deciphering travel technology – which components should you look for in a travel platform?

Deciphering Travel Technology

Which components should you look for in a travel technology platform?

Date 15th Aug 2013

Travel technology knowledge forum

About the presenters

Mahendra YadavCEO -Tavisca SolutionsHas built technology that powers over a million travel bookings annually for travel businesses across the globe.

Rahul PilkhwalCTO & Evangelist -Tavisca SolutionsHas architected cutting edge tools and components for travel companies that solve key business challenges

Kaustubh LatkarGM -Tavisca SolutionsHas worked with travel businesses across the world to implement relevant technology that brings sustainable benefits

Email: myadav@tavisca.com

Email: rpilkhwal@tavisca.com

Email: klatkar@tavisca.com

Which technology components would we cover today ?

Critical components in travel business value chain-

Booking & your online

Post booking operations

Niche inventory-a

differentiator

Standardized content

Security and scale

Booking Engine (IBE)

Back-OfficeInventory Manager

Hotel content Standardization

Hosting and data security

Common elements of a travel technology platform

Part 1

Internet Booking Engine (IBE)

Part 1 Internet Booking Engine (IBE)

An Internet booking engine (IBE) is a software that has the ability to search and book travel products such as Air, Hotel, Activity and Car in real time.

An IBE connects to suppliers of travel products such as GDS’s, Direct connects, Hotel, Activity and Car consolidators.

Agency Website

Consolidators for hotels,

activity &car

Agency

WebsiteIBE

Question that we often hear;

Is the IBE and my agency website the same ?

Your agency website can be completely built on top of the IBE,

a method popularly known as a white label website

Your agency website can be independent of the IBE and only

the searches would be directed to the IBE using a ‘Search Widget’

Integrating your agency website and the IBE

Ideal Search & Booking experience - The Shopping Cart

Activity

Booking on behalf of customers

Email quotation to customers

Agencies with walk-in customers

• White Label & Search widgetOffers both ‘white label’ as well as ‘search widget’ capability

• Create marketing pages Flexibility to add static marketing offers & pages

• Shopping cart Should have a shopping cart to book multiple products

• SuppliersShould search & book through multiple global suppliers

• Travel arranger flowShould support booking on behalf of customers

• Send QuotationsShould be able to send quotation to customers

• Mobile ready Should works on desktops as well as mobile devices

Check list for success

Part 2

Back-office

keywords:back-office, mid-office, configuration manager, MIS, backend, agency operations

Part 2 The Back-office

A back-office is a software that helps you track all bookings on your IBE, configure business functions such as markups, enables management of suppliers and provides reports.

MISSION CONTROL

Simplifies the lives of people working for an agency

Operations

Customer support

Revenue managers

Marketing

Accounting

Customer support Easy access to booking data

Revenue Managers

Marketing

Accounting

Customer support

Revenue managers Comprehensive mark-up management

Customer support

Marketing

Accounting

Ability to create static offers quickly Marketing

Accounting

Customer support

Revenue managers

Sales Access to customer data to run CRM activities

Marketing

Accounting

Customer support

Revenue managers

Accounting Primary accounting reports across all bookings

Marketing

Customer support

Revenue managers

• Customer service Access booking data easily

• MarketingCreate static offers & SEO for marketing

• Accounting teams Should be able to reconcile reports

• Revenue managers Control and manage comprehensive mark-ups

• Sales teams Easily able to conduct CRM activities

Part 3

Inventory manager

Keywords: Paper contracts, negotiated inventory, contracting ,negotiated hotels and activities, Niche travel

Part 3 Inventory manager

Inventory management applications enable travel businesses to sell their negotiated hotels and activities through the IBE & create a differentiator.

Negotiated contracts, especially for hotels, have complex clauses and terms.

• Black out dates • Early bird offers • Inclusions and meals • Extra adult/child pricing • Advanced purchase restrictions

eva@hilton.com

notifications

to hotels for

bookings

Black out

dates &

availability

Advanced

purchase

Manage room

allocations

Build 3 D/4 N

• Booking notificationsAuto booking notifications to hotel and activity vendors

• Dates Manage availability

• Allocation & RatesManage room allocation and pricing options

• Define deals Ability to define deals such as 2 Nights - 3 Days in hotels

• Static dataManage static hotel & activities data. ( Such as update latest feedback about that property/activity )

Part 4

Content standardization

Keywords: De-duplication, hotel static content, hotel mapping, hotel matching, clarifi

Part 4 Hotel content standardization

Challenge- communicating the right information about the hotel that a customer is booking ….

