Cruise Booking Software Is Essential for Online & Offline Sales

In today's connected world, the truth is that the majority of consumers spend hours researching and planning their cruise vacation online using a variety of different devices before completing the transaction. A majority of today's younger generation cruise passengers, commonly known as "Millennials", will actually shop and complete their purchase online, while others may start their research online but defer to a travel agent or cruise line sales representative to complete the booking.

Clearly there is an opportunity to integrate consumer online research tools with the offline expertise of a professional travel agent. With mobile devices enabling consumers to be online anywhere at any time, today's travel companies require technology that integrates online cruise research with both online and offline booking capability. Researching, planning and booking a cruise vacation is often a long process and frequently involves multiple online and offline steps. The need to merge consumer online and off-line shopping activity has made having online cruise booking software more critical than ever.

Online research may include interaction with a cruise line's website, reading cruise line reviews or using social media to check with friends. When planning a cruise for example, many shoppers will seek advice from friends or family, visit a traditional travel agent, or call a cruise line directly. The challenge many travel professionals face is integrating a consumers online planning and research with the offline expertise of a traditional travel agent. One way to start working towards this goal would be the deployment of an online cruise booking tool. This may sound counter intuitive to those traditional agents who want remain relevant and keep cruise booking offline, but allowing the consumer to plan online with an agency's cruise booking software may represent one of the most important ways to integrate online and offline activity.

Today's cruise booking engine also needs to include a vast amount cruise line, cruise ship and cabin descriptions linked to media files & rich content such as cabin photos, ship images and deck plans to assist in the shopping process. Live access to Cruise Line content is important to be sure customers and agents alike are provided the most up to date availability and pricing. And for those consumers who prefer to use a Smart Phone or Tablet, any solution should be built using innovative responsive technology that automatically adjusts the layout of the display based on the type of device being used.

Cruise booking software must allow you to easily control business rules such as price adjustments, value add offers and targeted promotions. You'll need the flexibility to control your business rules a variety of ways, so here is where you need be sure the application has the flexibility you need. Price adjustments should be easy to define with the ability to define filters for a specific cruise line, ship or cabin class. With cruise fares and availability changing so frequently it can be impossible for the most experienced travel agent to keep up with the latest deals. A flexible and easy to use Business Rules feature can help them manage.

Finding cruise booking software that has the functionality and content you need is an important decision for your business. Finding the right technology partner to assist you in reaching your customers where they shop can be even more important.

Content Is Key For Travel Booking Solutions

There's such a vast amount of travel content available today and so many different online travel booking solutions available with just a few clicks of a mouse, it is sometimes difficult to know which is the best fit for your needs. While certain booking solutions may have the functionality and features you are looking for, they may not have the supplier inventory your customers want. In other cases, you may spot an online booking solution with just the content you need, but find that it is lacking the features and functionality you require. The solution to your problems may be found with an online booking engine that has the features and functionality to properly manage your business along with flexible supplier connection capability which will allow you to access various content sources for different travel products.

If your agency is 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 to most initially or a bit of a challenge at best.

Some of the more advanced travel booking solutions even allow you to choose specific content sources by Supplier, providing the ultimate in content source flexibility. You may want to use one GDS ID to make most of your airline bookings, except for a few markets where you prefer to check another GDS ID for the fares of an air consolidator. Your air booking engine needs to be able to quickly and easily support these different connections and know when to use each. Accessing the right content source, for specific content can play a role in determining your success.

As cruise line preferred supplier relationships become increasingly important to securing the best price and commission levels, biasing the cruise line availability display to show preferred suppliers first has become an important tool for many agency owners. Some cruise lines have been quick to recognize the benefits biasing thee display may bring and may offer increased commissions and marketing support to agencies with an online booking solution with this capability.

Travel booking solutions also need the ability to quickly and easily define pre-set business rules so agency owners can adjust a product selling price or promote value add offers and special deals right in the availability display. Simply put, today's online booking engine needs to keep up with all the different specials and promotions that Suppliers make available today. Selling price adjustments and value add offers need to be easy to define and provide the flexibility to set rules by a specific supplier, travel dates, booking dates, booking channel 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 in reaching your customers where they shop can be even more important.

Is Your Travel Agency Software Ready for Today's Consumer?

The fact that travel agent software can be so critical to the success of any travel agency makes the solution an agency owner chooses an important decision. Some travel agents prefer to use an interface provided by the Supplier, while others may prefer to use third party tools that provide a single platform for multiple Suppliers. Deploying a solution that automates processes and increases bookings can be critical to the success of selling travel both via traditional retail sales locations as well as online.

With so many of today's consumers starting their online research using their mobile devices, traditional travel agency owners need to consider deploying an online booking engine. Not necessarily to push the consumer to a self-booking solution, but rather as a tool to capture consumers shopping online at the initial research phase. It is essential that every travel agency manager understand the steps today's consumer takes when researching and shopping for travel and to identify best way to capture these customers while eliminating any inefficiencies in the sales process.

Traditional travel agents who use the various Supplier interfaces available to make reservations are often confronted with the challenge of learning how each system works, creating the need to train agents on multiple systems and a challenge for agency managers. Keeping track of bookings and remembering which systems were used for a particular customer's booking can bring an added layer of confusion. Agency owners may also want to ensure that a consistent marketing message is delivered to both consumers shopping online as well as Agents using a traditional B2B solution.

A single booking platform across all Suppliers is typically the best way to streamline the process into a single work flow while accessing comprehensive content across multiple suppliers. Having travel agents and consumers using a common platform also eliminates any discrepancies between an agent's desktop and what the consumer sees online. Today's innovative third-party travel agent software can provide the opportunity to create a standard booking experience across multiple suppliers for both consumers online as well as the agent's desktop.

