Showing posts with label hotel booking engines. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hotel booking engines. Show all posts

Sunday, 8 December 2019

Best Hotel Booking Engine Option


Travel booking solutions should streamline the sales process and reduce the amount of time it takes your agency to train new agents to allow them to focus on selling faster.  Packaging options can allow travel agents to price multiple products, easily bundle them into a package and sell them online. Here is where an easy to use standalone hotel booking engine can be an excellent tool for agents or consumers to research and confirm hotel reservations.

Create your own pre-packaged offers for your customers that include not only their airline arrangements but their hotel accommodations, transfers, and even cruise vacations as well.  For those looking to design and create their own custom packages, dynamic packaging solutions allow both agents and consumers to package and price cruises, flights, hotels, and other travel products in real-time.  How your travel agency decides to integrate hotel accommodations into the products offered depends on your individual agency’s business and customer needs.

Some travel agents may avoid offering to check hotel accommodations for their customers since choosing the right hotel for a particular trip can be tricky depending upon a customer’s specific needs.  Hotels can vary so much with each offering different levels of service and amenities included, not to mention geographic location within a region.  For those looking to stay in a particular area of a city or near the specific point of interest, a hotel booking engine with geo-coding that helps customers and agents quickly find the right hotel in 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.  Today’s online hotel booking engine needs 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.  Users are able to view pictures representing different room types, actual property public spaces as well as street views.  And for those planning to expand into new markets, many of today’s travel technology solutions can easily handle multiple languages and currencies.

Advances in technology continue to change the online shopping experience and mobile readiness has become increasingly important to anyone looking to compete online.  The question is not whether more travel bookings will be made using a mobile booking engine, but rather how much of your business today is already being impacted by this change in behavior.  ‘Mobile First’ should be the philosophy for all development strategy whether immediate or long term.

Adding a hotel booking to your customer's travel itinerary is easy to do and gives you the opportunity to assist with more of their travel needs, so you will want to seriously consider including a hotel booking component as part of your travel technology solution.  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 today’s consumer when, where and how they shop for travel can be just as important.

Wednesday, 21 November 2018

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.

Tuesday, 18 September 2018

Travel Booking Solutions For Air, Land & Sea!



There are so many different travel booking solutions available in the market today to research and book travel that it can sometimes be simply overwhelming. The number of online air booking engines alone is staggering, a point perhaps proven by the number of “Meta Search” engines that simultaneously search hundreds of websites to provide the User with the lowest possible airfare. And there are online air booking solutions for just about any size business, whether you are a single location agency looking to extend your reach online or you are looking to extend access to your booking solution to other agency locations or homebased agents. There are even air booking engines that will allow you to simultaneously search multiple GDS IDs for published as well as private airfares for those agencies with multiple locations or perhaps partnering with an air consolidator for private fares.

Online hotel booking engines are also popular, offering consumers the ability to shop for Hotel accommodations quickly and easily just about anywhere in the world. Today's travel booking solutions can access information to research which hotel property meets a customer's particular needs with just a few clicks of a mouse. These state of the art applications allow Users to search for a hotel room by a specific neighborhood within a city, by price range and even star rating. Finding the exact hotel properties that include specific amenities such as free internet or perhaps concierge service may be important. Detailed pictures of guest rooms as well as public spaces can provide the User a good idea of what to expect upon arrival. Hotels offer varying levels of luxury, comfort and service, so matching a guest with the right hotel is important.

The fastest growing sector of the travel industry are cruise vacations. As cruise lines continue to build newer ships and expand into different markets, they are offering exciting new itineraries and onboard activities. Travel booking solutions focused on selling cruises have kept pace and now integrate a vast amount cruise line, cruise ship and cabin descriptions linked to rich content such as cabin photos, ship images and deck plans to assist in the shopping process. Users can view pictures of a particular ship, including sample guest cabins and public areas. Maps with ship itineraries that show all the ports of call for a particular sailing are integrated into the display. Detailed information about ship activities, pictures of public spaces and even videos where available help provide the User a better idea of what to expect onboard.

As customers look for a customized travel experience, the ability to offer dynamic packaging of an individual's specific itinerary has become an increasingly popular component for travel booking solutions. Dynamic Packaging solutions are typically an extension of an existing booking engine designed to allow Users to package and book cruises, flights, hotels and other travel products in real time. A custom packaging tool can allow travel agents to tailor make a travel itinerary to be sold online.

