travel tech insights

Fees management rules set-up and their impact on your business profitability

Get your financials right! You know very well the range of commercial agreements that you have with your corporate customers and how complex they can become. Also, a smart and accurate set up and management of service fees, commissions and discounts will have an impact on your business long-term profitability. Most likely, you have a diversity of service fee models – whether in terms of the amounts charged, type of service for which you are charging, type of operation performed (for ex. in case of air tickets – issue, change, refund etc.). As these service fees are a valuable source of revenue, you as a TMC, should be strict when applying fees, discounts and commissions.

Topics: travel erp Travel Management Company TMC travel agency management travel process automation TINA process automation

The Flow in Workflows: Back-Office Automation for Travel Agencies

It would be an understatement to say travel agencies must work harder, faster, and more efficiently in today’s global travel industry to remain competitive among the variety of methods travelers have to complete bookings. Today’s travelers demand agile, transparent, and highly visible value chains that cut through the complexity of an industry with a wide variety of suppliers, tour operators, travel management companies, and other key players. As a result, travel agencies must leverage efficient, productive workflows and operational platforms to meet customer demands, especially in the back-office even though many customers might not be aware of these non-customer facing tasks.

But the question is: How can travel agencies improve their workflows and streamline their back-office processes to remain competitive on a global stage? The answer lies in workflows and back-office automation solutions that allow travel agencies to eliminate manual, time-consuming processes that once divided an agent’s attention from interacting with and positioning the right products to the right customer.

Topics: travel agency workflow back office automation process automation automated processes

5 Processes Travel Agencies Can Automate with a Travel ERP

20 minutes may not sound like a lot of time. It’s a quick lunch or a long shower, but it doesn’t seem like enough time to worry about how efficiently it’s been spent. But multiply that 20 minutes five thousand times and you begin to see the way that best use of 20 minutes compounded over a month or a year can turn into real time and real money. If a small travel agency spends 20 minutes manually processing each of the 5,000 airline tickets it sells in a month, that 20 minute process takes up nearly 2,000 hours worth of work—the work of several employees.

Even in today’s increasingly digitized travel industry, this is still all too common of a scenario, especially for smaller travel agencies or travel companies. Yes, it’s true these tasks are important and a large part of a travel agency’s operations. Of course, tickets need to be processed—just as travel policies need to be enforced, invoices need to be managed, and 3rd party bookings need to be recorded. Just because these tasks are crucial, however, does not mean that they still need to be done by hand. Agencies utilizing a travel ERP solution ought to be able to automate these processes and many others, thereby saving time and money while freeing up employees to focus on providing value and completing more useful tasks.

Topics: erp travel erp travel erp system travel process automation process automation travel agencies

Wondering what's new in TINA 3?

TINA 3 reflects 14 years of experience in the mid back office area, gathered from more than 45 markets. In order to be validated, all the new features of the product have been tested against the normal day to day operations performed by more than 300 travel agencies across the world.

'We have focused on several major areas: 

  • Improved user experience
  • Increased number of automated processes
  • Big Data Aggregation with new features in the reporting module
  • Addition of processes control tools
  • Customized Deployment and implementation depending on project size

 

Topics: travel erp process automation

Has Real Disruption & Opportunity Hit the Travel Management Company?

During the past decade it has certainly seemed to be the case that disruption has been experienced to a far greater degree on the leisure side of travel rather than business side. Leisure travel has been impacted by OTA and witnessed the role of the travel agent - though still a force now – reduced in decision-making influence to that of friends, family and social media.

Topics: Travel Industry travel erp Travel Management Company TMC TINA process automation dcs plus Business Process Automation