language capability can be especially important in reaching certain demographic markets and essential for those looking to expand into internationally. And an automatic Email confirmation sent to customers from your email address should provide easy access for booking related questions and to add payment. Booking Reminders are also important to alert Customers and Agents that a payment is due.

Identifying the right combination of content and product features for your hotel booking engine can be a critical decision, finding the right technology partner can be just as important.

Online Flight Reservation Systems Can Evolve Your Business

The Air Booking Engines available in the market today are the result of decades of technological improvement. Originally designed to as a Flight Reservation System to automate the booking process for airlines, these applications have evolved over the years and have been a driving force behind the sale of travel products online today.

Airline tickets are a crucial component of most travel plans today and have always been a crucial part of any business selling travel. Once considered the “bread and butter” of a travel agent’s business, recent airline commission cuts have forced travel agents to find new and more cost effective ways to sell airline tickets.

Today, a Flight Booking Engine can provide Live access to airline content via direct connections or Global Distribution Systems and provide Users with the most up to date content, availability and pricing. Some Booking Engine even have the ability to simultaneously search multiple content sources for the best price, allowing business owners to combine their own fares with the fares of one or more consolidators.

Many applications allow for the headers, footers and style sheets to be customized to maintain an individual business’ own brand identity and provide a seamless online experience for customers right “out of the box”. Others offer customized private label versions where the complete layout is customized to meet your specific requirements.

Most Flight Reservation Systems include Revenue Management Tools with the ability adjust price and inventory, including marking up or marking down a selling price by airline, itinerary, class of service, dates and more. It should also allow for you to setup special promotions or offers that can be redeemed during the booking process. Reporting capabilities can be a crucial tool when evaluating how any online business is performing and a Flight Booking Engine is no exception. Business Managers need quick and easy access to the information needed for them to properly manage their online travel business.

To reach those customers always on the go, you will want to make sure that your Booking Engine is mobile ready and can support various mobile and tablet screen sizes used today. Customers need to be able to easily view and navigate through the booking process regardless the type of device they are using. You may even want to consider adding a dedicated Mobile app to offer to your regular customers “on the go” and increase your brand awareness.

Or if you are looking to control your own User Interface screens, you may want to consider one of the Booking Engine API products available in the market. These products allow you to develop and host all air booking engine User interfaces on your own servers while using the existing connections, powerful features and robust business tools that an established Flight Booking Engine has to offer for business logic and live Pricing, Availability & Booking.

Identifying the right combination of content and product features for your Flight Reservation System can be a critical decision, finding the right technology partner can be just as important.

Travel Booking Engines Functionality & Content Are Key

There are so many different types of content available and so many different online travel booking engines available today that it is sometimes difficult to know which is the best fit for your company. While one booking engine may have the great functionality and the features you need, it may not have the content your clients are looking for. On the flip side, you may find a travel booking solution with the perfect content source, but find that it is missing the functionality and features you need.

If you are selling multiple travel products, you may want your booking engine to access hotel content using one source, but look to use a totally different connection for your airline bookings or perhaps several other sources when booking a cruise. Finding the all the right travel related content sources in a single online booking solution that has the features and functionality you need can be overwhelming at first and a bit of a challenge at best.

The solution to your problems may be found with an online booking engine with the features and functionality you need to properly manage your business that also has a flexible supplier connection gateway which will allow you to access different content sources for different travel products. Some of the more advanced travel booking engine seven allow you to choose specific content sources by Supplier, providing the ultimate in content source flexibility. Say you want to use your GDS to make most of your cruise bookings, except one or two where you prefer to use a direct connection for faster response time or enhanced functionality. Your booking engine needs to be able to quickly and easily support these different connections and know when to use each.

As preferred supplier relationship become increasingly important to securing the best price and commission levels, display biasing has become a tool for many agencies to promote their preferred suppliers over one that’s not preferred. In many cases, the ability to bias the display towards one supplier over another allows an agency to steer consumers to the Supplier they earn the best commission with, thus increasing their overall profits. Many Suppliers are quick to recognize the benefits of a biased display and some may offer increased commissions and marketing support to those with an online booking solution that has this capability.

Travel Booking Engines also need the ability to quickly and easily define business rules so you can maximize profits and include value add offers or special deals in the availability display. Your online booking engine needs to be able to keep up with all the different specials and promotions that Suppliers make available today. Selling price adjustments and value add offers should be easy to define and have the flexibility to define a rule by a specific market, travel dates, booking dates, supplier uses and more.

Finding a travel booking solution that has the functionality and content you need is an important decision for your business, finding the right technology partner to assist you can be even more important.

In this article author writes about Odysseus Solutions. Some of the more advanced travel booking engine seven allow you to choose specific content sources by Supplier, providing the ultimate in content source flexibility.