Wednesday 31 August 2016

What are the benefits of OTA travel technology solutions over direct booking system?

The key to successful usage of the direct booking strategy increases site’s customization to ensure that visitors have access to direct booking rewards when it means the most. When a website visitor comes directly from an Online Travel Agency (OTA), hotels have the opportunity to give a unique and special experience which makes them place the booking.

Online Travel Agency
There is no doubt that the reservation giants consolidate and display travel information related to pricing. The main problem for hoteliers is that these sites have a primary purpose of booking rooms than to please the travelers. OTA is the ideal choice to book quickly, but many forget the hidden benefits of booking directly with hotels.

If customers choose to search directly on the hotel website and book ahead, they will be looking for a personalized experience. Independent hotels can provide great flexibility regarding the choice of rooms available, re-booking and price negotiations. The hotel's agent knows the system inside and outside to provide the best recommendations for restaurants and local attractions and accommodation for guests. The marketing benefits of direct booking is not a new concept to travelers, but many hotels continue building on their own websites.

The key is to capture the attention of visitors quickly when they visit websites, by marketing the benefits of direct booking on the site, which are best for them. By understanding the interest of the visitors from their first visit to the site, many agents have been able to engage visitors to build the value of booking directly with third parties.
Direct Booking Website
Meanwhile, at least one travel agency prices jumped on OTA, the possibility of using the value to promote and decry OTA’s use of customers. Travel agencies are using data of the customers to provide customized services. OTAs that act as marketing organizations are not sustainable for long term. The brand message will be lost when consumers realize that there is no real advantage to use their products. If metasearch provides a superior products and best prices and operations are intuitive and smooth the sites through the party.

From a customer perspective, by an OTA reservation makes no difference, because they see the same speed in the hotel room, as they do in OTA. However, there are several additional benefits directly to consumers to get the booking, but consumers won't get these advantages, unless the hotel knows about the reservation.

Driving Traffic: OTA vs Direct Hotel Booking

One of the benefits of OTA which is little-known is that it really drives traffic to the hotel reservation website. According to a study by Google, 52% of travelers visit the hotel’s website and view the available room or space before they place the booking. Towards the end, using OTA for the first time or to quickly fill vacant rooms is worth the cost of the commission. However, the purpose is to display the required information to the website visitor and place the booking. It helps in balancing satisfaction and expectation level of the customer. In that case OTA acts fast than a direct booking website.

How the new chat feature of Booking.com is going to favor travel technology business?

On 4 May 2016, Booking.com announced its new chat feature which allows the customers to text their accommodation soon after placing the hotel reservations. Though this advent is an old school feature, it allows any sort of conversations with the property owners. This is adding value to the business of travel technology companies.

Hotel Reservation System
All of us are accustomed to social media channels and several other chat applications to keep in touch with pals or family. This new feature allows the user to send a text within short span of time. Also, it avoids the time wasted by waiting for the response they expect through social media channels like Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter.

The chat interface will let you request for a early check-in, even on the way to your hotel. Language barrier is also eliminated through this add-on feature of the app. Pre-translated templates will allow to answer the most common queries raised by the users. This would be really grateful for non-English speaking people from various parts of the globe.

David Vismans, Chief Product Officer at Booking.com commented on the immediate response gained through this recent development, “We know that 75 (percent) of our customers prefer self-service options to take care of simple requests. With the new Booking Messages interface, customers can literally customize and manage their trips in the palm of their hand. This technology takes away the worry of a busy front desk, different time zones, or friction of communication between people speaking different languages.”

Online Travel Agency
The latest feature was released last week. So the company is expecting a positive response which leads to the enhancement of customer service offered by Booking.com. Booking.com gained the highest ranking among the travel apps, under the study conducted by ARC. By this new feature, it is emphasizing that this application deserves to be on the highest ranking position.

