Hotel Reservation Software Helps Complete Your Offer

Whether your travel agency concentrates on selling airline tickets or it focusses mainly on selling cruises and vacation packages, chances are there is an opportunity to include a hotel booking along with your customer's travel plans. While many travel agents gave up selling hotel accommodations due to challenges they experienced tracking hotel bookings and collecting commissions, the process has improved in recent years. Adding a hotel booking to your customers travel itinerary is easy to do and gives you the opportunity to assist with more of your customers travel needs. So you will want to consider adding a hotel reservation software component to your travel booking engine.

There are several approaches your business can take to include hotel bookings as part of your overall offering. An easy to use standalone hotel booking engine can be an excellent tool for agents or consumers to research and confirm hotel reservations. A custom packaging booking engine will allow you to create your own pre-packaged offers for your customers that includes not only their Air arrangements, but their hotel accommodations, transfers and even cruise vacations as well. For those looking to create their own packages, dynamic packaging solutions allow both agents and consumers to package and price cruises, flights, hotels and other travel products in real time. How you decide to integrate hotel accommodations into your offering depends on your individual business and customer needs.

And no matter if your customers prefer to book online, by telephone or by visiting your agency in person, look for hotel reservation software that is ready to serve customers how and when they decide. Applications should be developed using mobile ready technology so that consumers can access them using the variety of different devices today's mobile consumer uses to research and book their travel arrangements. Your online booking engine needs to access the content your clients are looking for at a competitive price, so make sure the hotel reservation software you can access the right content.

Choosing the right hotel for a particular trip can be tricky depending upon a customer's specific needs. For those looking to stay in a particular area of a city or near a specific point of interest, hotel reservation software with geo-coding to help customers and agents quickly find the right location can prove to be a valuable and timesaving tool. Your travel booking solution should include the ability to pre-define business rules and easily adjust a product's selling price or offer targeted promotions to your customers. Online hotel booking solutions need to include detailed product descriptions and rich content linked to media files that can assist agents as well as consumers throughout the research, shopping and booking process. And for those planning to expand into new markets, consider a solution that can handle multiple languages and currencies.

Finding a hotel booking engine with the right combination of options for your business can be a critical decision. Finding a technology partner with solutions that will help you reach your customers when, where and how they shop for travel can be just as important.

Travel Plans Often Start With Booking a Flight

When people start out to make travel plans, they frequently start with an airline reservation. This makes access to flight booking software critically important to the success of any travel agency business. The right airline reservation system can help make researching the flight options available for a particular destination and checking prices a lot easier. But there are so many options out there, you'll want to research the different options available in the market and be prepared to do your homework. First, make sure you understand your customer's needs and shopping preferences. Then do some quick research of the different booking engine solutions available and what content you might want to include. For example, you may want consider flight booking software that is flexible enough to be used with a packaging module that can offer a hotel room with the flight. This may be an excellent way for you to expand your overall sales volumes while helping you serve your customers better and build up customer loyalty in the process.

The airline reservation system you choose needs to be able to provide your travel business the access the airline content your customers need at the price they are looking for. It should also include administrative tools that allow you to pre-define business rules so you can easily adjust a product's selling price or offer targeted promotions to customers. Most of all, it should be easy to use and reduce the amount of time to complete a travel booking. And consider using mobile ready flight booking software to meet the demands of today's mobile consumer.

Many of the air booking engines available today enable customers to define their initial search by a variety of criteria including a specific airline and class of service or nearby airports and flexible travel dates. A significant number of online booking engines actually access airlines via a connection with large GDS companies for live airline availability and fares to ensure the most up to date information is provided. Some are even capable of simultaneously searching multiple content sources at a time, allowing even a small agency access to not only their own fares, but those of an agency they may partner with. These online booking engines have been tested and certified within the GDS environment, so security and stability is sure to be provided. This new breed of flight booking software can also provide travel agents with easy to use administrative tools to manage their business. Revenue management tools can quickly mark up or discount a product's selling price by website, airline, itinerary and even class of service to adjust a selling fare quickly. Many even support multiple languages and currencies, making expansion into new markets easy.

Finding an airline reservation system with the right combination of options for your online business can be a critical in determining your success. Finding a technology partner that will help you reach today's mobile consumer where and how they shop for air travel can be just as important.

