Booking with a travel agent has always been a great way to find the best deal. Not only is a professional travel agent familiar with the wide variety of different travel products available, they can often get you the best rate, extra amenities and even upgrades. A good travel agent can help with your entire trip including VIP access to local attractions and airport transfers. In short, how satisfied you are with your overall travel experience may depend upon the travel agent you choose or whether you go it on your own.
But like with most professions, the tools a travel agent uses can play a huge role in how successful they are. Travel agent software can vary dramatically when it comes to the content, features and distribution channels they support. Live access to supplier content should be provided to ensure the most accurate availability and pricing is used. A travel booking solution should reduce the amount of time it takes to complete a reservation and automate processes to make it easier for agents and financial staff to manage bookings. Tools that automatically cross check a booking with a Supplier can eliminate costly errors while the automatic export of booking data for integration with external systems can save a tremendous amount of time and resources.
Travel agent software needs to include the business management tools that provide an agency owner the tools they need to adjust a product selling price or deliver a specific marketing message directly to User in the availability display. Targeted promotions and special offers can set your business apart from competition with unique offerings and VIP service and should be easy to set up and define. Display Biasing capabilities can even provide the ability to promote preferred cruise suppliers with preferential placement in the availability display. While optional products such as Dynamic Packaging allow for Users to package and price airline reservations, hotel accommodations, even cruise bookings live using a travel shopping cart. Many dynamic packaging products have been developed as an extension of an existing Booking Engine and take advantage of existing live connections with various suppliers. While custom packaging features allow agents to tailor make a travel itinerary to be sold online to consumers as a Package.
Content Source can play a key role with any travel agent software and not just with packaging engines. Access to the major GDSs, Hotel aggregators, Cruise lines and other content specific to your client's travel needs can be critical in determining how successful your business is! You may even want to consider integration with travel insurance providers for ancillary revenues and added service. For example, ancillary products like a cruise data cache with the latest updates on cruise line pricing and availability can help you develop unique offerings or promote when the lowest price on a particular ship or itinerary is available and give you an edge over the competition.
Finding travel agent software with the right combination of options for your travel business can be critical to your success. Finding the right technology partner can be just as important.
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