10 Things To Consider Before You Design Travel Website or B2C, B2B Travel Portal

Everyone loves to travel. Nowadays the number of travellers have increased tremendously. While initial thought of journey arise in the mind, many tend to get more information from the online sources. They search for the destinations, best deals, flight bookings, hotel reservations and best time for travel on different OTA websites and travel portals.  
Travel Website Development
The traditional model of making personal visit to any of the travel agency and placing the booking, have totally changed. All the bookings happen online. Hence, your travel website should be technologically advanced to meet the needs and preferences of your client.
If you are a travel agent and you plan to develop travel website for your company, make a note of  the below mentioned factors. For those who own their own websites, you might be wondering why you are losing business? For all your queries, we are providing 10 important facts to consider before you design travel website. If these factors are followed you can gain reach and thereby your business develops.
1. Responsive Design
The website should be developed on responsive design platform. This enable your website to perform well on mobile devices too. Every time customers won’t browse on desktop and make their bookings. Therefore, it’s very important to provide them best user experience while they sign-in to your website using tablets or mobile phones.
2. SEM Benefits
Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is very vital to ensure top ranking of your website in the search engine. Google Adwords and Keywords adds-on to this scenario. A professional web development company’s help is advisable to gain visibility in organic as well as advertisement links on any search engine.
3. Proper placement of Call-to-Action Buttons
The purpose of your website is to generate business leads. In that case, it is very important that you place call-to-action buttons in the proper space. Here certain psychological factors are also to be considered. Behavioral psychology will enable your website to choose and create meaningful typography, layouts and colors.  
4. Content Management
Content Management is another major factor to be considered. A lot of contents arranged in a messy way will never generate business from your website. The contents should be short and apt for the context. Infographics and images can give more look and feel to your travel website design.
Travel Agent Website
5. Boost Offers and Deals
Your web design should showcase the best deals or offers to initiate traffic. Many people plan their travel while they get good offers for flight tickets. Some travellers even prefer travelling during off season to save their money. So a way to make a proper plan on managing the deals and season should be integrated within the website to evoke interest in website visitors.
6. Integration of Online Chat/ Call Services
24x7 customer support is required if you plan to run a booking website for travel agency. If you have clients from all around the world, then online support should be organized on the basis of geographical locations.
7. Search
Instant search feature has to be embedded in your website. This helps the visitor to get the required information by entering fields in the available search form. Date, time of travel, location all these are mandatory fields to be included in the form.


8. Location Based Services
Customized services based on location can generate more clients for your business. For that you need to integrate other service providers to your website. Car rental, hotel reservation etc. based on destination helps the traveller to make bookings prior to their arrival.
9. Partnership with Service Providers
Partnership with local and international service providers will always end up in gaining more customers for your travel agency. All range of bookings starting from budget travel options to 7 star reservations can be included in your list of services.
10. Integration of Website Translator
If the aim of your business is to gain a global presence then the website translator has to be embedded within the website design. Though English is a global language, people from many parts of the world won’t be able to read and understand the content on your website. To avoid this difficulty, website translator must be a part of the website.

These are few key things, one should take care while setting up a travel portal.