Hotel Parktown Hotel Parktown Annex

Why is hotel content standardization a BIG problem for agencies ?

• Thousands of hotels (Non Unique) from multiple suppliers • Millions of hotel images – some good, some bad• Variance is address and location • Leads to ‘incorrectly mapped’ hotels visible through your IBE

Hotel content standardization applications work with your IBE, ensuring that the hotel data shown to your customers is accurate for location, hotel name, star rating and latest updated information of the property

A great platform is the one with reliable & regular hotel content standardization process

• Auto download contentAutomatic update of hotel static content from hotel suppliers

• De-duplicate hotelsAutomatically find duplicate hotels

• Correct hotel dataAbility to fix incorrect hotel data such as address, name etc.

• Ability to publish such data to your IBE regularly

Part 5

Why hosting and security

matters….

Keyword: PCI compliant, PCI PA DSS, Cloud hosting,

payment gateway

Part 5 Hosting and security

Your booking technology should be compliant with online payment processing standards such as PCI PA DSS

Your booking technology should be hosted on secure cloud infrastructure

Your booking technology should follow good practices in encrypting payment related data

• Cloud Ready Should offer benefit of Cloud - ROI, performance and ease of scaling up your business

• Payment standardsShould comply with payment processing data standards – PCI PA DSS compliant

• Data Security & ownership Should follow data security standards using encryption of relevant data

TravelNxt Ready Reckoner

TravelNxt’s ready reckoner

A checklist for basic evaluation of a travel technology platform

• White Label & Search widgetOffers both ‘white label’ as well as ‘search widget’ capability

• Create marketing pages Flexibility to add static marketing offers & pages

• Shopping cart Should have a shopping cart to book multiple products

• SuppliersShould search & book through multiple global suppliers

• Travel arranger flowShould support booking on behalf of customers

• Send QuotationsShould be able to send quotation to customers

• Mobile ready Should works on desktops as well as mobile devices

• Customer service Access booking data easily

• MarketingCreate static offers & SEO for marketing

• Accounting teams Should be able to reconcile reports

• Revenue managers Control and manage comprehensive mark-ups

• Sales teams Easily able to conduct CRM activities

• Booking notificationsAuto booking notifications to hotel and activity vendors

• Dates Manage availability

• Allocation & RatesManage room allocation and pricing options

• Define deals Ability to define deals such as 2 Nights - 3 Days in hotels

• Static dataManage static hotel & activities data. ( Such as update latest feedback about that property/activity )

• Auto download contentAutomatic update of hotel static content from hotel suppliers

• De-duplicate hotelsAutomatically find duplicate hotels

• Correct hotel dataAbility to fix incorrect hotel data such as address, name etc.

• Ability to publish such data to your IBE regularly

• Cloud Ready Should offer benefit of Cloud - ROI, performance and ease of scaling up your business

• Payment standardsShould comply with payment processing data standards – PCI PA DSS compliant

• Data Security & ownership Should follow data security standards using encryption of relevant data

Webinar Recording & our complimentary checklist

Webinar recording would be made available to participants

Complimentary ‘Ready Reckoner’ for evaluating technology

Tavisca – Contact us

For any additional information and in-depth support on

choosing travel technology, do get in touch with us on

info@tavisca.com

www.tavisca.com

@Tavisca

About the presenters

Mahendra YadavCEO -Tavisca SolutionsHas built technology that powers over a million travel bookings annually for travel businesses across the globe.

Rahul PilkhwalCTO & Evangelist -Tavisca SolutionsHas architected cutting edge tools and components for travel companies that solve key business challenges

Kaustubh LatkarGM -Tavisca SolutionsHas worked with travel businesses across the world to implement relevant technology that brings sustainable benefits

Email: myadav@tavisca.com

Email: rpilkhwal@tavisca.com

Email: klatkar@tavisca.com

deciphering travel technology – which components should you look for in a travel platform?

registered trademark

travel businesses

travel companies

travel bookings

book travel products

technology components

suppliers of travel

relevant technology

Travel

deciphering earth’s history

deciphering diabetes

deciphering medicare part d

deciphering... india budget 2017

the textual traditions of baḤĪrĀ: deciphering the...

deciphering cimp msgs

deciphering the spin

deciphering india's demographic puzzle

components of successful travel training programs: research...

deciphering the tablets

deciphering fake news #infoworriesunc

deciphering brazil and mexico

deciphering legal citations

deciphering modals - uprrp

components of successful travel training programs: research...

major components of the travel business

buying business travel - cips events/buying business...

deciphering daniel 11 - wordpress.com

electric travel drive systems liebherr components ·...

communication deciphering inmate communication