8 Reasons Travel Agencies Need Online Booking Tool

The vast majority of companies promote their products and services on the Internet. Through a simple website or blog, any company can increase its visibility on the net, attract more traffic to its product, and, therefore, a larger clientele. 

Remarkably, a great number of travel agencies worldwide have already taken a step further in online promotion and have turned their website into something more than a showcase – an interactive platform for conducting travel business. This saves time, increases visits, and boosts profit.

One method to improve the performance of your travel agency’s web pages is to include an online booking tool. In this way, you will draw more visitors, who will book travel arrangements immediately on your website, with the reliability of a secured transaction.

Wouldn’t it be nice if your online booking system brought more revenue to your company? What should a good online booking tool (OBT) system have? And how the OBT proved to be the definitive solution for the first steps in creating travel decisions after the global pandemic of COVID-19 shook the world to its core? 

More of that in the following lines.

1. Available 24/7, With Customer Support at Hand

While On the Internet, it’s like getting everything we ever wanted right now. 

Why wouldn’t someone book a flight on a Friday at 4 in the morning and have it available for the next day at 3 PM along with the Hotel reservation and car waiting outside the airport? 

This is the very ease that makes the Internet the most compelling promotional tool, and business channel that has ever existed.

Without an OBT, you have to manage your own available time for selling travel on your website. Let’s say that you are available to create bookings by e-mail or telephone for 8 hours. It is likely that most clients will have to wait for you to entirely complete their reservation. 

Or that you will have to check out with the management of the desired hotel first. Not the most effective way to maximize the booking quota as you probably already imagine…

However, an Online Booking Tool enables you to constantly be open to receiving potential visitors, letting them book their flights, hotels and cars when it is easier for them to do so without restricting schedules or dates. 

An ideal OBT will have rich travel content and availability for diverse Global Distribution Systems. Your customers can take advantage of all the booking opportunities available worldwide with perfect pricing and constant availability updates. 

At the same time, your OBT technology partner will always be at your service if any issue arises when travelers create bookings.

2. Availability in Various Distribution Systems That Provide the Best Results 

As mentioned before, the perfect OBT interconnects with all the popular distribution systems and other travel suppliers, such as low-cost carriers, direct connect to airlines, hotel bed banks, etc. It will provide you with the content and services so that, with a simple click, your customer’s purchase travel directly from you, while you sleep, literally.

Following all these steps and receiving online reservations in a safe, comfortable, fast, and economical way will improve your revenue. Additionally, it will take customers only a couple of minutes to make their travel purchase on your website.

All of this thanks to the availability of the online booking tool that is linked with prominent travel services, suppliers, and distribution systems. 

Why keep waiting for the phone to ring or email to be received when the bookings can be created like a hailstorm while you spend your agency’s valued time and resources on a more fruitful purpose?

3. OBT is Constantly Improved by Technology Partner

Online reservations and availability systems go far beyond the traditional booking contact form that doesn’t give customers a clear picture of the status of their reservations. Besides, tourists cannot receive an immediate reservation confirmation from traditional booking forms. That is not acceptable by modern booking standards to say at least.

For an Online Booking Tool to be reliable, it must have at least these three basic characteristics. These will allow your customers to make a complete reservation in record time via massive distribution systems.

The technology partner that you will license the OBT form will constantly work on improving the tool for your benefit. Technology changes, travel suppliers update their systems, online payment methods vary, security of transactions needs to be optimum.  

All of these technical tasks are managed by the technology partner development so you do not need to worry about it. Your main focus will be on your sales and marketing initiatives so altogether, the OBT will help you increase your revenue and expand your business.

4. Reduce Manual Effort of Your Customers

Chances are that If your travel agency doesn’t have an Online Booking Tool, you most probably have to handle reservations manually in a world where even passports are likely going to become digital. 

Many Travel Agencies continue to record reservations in scrapbooks, notebooks, or home databases. A good online reservation system should automate your work and do it in the following way:

– Guarantee the availability of flights, hotels, and cars that your customers will purchase from you.

– Send an automatic email confirmation of the reservation.

– Collect all the information during the reservation process so that it is unnecessary to request more information later

This creates a pleasant and straightforward customer journey for anyone who visits your travel agency’s website, on any platform, at any place on the planet – some of the many reasons online booking tools are the definitive aid in the COVID-19 affected world.

5. You Will Control All Your Reservations in a Single System

It is also important that you include the reservations made by phone, e-mail, and on-site in your online reservation and availability system so that they are all in the same system and that the availability calendar is always up-to-date. 

A unified database is a resource of crucial value for a company that aims for long-term stability and highly accessible data.

All your reservations will be in a single place and easily accessible. You will be able to manage them and produce reports. Data can be exported to your accounting system for a better follow-up.

6. Markups, Service Fees, Discounts, and Promotional Codes

A system capable of including these extras in the reservation process ensures a complementary source of income and a more complete service for its clients. You can therefore create various markup services. An OBT will allow you to manage those in the system and it will apply them to all fares returned by travel suppliers.

This will allow you to increase your revenue in an automated way and with full control over how you want it to work for you.

Discount codes are a good way to promote your tourism business in low seasons or difficult times like the current one. A good online reservation and availability system should allow you to apply discounts to optimize your sales.

7.  Simple and Clear Overview That’s Impossible to Confuse Anyone

A good online booking tool should provide your customers an interface where they can view flights and confirm reservations at a glance. 

This way you will no longer have to keep written records. All information is in one place and the entire back team can work more efficiently.

Online booking tool is the most straightforward way someone could browse for the most suitable flight, hotel, or rental service and choose the one that accommodates its wishes with no confusion or misleading options.

8. Various Online Payment Gateways, Credit Card and Anti-Fraud Options

It is a fundamental step for the reservation process to be complete. You may also want your reservation system to include an online payment gateway and anti-fraud options. It is most recommended to be fully integrated and secure against malicious possibilities.

With an online booking tool, your travel agency’s website becomes a 100% independent tool that can handle your customers’ reservations from A to Z with no manual intervention, which represents a considerable time saving and reduces to 0 the chances of error.

Using various secure payment gateways such as ConnexPay, PayPal or Anti-Fraud options such as ClearSale proves to be the most reliable way of managing bookings. 

Both for your visitors and you as someone who manages their trust but also someone who should provide security and only the top-notch service.

In Conclusion

The future of the travel industry has never been so uncertain as in the near past.

As the world of travel slowly but surely returns to its previous nature, one technological innovation is turning out to be the definitive answer for all uncertainties and wishes that strike a common traveler.

It’s not even a question of whether Online Booking Tools are the necessary part of every modern travel agency’s website, but what kind of solution truly fits the modern traveler customer’s demands. 

In the present time and date, travel agencies should embed nothing but a safe and advanced solution for a booking tool into their website. After all, reliability and delivery are the two cornerstones of every effective and modern software resolution.