Friday 26 August 2016

Cost of B2C B2B Travel Portal, Travel eCommerce Platform and Custom Mobile Apps

If you are associated with the travel industry http://goo.gl/Ccfzga as a travel company, tourism development organization, resort, travel agency, consolidator or a travel adviser; you may be using travel technology solution that lends you the edge to attract/retain customers and beat competition. Travel portal software is ideally suited for those travel agencies who require flexible, easy-to-use solutions to automate and control their business online. Your experience in your industry, backed by this robust technology, will give you the necessary ammunition to skyrocket your business through the web.
To know Cost of Travel Portal Development – fill requirement form to get a quote – http://www.provab.com/get_quote.html
Cost of Travel Portal Development
So, how to enter the OTA market? How much it cost to build an online travel portal??
To set up OTA software, one needs to have a clear idea regarding the cost involved in developing a travel portal. After-all nothing comes without a cost. For every dollar that you spend in developing the travel software, you should get 10 fold back as the latest technology driven online travel booking software will drive more customers - means increase in sales & revenue.
The overall project cost depends on the complexity and depth of your requirement. If you know nothing about development and cost, here are some points to be considered:
1. Choice of t-commerce platform:
A comprehensive travel portal can be developed on various t-commerce platforms like flight booking engine, hotel booking engine, car rental software, cruise booking engine, bus reservation system, holiday and packages booking system etc. Depending upon one’s requirements and business vision, the specific platform can be chosen. While choosing the appropriate travel module, you need to know the cost associated with it.
Flight Booking Engine: It is one of the leading travel commerce platforms that provide distribution, technology for global tourism and travel industry. An airline reservation system comes with an XML integration, which is ideally provided by some API or GDS (Global Distribution System) consolidators. API/GDS is a network operated by a company that enables automated transactions between third parties and booking agents in order to provide travel-related services to the end consumers.
A basic flight reservation system with an API integration usually costs between 6K to 9K USD. For a booking engine with GDS integration, say Amadeus, you can add 25% to above cost.
Hotel Booking Engine: Online hotel reservations are a popular method for booking hotel rooms. It is a computerized system that stores and distributes information of a hotel, resort, or other lodging facilities. Large hotel chains typically have direct connections to the airline national distribution systems (GDS) (Sabre, Galileo, Amadeus, and Worldspan). These in turn provide hotel information directly to the hundreds of thousands of OTA through their XMLs, which are integrated in a travel booking software.
A hotel booking engine with a base level design can cost you between 5K to 7K USD. Any customization in terms of design, functionality, features etc., can cost you more.
Car Rental, Cruise and Bus Booking Systems: For a comprehensive travel booking engine, these all modules play a vital role in terms of business spread. According to a study report, the travel portal with these comprehensive services have more visitors compared with a single service provider booking engine.
Generally adding a car rental software or cruise / bus booking engines in a travel portal costs between 3K to 5K USD each. However the cost varies if you go with a single module system development.
Cost of Travel Software
2. Choice of business models:
There are basically two different types of business models - B2C, B2B. Based on the audience, one can select his appropriate business model.
B2C: Business-to-Consumer (B2C) Model refers to the tactics and best practices used by the companies that sell their product and services directly to the consumers. For a booking engine with B2C model, you can add 15% to above cost.
B2B: Business-to-Business (B2B) usually connects customers & partners to important company and product info. In simple words, it refers travel AGENT module. This model ensures your business growth as well as stability. For a booking engine with B2B model, you can add 30% to above cost.
Travel portal development cost varies a lot based on the features and platforms associated with the system. It can be commented after going through the detailed requirements. Professional travel portal development companies have ready framework for different type of travel models and thus using that, may reduce the time and development cost. Better to share your scope with a professional development company and get the absolute idea about pricing.
Regarding Author:

Author is a travel technology expert and has been involved in several travel portal development projects. 

Integrate Amadeus or Galileo GDS On your Portal to access the best travel deals in Flights, Hotels, Transfers, Cruise

The reliance on the GDS systems including Galileo gds http://goo.gl/alpf95 have increased significantly over the years. Travel agencies across the world, are more and more using global distribution systems (GDS). GDS systems are enabled to provide online travel deals and data through a single source. A more traditional way of calling the provider to confirm the booking, was used, which took considerable efforts and time per booking. Today, latest travel technologies from the leading consolidators (aggregators) including Amadeus, Galileo, Sabre and Worldspan have become popular among the travel agencies and services providers. Out of all, Amadeus GDS has emerged as the most preferred by travel agents around the world to make flights, hotels, car rentals, holiday packages, ferry, cruises or other travel services booking. The volume of the ticket bookings through Amadeus system such that all the leading airlines are actually connected with Amadeus GDS system. A growing travel agency must integrate Amadeus gds web services on travel website.
Amadeus GDS system

Apart from the generic travel contents, Amadeus GDS web services provides availability, pricing, details and online reservation module to travel agencies. Nowadays, travellers prefer a one-stop service, and request rich information to make a right decision. Information from the GDS system helps them to navigate, select and book, what they like. The travel agent has to provide detailed, real-time information to enable the consumer to choose an option that is suited to all his/her needs. Amadeus travel system just makes everything easy.
Amadeus had maintained its position as the global leader in travel technology and travel distribution solutions for tourism industry, by constantly introducing innovations. Set of solutions like e power suites, web services, APIs and other value added services, let client choose – what they like. Amadeus tools are built to deliver the professional travel booking solutions. It helps the agents to deliver comprehensive travel itineraries quickly and efficiently.
For travel technology companies also, Amadeus GDS is a top choice and companies can deliver the custom made solutions to travel agents. With great technical support, that it offers – things can be big for Amadeus. Integrating Amadeus gds web services will definitely take the travel agency to another level, as it can access the huge set of travel contents governed by Amadeus GDS.
Regarding Author:

Author is a travel technology expert and has been involved in several travel portal development projects. 

