Hotel Reservation Software Helps Overall Sales

Have you ever wondered why some travel agents are so successful selling hotel accommodations to their clients while others don’t bother at all?  The right hotel reservation software can help your business increase hotel bookings as part of your overall sales.  An easy to use hotel booking engine can be an excellent tool for agents and consumers to research and confirm hotel reservations.  Travel booking engines should be designed to automate processes and reduce the time and effort required to research and completes a booking. But how do you know what type of booking solution to choose with everything from generic, white label hotel booking engines readily available to complete private label travel booking solutions that meet your agency’s specific requirements.

Any online application needs to provide your users with a seamless online experience based on your specific agency branding.  The booking engine’s headers, footers, colors, and fonts should all match that of your company branding.  Some of the more advanced applications even use innovative responsive technology that automatically adjusts the screen display layout based on the type of device being used to access the booking engine.  No matter if your customers prefer to book online -or- with one of your experienced agents, you’ll need hotel reservation software that allows your agency to serve customers the way they choose.

But it takes more than multiple selling channels to be successful in today’s crowded online travel space.  Easy to use business management tools can be essential for your business to remain competitive and set you apart from the competition.

 Today’s travel booking engine needs to allow you to quickly adjust a product’s selling price and promote any special offers that may be available. And with so many different hotel options and amenities available, hotel reservation software needs to include links to media files & rich content to assist with selecting the right hotel property during the shopping process. Geo-coding of hotel properties help Users identify which hotel properties are near a specific point of interest or neighborhood with a given city? Access to a photo gallery of the hotel help provide a good idea of the different room types and amenities are available.

The ability to easily combine air, hotel and even a cruise booking into a single custom travel package can help you quickly increase your overall sales.  A custom packaging engine can allow you to create your own pre-packaged offers for your customers that include not only their Air arrangements, but their hotel accommodations, transfers, and even a cruise vacation.  There are even dynamic packaging solutions that allow agents or consumers to package and price cruises, flights, hotels and other travel services.

How you decide to integrate the option for hotel reservations into your travel booking engine should depend upon your individual business and customer needs.   Finding online hotel reservation software with the right combination of features for your travel business can be a difficult and critical decision to make.  Finding a technology partner that can help your travel business drive efficiency through innovation can be even more important.

Cruise Booking Software Helps increase sales

If you are not selling cruises today, you may be missing out on a huge opportunity to earn high commissions in a rapidly expanding sector of travel.  The cruise industry is projected to continue to grow throughout 2019 with an estimated 30+ million travelers expected to cruise, making it and the fastest-growing segment in the travel, tourism and leisure industry.  While the traditionally strong in the North America market, cruising has become increasingly popular in Europe and Australia as well as across the entire Asia Pacific region.   Cruising in the Asia market has been surging ahead with passenger numbers doubling over the past four years to over 3 million.  Unfortunately, regional travel agents have been missing out on the wave of sales revenue due to a lack of automation, a scenario that has recently begun to change.

The ability to quickly and easily combine cruise booking software with flight reservations and hotel accommodations into a single custom travel package can be critical in the Australia and Asian markets.  The majority of passengers coming from these markets require more than just a cruise booking to complete their itinerary, which can be a time consuming and complex to complete.  Matching up a specific cruise departure time with international flight arrivals and ground transportation can be overwhelming even for an experienced agent.  Adding a hotel along with any other products for a pre or post stay can just add to the complexity.  But today’s dynamic packaging solutions allow agents and consumers to build their own unique travel packages with live pricing and availability for cruises, flights, and hotels as well as other travel products. Custom packaging solutions allow agency owners to pre-package a travel itinerary to be sold online accessing supplier content Live using an agency’s specific ID. 

The right technology partner can help your travel business drive efficiency through innovation.    

Cruise lines have turned ships into destinations in their own right and cruise booking software requires the integration of detailed photo galleries, deck plans and even videos to highlight their distinct features and amenities.  Cruise line, cruise ship and cabin descriptions need to be part of the cruise booking software and linked to media files & rich content such as cabin photos, ship images and deck plans to assist Users during the research, shopping and booking process.

Cruise booking software with a powerful business rule feature can make adjusting a product’s selling price easy and allow you to easily administer targeted sales or promotions to remain competitive.  Availability display biasing capability can give you the power to focus your business on specific cruise providers or ships and potentially put you on the path to earn higher commissions.

Connecting the dots between suppliers and customers can be a complex process for any size travel business.  Finding cruise booking software with the right combination of features for your travel business can be a difficult and critical decision to make.  Finding a technology partner that can help you drive efficiency through innovation can be even more important.

