Travel technology has radically revolutionized the contemporary traveler’s experience when booking or modifying plans. Travelers now have control over their reservations in the palm of their hand and may make adjustments without contacting a travel agent.
What exactly is meant by travel technology?
Travel technology refers to using information technology (IT) or information and communications technology (ICT) in the travel industry. Tourism technology or hospitality automation is other terms for it. It entails utilizing technology to organize holidays. It assists B2B travel agencies in booking tours for their travel agents, as well as hotel accommodations and various other travel-related activities.
Importance of travel technology in B2B travel agency
Travel technology automates travel operations such as bookings, itineraries, payments, and customized packages to increase operational efficiency, reduce costs, and improve the customer experience. It helps with process monitoring and streamlining, the flow of information maintenance, and communication and record management. In reality, increasing operational efficiency helps cut expenses while allowing for quick expansion. Every reservation system maintains and retrieves real-time data, allowing B2B travel agents to expedite communication with all the travel agents.
How travel technology is improving the travel experience?
The following are the ways in which travel technology is improving the travel experience:
- Simple reservations
Travel agents may use travel technology to book hotels, lodgings, and even specified activities in minutes. The internet has made it possible to locate the best hotels and lodging. Websites can provide hotels and lodging alternatives ideal for your needs and tour budget. You do not need to print the hotel bookings because e-tickets and mobile check-ins are available. It will spare you the difficulty of taking many papers and a large amount of paper.
- Altering reservations
Mobile applications and websites have drastically revolutionized the contemporary traveller’s experience when altering bookings. Travel agencies have complete control over their reservations and may make changes immediately. Travellers may also interact with Chatbots that can answer basic queries about their travel experience, such as rebooking or adding a stop to an existing reservation, thanks to travel technology.
- Hotel reservations
Travel agents no longer need to visit a counter to pick a hotel. Nowadays, hotel reservations are made online. Online lodging services now provide a faster approach and informed solutions that help hotels. Last-minute travellers frequently hunt for hotel rooms. On specialized websites and apps, spontaneous travellers can quickly secure extra rooms. Hotel websites use artificial intelligence for personalization and ease when booking a stay. Chatbots can effectively interact with travel agents to answer queries and provide information.
Travel technology assists travel agents as they make their final decisions.
- Wearables and the Internet of Things (IoT)
The Internet of Things is a beneficial technology in a variety of fields. The tourist sector has also embraced this cutting-edge technology for connecting numerous gadgets. IoT technologies may be employed in hotels to provide superior services to travellers via linked gadgets. Wearables are used by many travel businesses to increase travel agent involvement.
- Individualized tour experience
Travel agents mostly prefer personalized and unique travel experiences to enjoy the best travel experience. Technological breakthroughs have made it feasible for you to have a one-of-a-kind experience.
- Online Evaluations
Travellers rely on the opinions and evaluations of people in the online community to locate the best entertainment, restaurants, activities, and attractions. The social media presence and reputation of businesses also influence travellers’ decisions. If a hotel has a good reputation and engages with travel agents regularly, they regard them favourably. Online reviews influence travellers to choose one business over another.
The goal of travel technology is to increase speed and agility to better identify and respond to the needs of travel agents than ever before
It’s important to keep travel agents happy while ensuring revenue growth and making travel agencies profitable. Even though too many firms in the industry are still dealing with legacy organizational structures and old ways of thinking and doing things, it is time to reform and modernize, and adopting a tourist management platform will undoubtedly be the basis to meet the new expectations! Today’s “musts” include maximum efficiency, agility, end-to-end experiences based on real-time data, and hyper-personalized services.
Making use of digital transformation to gain a competitive edge
The digital transformation in travel technology has only accelerated as a result of the pandemic. As we approach a new era of travel and hospitality, the benefits of technology innovation will act as a competitive advantage for enterprises re-entering travellers’ lives. Travel agents will rely on AI and other experience technologies to assist them in handling the obstacles involved with travelling today, propelling the travel experience ahead.
The travel technology solutions for sustainable business growth
Travel agencies provide compelling services and travel technology solutions that ease global traveller procurement by giving real-time, aggregated access to low-cost carriers, GDS carrier schedules, and pricing. These one-of-a-kind solutions are essential to the highly competitive travel web development procurement process, driving efficiency and cost savings to help you accomplish your company objectives. Along with these exciting solutions, the following new features and functions provide additional benefits and enhance the traveller experience:
- multiple GDS integration
- back-office and mid-office integration
- payment gateway
- mobile app development
- online hotel booking engine
Why is Traveller Experience important in B2B Travel Agencies?
The word traveller’s experience relates to a traveller’s opinion of how a company satisfied their wants and expectations. The notion of a traveller’s experience indicates a chilly and detached observational judgement on the side of the travel agent. The truth, however, is considerably different. Everything from the cuisine they consume to the quantity of sleep a guest may get can impact their trip experience. The traveller’s experience is more of an emotional reaction than a guarded judgement.
The response can encourage repeat business, favourable word-of-mouth promotion, or the opposite
Your travel agent’s experience is likely to significantly influence the health and performance of your travel business. Companies in the travel sector that focus on travel agent experience beat their competitors by over 80%. 84% of companies that focus on improving the travel agent experience saw increased revenue. The expertise of a travel agent may influence many aspects of your organization. Around 72% of pleased travel agents inform at least six travel agents about their great experience with the brand.
Why is it essential to digitalize wherever it’s possible in the travel agency?
Travelling required a lot of organization since travellers had to keep track of hotel bookings. There is no reason why enterprises in the travel sector cannot alleviate the burden of keeping track of these documents by digitizing them wherever feasible in today’s digital age. Investing in a business application will likely provide great returns, particularly if it allows your customers to electronically keep their keys, tickets, and vital paperwork on their phones.
A travel technology application will help travel agencies retain travel agents in two ways:
- Firstly, it improves the travel agent’s experience.
- Second, since your app will occupy precious real estate on the agent’s mobile device.
Why B2B Travel Agents should use travel technology?
Travel agencies discover highly customizable travel technology software that streamlines the process and reduces operating expenses.
- Interactive navigation system.
- Back-office administration is straightforward.
- Revenue is simple to handle.
- Support for several currencies and languages.
- Improve travel agencies’ travel processes.
- Help the travel agency manage the business process.
- Reduce operational costs.
- Increase the profitability of your travel agency.
- It adds real-time travel content such as papers, descriptions, videos, maps, and photographs to travel packages.
- It facilitates the update of several travel inventories, such as unit-based pricing, range-based costing, and occupancy-based rates, as well as the swift selling of travel products.