The administration and integration of travel agent software can be a critical factor as well. Travel Agency managers need a platform that can help control the booking process and create a common set of business rules to be used across the application. Agency owners need to ability to adjust a product's selling price by a wide range of criteria including Supplier, dates, class of service, distribution channel and more. Pre-defined rules can prevent agent errors and highlight special agency offers while providing a better shopping experience and the ability to shift sales to preferred suppliers. Integration can also provide a more normalized invoicing and payment process with agency accounting and back-end systems, eliminating the need to manually retype this information. Integration can also help streamline the process and understand customer requirements better, especially for repeat customers.

Finding travel agent software that provides the right content, powerful business rules and flexible distribution capabilities is an important decision for any travel agency owner. Finding the right technology partner to work with can be just as important.

Upgrade Your Travel Booking Engine Lately?

Technology changes at lightning speed and if you haven't upgraded your travel booking engine in a while, you are probably missing out on some huge potential benefits for your business. Solutions for researching, shopping and purchasing travel products have come a long way over the past several decades.

There is so much content available from so many different online travel solutions that it is sometimes difficult to know which to choose for your business. While some booking engines may have the functionality and features you need, they may not have the content your clients are looking for. In other cases, you may find a travel booking engine with all the right content, but it is missing the functionality and features you need. Finding the right combination in a single online booking solution can be challenging and a bit overwhelming for many.

The best approach is to start by thinking about what products your clients need and how they prefer to shop and purchase travel. Then consider opportunities to perhaps increase the scope of the sale with your clients and maybe include the option to purchase ancillary products like Travel Insurance protection. These products cover the traveler in the event of canceled flights, lost bags as well as trip cancellations due to illness or bad weather and is often overlooked in the booking process.

Tools that innovate an agency's marketing capabilities continue to evolve as technology advances. Travel agency owners can now customize and deliver the right marketing message to both their agents and customers. The typical Rules Engine in older booking engines used to be rigid and time-consuming to manage, but new technology has changed this. Today's travel booking engine provides the ability to quickly and easily define business rules allows business owners to maximize profits. It should include the ability to promote value add offers or special deals right in the availability display. It needs to be able to keep up with all the different specials and promotions that Suppliers make available today and adjustments should be easily defined with the flexibility to meet your specific needs. Today's travel booking solutions can offer numerous different filters and rule types allowing agents to choose from options such as rewards points, value add offers, discounts and mark-ups. These rules may need to be applied individually or combined.

Dynamic Packaging products have become quite popular as consumers look to create their own travel experience. The ability to combine airline reservations, hotel bookings, transfers and even cruise vacations has become a major revenue source for many travel agencies. Dynamic packaging extends the entire sales process from simply selling an airline ticket to creating a completely unique travel experience. Most are developed as an extension of the existing Booking Engine and are designed to allow both agents and consumers to package and price flights, hotels and other travel products in real time.

Finding a travel booking engine with the right combination of options for your business can be a critical decision. Finding a technology partner that will help you reach today's mobile consumer with tools to automate your travel business can be just as important.

The Cruise Booking Solution

With the popularity of cruise vacations growing at a record pace, cruise booking solutions have become an increasingly important component of any travel agency's leisure business plan. As airline commissions began to dwindle, many travel agency owners were forced to look for alternative revenue sources. Many shifted focus to Leisure travel where higher commissions for packaged vacations were an option for some while others focused on the rapidly growing cruise market. The cruise industry has been experiencing sustained growth for decades and shows no signs of slowing down. The increased commission rate cruise lines pay travel agents combined with the high ticket price for many cruise itineraries have made selling cruises something every travel agent needs to consider. This industry shift happens to coincide with the early days of the internet revolution so it wasn't long before online cruise booking solutions began to be available.

Travel Agents have always been a great resource to sort through the different vacation options and help their customers select the right vacation option for them. Their help and expertise can certainly can make any vacation easier to plan as well as more enjoyable overall. After all, planning a vacation should not make you feel like you need one. Cruise booking solutions should be designed to help travel agents automate processes and increase revenues. A cruise booking engine needs to support both travel agent and consumer Users with the headers, footers and style sheets customized to provide a seamless online experience.

And in order to keep pace with the multitude of special promotions that cruise lines offer, cruise booking solutions should include the capability to quickly and easily adjust a product's selling price and include value add offers right in the availability display. The application should incorporate custom rule types such as fixed cruise deposit amount, variable onboard credits, master promotions and agent commissions. Agents should be able to define additional filters and decide which type of booking or selling channel they want to apply a specific business rules to. Newly added or modified rules should be applied almost instantly, so that anyone accessing the cruise booking engine gets the best deal possible.

To assist consumers as well as travel agents in the shopping process, cruise booking solutions also need to include a vast amount cruise line, cruise ship and cabin descriptions linked to media files & rich content such as cabin photos, ship images and deck plans. This rich content will help both travel agents and consumers during the research, shopping and booking process.

Some more advanced online cruise booking solutions can seamlessly process cross-border bookings in multiple currencies and localize the display to meet local market requirements. The ability to provide cruise booking solutions in multiple languages allows cruise retailers using these solutions to reach new customers in the language they speak. A global product with multi-language and multi-currency capabilities which has been localized to meet unique market requirements can help enable an online travel agency (OTA) become a global retailer.

Finding online travel software with the right combination of options for your business can be a critical decision. Finding the right technology partner can be just as important.