Travel Booking Engines Functionality & Content Are Key

[Glenn Dean]

There are so many different types of content available and so many different online travel booking engines available today that it is sometimes difficult to know which is the best fit for your company. While one booking engine may have the great functionality and the features you need, it may not have the content your clients are looking for. On the flip side, you may find a travel booking solution with the perfect content source, but find that it is missing the functionality and features you need.

If you are selling multiple travel products, you may want your booking engine to access hotel content using one source, but look to use a totally different connection for your airline bookings or perhaps several other sources when booking a cruise. Finding the all the right travel related content sources in a single online booking solution that has the features and functionality you need can be overwhelming at first and a bit of a challenge at best.

The solution to your problems may be found with an online booking engine with the features and functionality you need to properly manage your business that also has a flexible supplier connection gateway which will allow you to access different content sources for different travel products. Some of the more advanced travel booking engine seven allow you to choose specific content sources by Supplier, providing the ultimate in content source flexibility. Say you want to use your GDS to make most of your cruise bookings, except one or two where you prefer to use a direct connection for faster response time or enhanced functionality. Your booking engine needs to be able to quickly and easily support these different connections and know when to use each.

As preferred supplier relationship become increasingly important to securing the best price and commission levels, display biasing has become a tool for many agencies to promote their preferred suppliers over one that’s not preferred. In many cases, the ability to bias the display towards one supplier over another allows an agency to steer consumers to the Supplier they earn the best commission with, thus increasing their overall profits. Many Suppliers are quick to recognize the benefits of a biased display and some may offer increased commissions and marketing support to those with an online booking solution that has this capability.

Travel Booking Engines also need the ability to quickly and easily define business rules so you can maximize profits and include value add offers or special deals in the availability display. Your online booking engine needs to be able to keep up with all the different specials and promotions that Suppliers make available today. Selling price adjustments and value add offers should be easy to define and have the flexibility to define a rule by a specific market, travel dates, booking dates, supplier uses and more.

Finding a travel booking solution that has the functionality and content you need is an important decision for your business, finding the right technology partner to assist you can be even more important.

In this article author writes about Odysseus Solutions. Some of the more advanced travel booking engine seven allow you to choose specific content sources by Supplier, providing the ultimate in content source flexibility.