Does Your Travel Booking Engine Compete

The online travel marketplace is so competitive that you can almost wonder how any travel agency other than the largest Online Travel Agencies (OTA) can survive.  But the technology solutions available today allow any size agency to compete with easy to use online travel booking solutions that allow them to automate processes, increase revenue and reduce the time and the effort required to complete a transaction.

With the online market so crowded, it is important that your Travel booking engine provides the brand management tools you need to customize the look and feel to match your company.  Some of the best-hosted travel solutions use a unique sub-hosted domain to further protect your brand identity by providing the ability to easily customize the headers, footers and style sheets.  You have worked hard to build your brand image and your website and online booking solution should be an extension of your brand.

Whether your customers prefer to make their travel arrangements directly with you -or- they prefer to shop and book online, your travel booking solution needs to provide the ability to serve them quickly and easily.  Affiliate & distribution features allow you to quickly connect affiliate users and websites to your travel booking engine.  Mobile friendly applications use innovative responsive technology that can automatically adjust the layout of the booking engine’s User display based on the type of device being used.

Depending upon your business, you may want to consider access to multiple selling channels that can be easily managed using a single application.  This type of feature can allow you to easily set up additional users and quickly connect additional affiliated websites to your online booking engine.  Administrative functions such as profile and preference management tools provide the ability to turn on/off a number of available features.  Translating the online booking engine templates into another language can either be accomplished using pre-set translated templates or easy administrative tools that allow the client to translate your travel booking engine User templates.

Today’s travel booking solutions can bring content for airlines, hotels and even cruise lines into a single platform that allows a User to dynamically build their own custom package.  This is a huge advancement compared to the days when travel agents had to use several different systems to book a packaged vacation.  Agents no longer have to use one system to book an airline seat, another for hotel accommodations and perhaps a third for booking a cruise or ground transportation.  The process of coordinating a cruise with flights and hotel accommodations can be a complex process that takes hours.   Fortunately, the dynamic packaging solutions available today streamline the entire process with dynamic packaging modules that allow agents or consumers to custom package a cruise, airline reservations, hotels accommodations and other travel products in real-time for example.

Finding the online travel booking engine with the right combination of features for your travel business can be difficult and critical to your success.  Finding a technology partner that can help your travel business drive efficiency through innovation can be just as important.

Flight Reservation Systems Help Sell More

An easy to use flight reservation system can have your agents selling faster and allow you to customize the look and feel to match your agency’s own brand identify.  Today’s online travel booking engines include robust business rules features that allow agency owners to easily adjust a product’s selling price and deliver the appropriate marketing message to their Users.  Unique and easy to follow process flows can even help you easily expand the products and services you provide your customers.

Whether your clients are making their flight arrangements for the business trip they have to take or the two-week vacation they NEED to take, chances are they may need assistance with a hotel or ground transportation to make their travel arrangements complete.  Today’s custom packaging solutions allow agency owners to pre-package a travel itinerary to be sold online.  The ability to easily combine all the different components of a trip itinerary into a single custom travel package can help you offer clients more services and quickly increase your overall sales volume.  The optional packaging modules available with some travel booking solutions combine the various live supplier connections with the travel booking engine’s innovative rules engine.  Dynamic packaging solutions allow agents or consumers to build their own unique travel packages with live pricing and availability for cruises, flights, and hotels as well as other travel products.

But your travel business will need more than great technology to be successful in selling flights online.  You need to make sure you have access to the lowest fares and best value to serve today’s price driven customer. Your flight reservation system must be able to search the best sources for content quickly and cost-effectively to ensure you offer a competitive price.  Make sure the technology you choose can provide live access to airline content to be sure the most accurate availability and pricing are used.  It helps to negotiate the lowest fares and best deals possible with the airlines when using your own agency credentials and be sure promoting any special deals that are available.   Accessing low rates offered by air consolidators is a great way to easily access the lowest fares available.  Since many air consolidators specialize in specific markets or destinations, you may look for a flight reservation system that allows you to simultaneously search multiple air consolidators for the best fares. You will need the ability to easily adjust pricing and perhaps include value add offers right in the fare availability display.

The right flight reservation system can be a great resource for any online The user that is trying to make sense of all the options available and find the best deal possible.  Make sure your agents have the expertise and tools to provide the topnotch service that only a professional travel agent can offer.  Finding online airline reservation software with the right combination of features for your travel business can be a difficult and critical decision to make.  Finding a technology partner that can help your travel business drive efficiency through innovation can be just as important.