Travel Technology Solutions Help Drive Travel and Tourism

Travel & Tourism is an important economic activity in most countries around the world and helps to produce prosperity across the globe. Tourism brings people from different cultures closer together, creates jobs and helps drive the export of goods and services. When you consider the impact that the travel industry has on commerce across the board, it's no surprise that travel technology solutions have been pioneers in online commerce.

The travel industry is estimated to account for about 10%+ of global GDP and nearly one (1) out of every ten (10) jobs worldwide and last year was one of the strongest years of worldwide growth in nearly a decade thanks to strong consumer spending. But Travel & Tourism's total contribution to the world's economy goes deeper than the money spent during a trip. In addition to the obvious expense for products such as airline tickets, hotel accommodations, cruise vacations or ground transportation, the industry provides significant indirect benefits to other industries. Consumer spending on local entertainment or attractions, food & beverage services as well as retail spending before and during a trip can all be considered the result of travel and tourism. Even companies developing travel technology solutions owe their existence in part to this important and exciting industry.

All signs indicate that consumers will continue to use their smartphones as more and more as they become constantly connected to social media. If you're not making your product available on all channels you are potentially surrendering your customers to the competition. As a result, mobile ready travel technology solutions are becoming increasingly important for any travel business looking to reach these customers. People are not only using today's mobile devices to interact with each other, but they are also using these devices to make a significant number of purchases online. Some consumers may use various different devices as they research and eventually purchase products online. For instance, many consumers may start their initial research using their smartphone, but then switch to a Laptop to complete the purchase. Others will choose to use their handheld device exclusively and access a mobile booking engine to complete their purchase. Either way, your business needs to be ready to serve these customers on the device they choose to use.

Today's state of the art travel technology solutions can take full advantage of the easy access to content and powerful features that an online booking engine offers combined with the ease and mobility of using a smartphone. The competitive online market also requires agency owners have the flexibility to quickly and easily control a product's selling price based on a wide range of criteria including travel or booking dates, supplier or class of service.

Finding an online booking solution 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 consumer where and how they shop for travel can be just as important. If you're not making your product available on certain channels, then you are surrendering your customers to the competition.

Travel Agent Software Can Extend Your Reach

The travel industry has experienced tremendous growth over the past few decades and advances in technology have helped fuel this expansion. Some of us are old enough to remember the days when airline reservations were stored in a flight book and airline reservation agents would work the phones to assist travel agents as well as a few consumers with their travel arrangements. As technology evolved, the complicated formats to input "pre-paid ticket" information were replaced by electronic tickets and the airlines practically did away with paper tickets all together. Transformational changes have occurred throughout each of the travel verticals. As more people travel more frequently the need for hotel accommodations and ground transportation also increases.

Travel agents remain an important part of the travel industry and have been evolving the way that they interact with suppliers and customers along with the rest of the industry. Travel agent software such as airline booking engines, hotel booking engines and even cruise booking engines were launched years ago and have been evolving ever since. The transition to online commerce has been crucial for many agencies to remain in business. The online booking engines available today provide agents or their customers the ability to book just about anything online including an airline seat, a hotel room or even a cruise vacation.

With just a few clicks of a mouse, today's travel agent software can access the information that agents or their consumers shopping online need to research which particular hotel meets an individual's needs best. Hotel searches can be narrowed to a specific neighborhood within a city, the hotel star rating or price range. You can even research whether a hotel property has banquet facilities, a restaurant or room service. Air travel searches can be specific to an airline, time of day or even class of service. Online searches for cruise vacations can be specific to a Sailing region, such as Alaska, a specific cruise line or cruise ship and even by the length of the cruise. High resolution photographs of a cruise ship's public spaces as well as sample cabin photos are complimented by detailed descriptions and integrated into the booking engine to help agents and customers when deciding what suits their needs the best. Users can even select which seating time they prefer for dinner, choose their bed configuration preference and even alert the cruise line of a special occasion such as a passenger's birthday.

Like many businesses, consolidation has forced many travel agencies to merge or join forces with other agencies forming new agency affiliate relationships. The ability for a host agency to share their travel agent software with affiliated agencies or agents quickly and easily can be a powerful tool. As agencies form new alliances, many still want to maintain their individual brand name with their customers, so many offer the ability to customize the header, footer and fonts to match the branding.

Choosing a travel agent software 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 the content they are looking for can be just as important.

A Travel Booking Engine Should Combine Components Easily

Many agents face a complexity of issues and challenges when building vacation packages often making it a time consuming process. Coordinating the various elements such as cruise departure times, flight arrival times, travel distance & time between cruise port and airport (which will vary greatly by Port) can be quite complex with some itineraries. Easy access to local hotel content for any pre or post cruise stay requirements or requests is often a challenge, especially when it involves using different systems or applications. All the elements of a cruise vacation package require precise coordination to ensure a seamless experience for the traveler. Unfortunately, in many cases travel agents are using different methods, applications or devices to research and book each of these package components. Some operations are even set up using product line experts where several agents are involved to complete the booking. A cruise expert will complete the cruise booking before passing it to an Airline expert for the flight arrangements and then a Hotel expert to add any hotel accommodations required.

Today's travel booking engine needs to be designed to allow both agents and consumers to price as well as package Cruises, Airlines, Hotels and other travel products in real time. Many have introduced dynamic packaging modules that take full advantage of their existing connections with various travel suppliers using a client's specific ID with suppliers such as cruise lines as well as airlines, various hotel content sources and even travel Insurance providers. It streamlines the process to book a complete cruise vacation by dynamically combining a cruise itinerary with air and hotel arrangements into a single package. By taking the guesswork out of the equation, agents can serve their customers more efficiently and eliminate errors while reducing the time and effort to complete a package booking. These applications are so simple to use that today's online consumer can even quickly and easily build their own unique package when the booking engine is connected to their travel agent's consumer website.

A dynamic and innovative rules engine can allow clients to drive efficiencies in the sales process by automatically delivering the proper marketing message to agents & consumer users with the ability to preset business rules and adjust a product's selling price using a wide variety of filters. Today's travel booking engine needs to be mobile ready to serve today's consumer and includes other features for traditional B2B and B2C selling channels. There are even a Custom Packaging options available that allow the Travel Agent to price multiple products, bundle them into a package and sell them as packages easily online. By taking the guesswork out of the equation, agents can serve their customers more efficiently and eliminate errors while reducing the time and effort to complete a Package booking.

Choosing 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 the content they are looking for can be just as important.