The Right Travel Agent Software Will Have Your Agents Selling More

[Glenn Dean]

The travel business has gone through significant changes over the past few years and travel agencies have had to adjust their business tools along the way. Finding the right travel agent software can help an agency owner get agents trained and selling quicker while streamlining the agencies overall selling process. The travel agent booking engines available today are easy to use and are designed to help agency owners automate processes, increase revenues and reduce time and effort required to complete a transaction.

Today's applications provide an agent view (B2B) for travel professionals to use as well as easy to use consumer views (B2C) for an agency's website. Many use the same application for each view, eliminating any concern an agency owner may have with syncing up passenger records with two separate systems. The travel agent view provides agents using the application with important information such as commission amount, fare basis codes used, etc. While these fields are visible to travel agents using the application, they are hidden to the consumer who would not understand the relevance anyway.

Flexible and Customizable, online booking engines can be easily customized to support each agency's own brand identity and unique selling style. Many online booking solutions include revenue management tools to help an agency owner control the selling price and maximize revenues. The ability to define unique business rules allow an agency to feature special deals and value add offers to their customers and adjust theses offers along the way.

Knowing what your customers are purchasing online is important, but knowing what they are looking for on your website can be even more important. Most of today's online applications include the ability to track bookings made online, but some also have the ability to track specific search criteria, which will show what customers are looking for. This can be valuable information when identifying travel trends and ensuring that you have the right product at the right price available for your agents and customers alike.

The right travel agent software can also enable agency owners to expand their clientele base while reducing their overall operating costs. For example, there is often no limit to the number of users or websites that can access an online travel booking engine and some can even handle multiple languages and currencies to allow travel agencies to quickly expand their business into new markets.

An online booking engine is no longer something that only large travel companies can afford and there is an online booking engine available today to meet the needs of any size travel business. So if your agency needs an air booking engine, hotel booking engine or a cruise booking engine and whether your customer books directly with a travel agent (B2B) -or- they prefer to shop and book online (B2C), there is a travel agent software available to help you service them quickly and easily. All you need to do is find a technology partner that has the tools that your business needs to compete.

In this article author writes about Odysseus Solutions. The added value that a Travel Booking Engine can offer your customers will simply help your travel business build brand recognition and expand the ways that you interact with your customers.