Choosing an online booking solution with the right combination of options for your travel business can be a critical decision. Finding a technology partner that will help set your travel business apart from the competition can be just as important.

Thursday, 26 April 2018

Hotel Reservation Software Can Increase Sales



The internet has changed the way the hotels are researched and booked today. But there are so many hotel options available on the market that it can be overwhelming for many consumers. This is why finding a professional travel agent can be an important first step. Travel agents are a great resource to help consumers research options and can find the best deal possible. Customers who use a travel agent often get the best deals and VIP treatment upon arrival. Travel Agents are experts in the industry and many have negotiated special deals and amenities for their clients. Many have launched their own online booking solutions that allow their customers to research and book travel when and where they want while still enjoying the benefits of using a travel agent.

The Hotel reservation software a travel agency chooses should be easy to use and provide Users the functionality they need to research and book the hotel property they are looking for. The ability to narrow the Search to a specific neighborhood within a city near a specific point of interest may be important for some Users. The ability to find a hotel that has a restaurant or banquet facilities may be key for those planning an event. The ability to sort a search for hotel rooms by a particular star rating or the average nightly rate can speed up the process dramatically. Easily finding a hotel property that includes the specific amenities such as free internet or perhaps concierge service may be important for others. Hotels offer varying levels of comfort and service, so matching a client with the right hotel is important.

Today's hotel booking engines can access information to research which particular hotel meets an individual customer's specific needs with just a few clicks of a mouse. Search for a hotel room by a specific neighborhood within a larger city, by price range and even star rating. Recent industry consolidation has many travel agents forming alliances, so the ability to extend their hotel reservation software to affiliated agencies quickly and easily is key for many. The ability to easily expand the access of an online booking engine to affiliated agencies while maintaining their brand identity can be crucial to the success of launching an online booking engine for some.

The hotel reservation software products available in the market today include links to media files & rich content to assist with selecting the right hotel property during the research, shopping and booking process. Some 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. Dynamic Packaging modules are designed to allow agents and consumers to package hotels with other travel products like airline tickets and cruise vacations. Dynamic packaging allows the user to create their own unique travel itinerary.

Finding hotel reservation software with the right combination of options for your business can be a critical decision for your business. 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.

Saturday, 25 April 2015

Hotel Booking Engines Have Revolutionized Hotel Reservations

Whether you are travelling for vacation or for business, one of the most important part of your travel arrangements are your Hotel accommodations. Selecting the wrong airline seat can be a bad start or end to any journey, but the choosing the wrong hotel room can ruin an entire trip. A hotel serves as your "home base” while travelling and it should provide the atmosphere, amenities and services you'll look for to make your stay as enjoyable as possible. Do you need a downtown location close to restaurants with a business center? Do you prefer to have a room close to the beach with a place to get an exotic tropical drink? Or do you prefer a family hotel near a particular theme park or attraction? Finding the right hotel for a specific trip at the right price can be overwhelming.

The wide variety of different hotel options available combined with the various methods to research and book hotels today provide endless options for travelers. Travel Agents have always been a great resource to sort through the different options and select the right hotel for their customers. Quite often, a travel agent will have access to special deals with hotel properties and they can often ensure you are treated like a V.I.P. when you arrive. Their help and expertise can certainly make your trip more enjoyable and easier to plan.

However with the increasing popularity of the Internet and improvement in technology, many consumers now prefer to research and book their hotel rooms themselves online. This helps them to avoid the hassle of visiting a travel agent's office and allows them to research and book a hotel room when they want from the comfort of their own home. Many hotel booking engines include links to media files & rich content to assist with selecting the right hotel property during the shopping process. Most provide the details, pictures and information about a hotel property to help a consumer research which is the best hotel for their needs. Consumers can go online and view pictures of a hotel lobby, sample guest rooms and even hotel restaurants and gyms. They can quickly view where the hotel is located on a local map and determine whether it is in the right location.

There are so many websites that aggregate hotel content and a variety of hotel reservation software to choose from today that many consumers are not sure where to go. While technology has made it easier for consumers to book directly with travel suppliers, many consumers are missing out on the benefits and perks that using a travel agent can bring. Savvy travel agents recognized the value of combining their expertise with the ease of internet bookings and jumped into the world of online booking engines years ago.

The hotel reservation software available today makes it easy for any size agency to compete with the largest online players. Many hotel booking engines are easily customizable to match an agency's brand identity and provide the features and tools to manage your online business.