Booking A Hotel Online Should Be Easy

A hotel booking engine should reduce the time and effort required to complete a hotel reservation by automating the shopping and booking process for your customers while it increases your overall sales revenue. There are countless online booking engines in the market today accessing different content sources with varying degrees of features and functionality.

To take advantage of all the different distribution channels efficiently, hotel booking software needs to have Business to Business (B2B), Business to Consumer (B2C) and Business to Business to Consumer (B2B2C) capabilities. Applications should use responsive technology that automatically adjusts the screen display to fit the type of device being used in today's mobile world. For those looking to expand their reach through an affiliate & distribution network, there are online booking engines available that allow you to quickly add affiliate Users and websites with the ability to easily customize the look and feel of the booking engine for each. Basic functionality should include the ability to shop, book and manage hotel reservations online with full payment capability and support of cancelation policies.

To protect your brand identity, your online hotel booking engine should provide you the ability to customize the headers, footers and style sheets to provide a seamless online experience for your customers. Some solutions may even offer complete private label versions where business owners can control the complete layout to meet the specific requirements of their business.

There are hotels everywhere and with so many different options to choose from in any location, searching for the right hotel to match a client's specific needs can be overwhelming at times. Hotel images and detailed descriptions integrated right within the pricing and availability display can help provide the information needed to make the best selection much quicker. Good hotel booking software will include links to media files & rich content to assist both agents and customers with selecting the right hotel property and room type during the research, shopping and booking process.

Multiple language and multiple currency capability are two obvious features required of a hotel booking engine when expanding into new markets. Many international markets can also bring unique requirements and local supplier constraints, so it is important to work with an experienced technology partner ready to address these challenges. In some markets, you'll need a product that has been “localized” to meet that specific market's unique requirements as well as integration with local content sources.

The technology you use should be "state of the art" and deliver flexible & fully scalable applications that will allow your business to easily grow and expand into new markets while maintaining your own unique brand identity. Whether you need a simple “out of the box” online hotel booking solution or fully customized hotel booking software, a little research upfront will save you a lot of time and expense in the long term. Finding the right online booking solution can be an important decision for your travel business and finding the right technology partner can be a critical the first step to ensure success.

Flight Booking Software Should Help Your Business Compete

It is tough for any size agency to compete with the large online travel agencies buying power with the airlines today, but there are tools available today that can help level the playing field. Choosing the right flight booking software is one way of getting your business online and helping you start to compete effectively. The ultimate goal being to provide your clients with a unique online booking solution that results in operational efficiencies and reduces the overall cost of making a booking for all parties involved.

With ever changing airline schedules and airfare wars, an airline reservation system needs to provide Live access to airline content to be truly sure the most up to date availability and pricing is used. Some air booking engines even offer the ability to allow users to simultaneously search multiple content sources, saving valuable time when searching for the best airfare for a specific itinerary.

With so many suppliers offering so many different deals, keeping track of price adjustments and promoting special offers can be a full-time job for many travel website owners. It is almost impossible to keep pace with changing airfares and the multitude of special promotions that are available simultaneously. Today's travel booking solution must provide the capability to quickly adjust a selling price and advertise value add offerings included right in the availability display.

The right airline reservation system can help simplify the process with a powerful business Rule features that allow business owners to easily adjust a product's selling price, include value add offers in the availability display and more while supporting both B2B and B2C channels. In addition to the basic business rule functions such as marking up or discounting an airfare, some solutions incorporate custom rule types that even define additional filters to determine which type of booking or selling channel a specific business rule should apply to. Some include filters to define a Rule by affiliate, supplier, departure, destination and more.

You'll want your airline reservation system to include revenue management Tools with the ability to mark up or mark down a product's selling price by airline, itinerary, class of service, dates and more. Some of the more advanced flight booking software includes features like the ability to set up automatic emails to Customers' and /or Agents advising them that a payment is due.

Reporting capabilities should not only include basic booking statistics but also search statistics to determine what customers may be looking for when searching on your website, but not finding with the airline reservation system you are providing. This type of information can be potentially valuable when negotiating private airfares and commissions with suppliers or defining price adjustments to be included in the air booking engine display.

Flight booking software should provide with the tools needed to manage a business and provide operational efficiencies that increase sales and reduced costs. It should be easy to use for both agents and customers and provide live access to airline content. Finding the right online booking solution can be an important decision for your travel business and finding the right technology partner can be even more important.