Travel Software & Travel Mobile Apps are giving edge to agencies in Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Turkey

The travel industry http://goo.gl/DYZuiu has undergone a major makeover with the introduction of the online travel software and the consequent implementation of travel apps. Earlier planning a vacation was thought to be a task that required intense management skills. We have to go to a travel agent for airline booking or rail booking. Making a hotel reservation was again done through a travel agent or was accomplished after reaching the destination. We would have very vague idea about the “must visit places” at the destination, and would have to hire a travel and tour guide for the same. Similarly arranging a car rental at the destination of visit was done by coordinating with the local travel agent or the hotel.

For Travel Agency Software Development – Get a Project Quote – http://www.provab.com/get_quote.html
Travel Agency Software

The situation at present is totally different from the statements mentioned earlier. Now we don’t visit a travel agent for airline booking or hotel booking and we don’t contact travel agencies for car rental booking. We don't require a travel guide to tell us about the places to visit at our travel destination nor do we depend on anybody to tell us the direction of a place. Have you ever wonders how the process of planning a vacation have become so smooth and peaceful in the present times. Now I have the privilege of making airline reservation, rail reservation, hotel reservation, car rental reservation and planning the trip sitting at the vicinity of my home or office or any other place of my comfort.

The big question is, how this happened? This advance stage in the travel sector was achieved through the implementation of technology. Technology came in the form of development of travel agency software and travel apps. The travel agencies too have undergone a major makeover and now when we think of travel agencies, the picture that comes to our mind is an automated system which has all the information and facilities required to plan my trip.

Benefits of Online Travel software for Travel agencies

Travel software have been very beneficial for the travel agencies as it has bought a total change in the way the travel agencies used to work. Now a travel agency doesn’t depend on the traditional system of using a pen and paper to keep track of the transaction or depend on handwritten information pertaining to the details regarding dates and availability for airline, rail and hotel reservation.

Travel agencies now have an online booking system, where global distribution system integration helps in making all information including availability and pricing available to the clients. The end-users can compare the rates and availability and proceed with the airline reservation, hotel reservation and car rental booking. Similarly maintaining data, information and generating reports have become lot more easier and automated with the help of travel software.

Below are the distinct advantages of travel agency software -

  • Accessible from any location
  • Automated system for maintaining information
  • Automated system for maintaining data and generating reports
  • Data is centralized
  • Easy migration to mobile platform
  • Quick service to the clients
  • Enhance level of customer satisfaction

Travel Mobile Apps

Benefits from travel Apps

With more and more people across the globe preferring to access information through their mobile device, travel agencies now have their own travel apps to enhance their business. Travel apps are available for airline reservation, Rail reservation, hotel reservation, car rental reservation, accessing travel blogs, planning the trip and accessing the locations.
Travel apps have also helped the travel agencies to respond to the queries raised by the end-users at the earliest and bring enhancement in the level of customer satisfaction. As per the research conducted on travel apps, it was found that travel apps have helped the travel agents to acquire more clients.

Our vacation and travel planning has become lot more easier at the present times. This was only possible due to the implementation of travel agency software and travel apps by the travel agencies across the world, making our travel more comfortable and enjoyable.


Author is a travel technology expert and has been involved in several travel portal development projects. 

Develop Amadeus Software with GDS Web Services and Connect to Global Travel Inventory

The reliance on the GDS systems http://goo.gl/ffhlic including Amadeus gds have increased significantly over the years. Travel agencies across the world, are more and more using global distribution systems (GDS). GDS systems are enabled to provide online travel deals and data through a single source. A more traditional way of calling the provider to confirm the booking, was used, which took considerable efforts and time per booking. Today, latest travel technologies from the leading consolidators (aggregators) including Amadeus, Galileo, Sabre and Worldspan have become popular among the travel agencies and services providers. Out of all, Amadeus GDS has emerged as the most preferred by travel agents around the world to make flights, hotels, car rentals, holiday packages, ferry, cruises or other travel services booking. The volume of the ticket bookings through Amadeus system such that all the leading airlines are actually connected with Amadeus GDS system. A growing travel agency must integrate Amadeus gds web services on travel website.
For B2C Travel Software Development – Get a Project Quote – http://www.provab.com/get_quote.html
 B2C Travel Software Development
Apart from the generic travel contents, Amadeus GDS web services provides availability, pricing, details and online reservation module to travel agencies. Nowadays, travellers prefer a one-stop service, and request rich information to make a right decision. Information from the GDS system helps them to navigate, select and book, what they like. The travel agent has to provide detailed, real-time information to enable the consumer to choose an option that is suited to all his/her needs. Amadeus travel system just makes everything easy.
Amadeus had maintained its position as the global leader in travel technology and travel distribution solutions for tourism industry, by constantly introducing innovations. Set of solutions like e power suites, web services, APIs and other value added services, let client choose – what they like. Amadeus tools are built to deliver the professional travel booking solutions. It helps the agents to deliver comprehensive travel itineraries quickly and efficiently.
For travel technology companies also, Amadeus GDS is a top choice and companies can deliver the custom made solutions to travel agents. With great technical support, that it offers – things can be big for Amadeus. Integrating Amadeus gds web services will definitely take the travel agency to another level, as it can access the huge set of travel contents governed by Amadeus GDS.
Regarding Author:

