TRAVEL AGENCY BOOKING ENGINE

White Paper: What Makes a Good Booking Engine ?

by....Donald Dunlap, President, Computer Systems Integrators, Inc.

Definition of a Travel Booking Engine(TBE)......

A program for the travel industry that provides the means for the travel agent to enter and collect information on the interests of their clients and handle the administrative details associated with setting up the travel agenda for the client. Provide the ability to bill the client for the services provided. Provide the capability to handle the payables aspect of the business in as far as tracking the services provided from others in the hospitality industry. Provide the tools for marketing the services of the travel agency. This is a very basic definition but What Makes a Good Booking Engine ?

To provide the travel agenda for the client is fine for the client but there is much more that should be done to insure that the agency is providing the highest quality of service to the traveler and generating repeat business from the client. This requires the collection of every piece of detailed information on every contact between the agency and the client. What are the clients likes and dislikes ? What specific preferences are demanded by the client such as rooms that are declared as non smoking, a vegetarian diet, type of bed, pet accommodations and the list goes on. This also requires the collection of very personal information about the client.

In house, all departments of the Agency should have access to all information and it should be current. Yes, each department has individual requirements but these should be satisfied within a single system to achieve the goal of updating all department data instantly.

The program should guide the users through the entry process with very clear instructions and questions. This accomplishes the dual task of ease of training and the entry of accurate data for all departments even though the entering employee may not fully understand the purpose of entering the data. The program should focus on overall input efficiency which must include text entry with prompts as well as the GUI aspect of windows.

The program basic structure should be so designed that program changes can be made with minimum interruption in the days business and not cost prohibitive. The travel industry is in continual change therefore the program should adapt to these changes. The program should satisfy the basic requirements of a booking engine but from that point, it should be adaptable to the business procedures of individual travel agencies. The agency should set the standards of the program not the program setting the standards of the agency.

The quality of the service provided to the client is a direct product of the program. Regardless of the individual within the agency that is talking to the client, they should have available to them all the information on the client. They may not be able to make some changes for the client but they can efficiently communicate to the proper person the desires of the client. In the end the client could care less who solves the problem, they just want it solved.

The availability of all information places the agent in a very favorable position to offer new services to the client based on the past activity of the client. When the client mentions some previous activity and the agent can intelligently respond to questions, the confidence of the client in the agent is increased which results in repeat business.

A good Travel Booking Engine(TBE) not only satisfies the agency booking requirements but it contains Customer Relation Management(CRM), Partner Relation Management(PRM) and Enterprise Resource Planning(ERP) capability. This is accomplished by the “interconnectedness” of all the data on clients and partners that the single system approach provides. This is not as hard as it may seem. All departments in an agency have one goal in mind. Attract the potential traveler, provide them a travel agenda, handle billing in an timely and efficient manner and generate repeat business. The well-oiled program is one in which all department requirements are met and the interchange of data is timely and efficient.

Based on this criteria, the program data structure should be designed around satisfying all these needs. As changes occur, the changes are viewed in relation to these requirements. Changes can be made that affect all areas as well as those affecting only one or two areas with equal ease. The data should be captured at a granular level in that it is broken down to the smallest detail.

The CRM capability in the program should span all areas of the program. All information that is entered into the program is used by CRM, even those accounting transactions that are aborted. The data design will make or brake CRM. The same goes for the PRM, and ERP functions in the program. Just as the Agent that talks to the Client should have certain information to provide the level of service required by the Client, the Marketing and Corporate departments should have precise detail information to achieve the results of their departments.

Does this make the design of a Travel Booking Engine impossible ? NO. It does require planning and input from all departments. The programmers must become as knowledgeable of the Travel business as any executive or agent in the business. They will, as they develop the code, see interactions between the various departments and address those issues that could create problems. They will also pick up on issues that can be added to enhance the program across all departments.

Now that I have given you what I believe to be the ground rules for a Travel Booking Engine, I will tell you that all these requirements are available in one program. It was developed following the rules outlined above over the past 16 years and has been in use since 1988 by International Expeditions, the largest Environmental Travel Agency in the United States if not the World.

TRAVEL ADMINISTRATION PROGRAM

“TAP”

by

COMPUTER SYSTEMS INTEGRATORS, INC