Increase Sales with a Mobile Booking Engine

It should come as no surprise that nearly every facet of the travel industry continues to focus on adding marketing and sales resources to their e-commerce solutions. As more and more people rely on the internet for purchasing just about everything from retail merchandise to personal services, consumers are turning to the internet to research and book flights, hotels and even cruise vacations online. Unfortunately many travel companies have had challenges developing an easy to use mobile booking engine that can be accessed using the variety of today's mobile devices. Many in the travel business continue to use booking applications that were built using legacy technology, which typically doesn't permit them to simply add new content or make minor changes to their User Interface.

The architecture of these old Legacy systems are built on are typically not at all like that used for today's flexible applications. The business rules and policies defined for many Legacy systems are often hardcoded and use predefined, inflexible process flows which make any customization or adaptation with Internet-based applications difficult or sometimes just impossible. And if the amount work required isn't enough of a deterrent, companies ready to make the investment to upgrade have found it increasingly difficult to find developers willing or able to work with applications that are written in languages which are no longer widely used in today's technology. As a result, the Internet revolution and explosion of online commerce has frequently been the driving force behind a company's decision to switch away from a legacy system.

Travel businesses have been quick to learn that moving sales to E-commerce saves them time and money. An online booking engine is typically the most cost effective way to serve customers today and the innovative technology available helps software solution providers design and develop flexible & fully scalable applications that easily grow with any size business. Some even provide the ability to customize the application to maintain a company's own unique brand identity.

To serve today's growing number of consumers using their mobile device to purchase travel products, many companies are building a mobile booking engine. Now, regardless of the type of device a customer uses to access a travel website, applications are available that can automatically adjust the screen layout based on the type of device being used. For those looking to have a dedicated mobile booking App, there are several travel technology companies that can design and develop a custom mobile App for your business. Some offer mobile-ready applications as part of their existing Booking Engine while some will develop them independently. Either approach offers consumers the ease and mobility of using a smart phone or tablet.

Finding a mobile booking engine with the right combination of options for your customer can be a critical decision for your business. Finding a technology partner that will help you reach today's mobile consumer where and how they shop for travel can be just as important.

The Explosion of New Sales Channels

It seems like new websites and online channels are popping up daily, revolutionizing the distribution landscape of the entire travel industry. Whether you are a travel supplier like an airline or a retail travel agent, several opportunities to quickly expand the reach of your travel booking engine to new customers are readily available. Todays' online booking solutions provide unique and powerful tools to book airline tickets, hotel accommodations and even cruise vacations quickly and easily online providing a seamless online experience for users.

Today's online booking engines are able to provide both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) applications designed to automate processes and increase bookings. Customizable header, footers and style sheets enable travel agents to match the look and feel of their website while providing a seamless online experience for their online customers. Some applications are even fully customizable, allowing the booking engine's complete layout to be modified to match an agency's specific requirements.

The explosion of online travel agencies (OTA's) in the travel marketplace has fueled the growth of travel sold online and has allowed for a few large OTA's to dominate the online travel market. Unfortunately the price advantage some large OTA's can offer come with limited customer service in the event your plans suddenly change. And while many of the online travel booking solutions offered by Suppliers are easy to use, the content is often limited to a specific brand. These are two reasons why many consumers have learned the benefits of using a professional travel agent. Not only for the simple ease of having someone else take care of everything for you, but because booking with a travel agent is the best way to reserve hotel accommodations. Specialized agents using the right travel booking engine can save a tremendous amount of time and energy for even the most experienced travelers.

Whether a consumer likes to shop online, by phone or in person, today's travel booking solutions need to be ready to serve customers how and when they decide. Applications should be built using technology that is mobile ready so consumers can access and use them across the variety of different devices so many use during the research, shopping and booking process today. Your online booking engine needs to access the content your clients are looking for at a competitive price. It should include business rules capability so that you can easily adjust a product's selling price and offer targeted promotions to your customers.

Online travel booking solutions need to include detailed product descriptions and rich content linked to media files that can assist your agents as well as consumers booking online across the research, shopping and booking process. And for those planning to expand into new markets, consider a solution that can handle multiple languages and currencies.

Finding a travel booking engine with the right combination of options for your business can be a critical decision for your business. Finding a technology partner with solutions that will help you reach your customers when, where and how they shop for travel can be just as important.