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

Copyright 2013 www.tavisca.com Tavisca is a registered trademark1

Deciphering Travel Technology

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

Date 15th Aug 2013

Travel technology knowledge forum

http://www.tavisca.com/


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: [email protected]





Which technology components would we cover today ?



Critical components in travel business value chain-

Booking & your online

store

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

IBE

GDS

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


Air

Hotel

Car

Activity

Deals




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

Sales

Marketing

Accounting




Customer support Easy access to booking data

Revenue Managers

Marketing

Sales

Accounting

Customer support




Revenue managers Comprehensive mark-up management

Customer support

Marketing

Sales

Accounting




Ability to create static offers quickly Marketing

Sales

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

Sales

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




[email protected]

Auto

notifications

to hotels for

bookings

Black out

dates &

availability

Advanced

purchase

norms

Manage room

allocations

Build 3 D/4 N

deals



• 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

[email protected]

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