Author is a travel technology expert and has been involved in several travel portal development projects. 

Online Booking Software with Amadeus, Travelport, Sabre GDS helping Travel Agencies

Your travel business http://goo.gl/Ccfzga may be small or big, but it can’t survive in the present world without an Online Booking Software. You may have hosting a very good travel website design on your domain and it may also be attracting a-lot of visitors as well. But without travel software, you may not be able to realize its full potential. With online travel software in place, you can not only connect to potential clients but also achieve the sales online. Integrating a travel agency software will change your website to an online booking system platform.
Online Booking Software
But how to integrate, is an intriguing issue. There are three basic methods of integration to your existing website:
iFrame Integration
Top travel software provides the white label links, which can be connected in any travel website. Your web designer can simply import these links in iframe. Thus your website will host the search box and will enable the complete online booking software on your website.
Widget integration
You add the code snippet or a widget, from travel software provider, to your website code. Sections of on the online booking UI will be added to the desired places in your website (e.g., search box, hotel room or flights on special offer).
travel software development
API integration
API integration is one of the most common methods used today. You need a professional travel software development company to achieve this. APIs provide the web services XML, which should be programmed to connect to third party server to bring the data. Its always advisable to hire an experienced travel portal developer to do this for you. Hotel APIs or Flight APIs integration will give you the complete control on look n feel of the system and customization.
With API integration, travel companies can -
Have B2C, B2B, corporate and white-label modules
Manage multiple suppliers including GDS & hotel consolidators
Manage separate sub-domains / domains for end users and agents
Update the markup from the backend
Have IP based currency option
Have comprehensive reporting system
Regarding Author:

Author is a travel technology expert and has been involved in several travel portal development projects. 

Thursday 25 August 2016

Integrate Amadeus GDS Web Services On Travel Agency Website

The reliance on the GDS systems including Amadeus gds have increased significantly over the years. Travel agencies across the world, are more and more using global distribution systems (GDS). GDS systems are enabled to provide online travel deals and data through a single source. A more traditional way of calling the provider to confirm the booking, was used, which took considerable efforts and time per booking. Today, latest travel technologies from the leading consolidators (aggregators) including Amadeus, Galileo, Sabre and Worldspan have become popular among the travel agencies and services providers. Out of all, Amadeus GDS has emerged as the most preferred by travel agents around the world to make flights, hotels, car rentals, holiday packages, ferry, cruises or other travel services booking. The volume of the ticket bookings through Amadeus system such that all the leading airlines are actually connected with Amadeus GDS system. A growing travel agency must integrate Amadeus gds web services on travel website.
Amadeus GDS system
Apart from the generic travel contents, Amadeus GDS web services provides availability, pricing, details and online reservation module to travel agencies. Nowadays, travellers prefer a one-stop service, and request rich information to make a right decision. Information from the GDS system helps them to navigate, select and book, what they like. The travel agent has to provide detailed, real-time information to enable the consumer to choose an option that is suited to all his/her needs. Amadeus travel system just makes everything easy.
Amadeus had maintained its position as the global leader in travel technology and travel distribution solutions for tourism industry, by constantly introducing innovations. Set of solutions like e power suites, web services, APIs and other value added services, let client choose – what they like.  Amadeus tools are built to deliver the professional travel booking solutions. It helps the agents to deliver comprehensive travel itineraries quickly and efficiently.
For travel technology companies also, Amadeus GDS is a top choice and companies can deliver the custom made solutions to travel agents. With great technical support, that it offers – things can be big for Amadeus. Integrating Amadeus gds web services will definitely take the travel agency to another level, as it can access the huge set of travel contents governed by Amadeus GDS.
Regarding Author:

Author is a travel technology expert and has been involved in several travel portal development projects.