travel tech insights

For many customers, the look, feel, and vibe of a company’s branding can be just as influential in  whether they work with said company as the products and services themselves. As such, it’s important for these companies - especially companies within the travel industry, many of which use brand management and image as a chief selling point - to ensure their brand is uniform and cohesive across a number of different platforms, including offers, vouchers, receipts, and other forms of documentation.

But the problem for many travel agencies and travel management companies is that many booking engines and other ERP systems lack the capacity for those within the company to manage their document templates. These templates often times have to be adjusted, modified, or managed by external developers, which is costly, time-consuming, and inefficient, especially when it comes to creating specifically tailored documents for a number of different applications.

For travel agents, the ability to offer customers quick and efficient search responses is similar to running a marathon - you have to be steady and consistent, but you also have to be fast and nimble, especially in today’s global travel and tourism landscape. A travel agency’s ability to drive sales and profitability depends on utilizing a booking engine with a powerful search component to help customers sift through the multitude of products and services in order to find the product that best suits their needs.

However, it’s not just about assisting customers through the metaphorical jungle of travel offers - it’s about decreasing the amount of time customers devote to this task. In today’s hyper-connected travel industry, travelers expect agents to respond quickly and comprehensively to inquiries, which makes search response perhaps one of the more most important value propositions of advanced booking and reservations systems. In an era when so many travelers can research and complete bookings with the technology they carry in their pocket on a daily basis, the onus is on travel agents to deploy booking systems with enough computing power to return advanced searches in a competitive enough manner.

Imagine you’re planning a long road trip with a group of friends. You’ve plotted out your route, made a list of stops you want to make and sights you want to see, and the last step is deciding what car you’re going to drive. You want a car that is reliable, big enough to comfortably seat everyone, and cost-effective enough so you don’t squander money on fuel. This may sound strange, but the link between this hypothetical road trip and optimizing travel agent search capabilities through advanced mapping is stronger than you’d think.

In incorporating advanced search capabilities, travel agents desire reliable search capabilities, comprehensive search functions, and a search technology solution that is cost-efficient and promotes growth across the entire value chain. Travel booking engines, with their capability to integrate travel suppliers and work with more wholesalers and Global Distribution Systems, empower agencies to offer an even greater product variety and availability at the best rate.

Travel agents in today’s travel industry are in something of a precarious position. To remain competitive with online travel companies, travel review websites, and travel and tourism social media platforms, agents must provide streamlined levels of customer service based on speed and convenience while at the same time offering travelers the personalized touch they desire from interacting on a one-on-one basis with a human being. Walking the line between efficiency and individualized service can great stress on agents as they attempt to manage several tasks and priorities during a single transaction, which can result in errors or gaps in process management that impact multiple touch points across an agency’s value chain.

This is where travel booking engines can help travel agents cut the complexity. Because booking engines provide travel agents with the real-time capability to analyze, review, modify, or even suggest bookings, agents can significantly reduce the potential for errors often associated with high-volume tasks, which in turn provides greater levels of agility and efficiency with the products and services they offer. Travel booking engines also decrease the amount of human intervention necessary during the booking process, which allows travel agents to invest more time and resources in providing travelers with the personalized touch they seek when working with an agent.