It’s no wonder in a world open to anyone and sharing numerous business, family and cultural connections, that industries such as the travel business are trying to be in step with modern technological software.
Manual creation of proper travel maps covering all destinations in a travel tour takes an enormous amount of time, and it won’t necessarily be the most cost-effective solution. Mistakes in choosing the proper hotel, airline or vacation spot result in wasting money and damaging travel agents’ reputations.
Travel agencies work for the sole purpose of customer satisfaction and, naturally, overpriced tours are not something that make clients happy. Corporate travel planning is even more difficult since it is usually associated with lots of formalities.
On the other hand, ready-to-use travel management software modules can easily deal with searching and analyzing travel options, leaving for you to only select between the most suitable options. Besides, travel management software samples are usually designed with multiple features addressing various aspects of travel planning.
Types of Travel Management Software
You can decide what traveling aspect is difficult to plan for you and configure the needed module to match the majority of your requirements. Let’s review some of them.
Flight Planning
Flight planning software is designed to simplify the airliner choice and cover all flight details, such as ticket booking, voiding or cancellation, notifications on schedule or gateway changes, additional meals or extra baggage. Such tools usually provide information as to the weather conditions at the destination point, seat maps, airport codes, flight itinerary and others, depending on your chosen software.
Hotel Booking
Hotel booking software takes on the majority of accommodation features. It offers customized search options by country, city, star rate, price, room type, and other filters. One of its key functions is in booking, modifying and canceling room reservations through a secured booking page. Certain solutions might provide an image gallery and hotel comparison, as well as offer promo codes, hotel rules descriptions, child validation service and reservation reminders.
Activities Planning
Activities planning software represents a compact guide for the chosen spot and gives an overview of the surrounding sights and worthy infrastructural objects with their description, visitors ratings and feedback. Most of activities modules have an image gallery.
Transfer Planning
Transfers planning software takes care of travelers’ in-between transportation by planning it beforehand. The module responses to a specified time and date of a client’s arrival and comes up with a proper transfer solution. Supporting information such as the presence of children, the amount of baggage and final destination helps to improve the service needed.
Holiday Travel Management
Holiday travel management software is a package solution for both travelers and travel agencies. It encompasses the information about the route, hotels and favorite tourist spots with an extended description, creating the lifelike perception of a chosen place. By including all vacation details, this kind of travel management software helps to find the optimal solution based on your interests and within your available budget.
Corporate Travel Management
Corporate travel management software addresses the needs of small and big companies. Usually, this sort of software includes a profile management system, keeping all data for trips organizing updated, a trip arrangement toolkit with enabled approval flows, up-to-date reporting and cost control, multi-currency support and receipts storage.
CRM module is a piece of travel management software emphasizing client-oriented approach. Such tools are generally used in many spheres to organize customer information, enable and promote international communication, and automate manual procedures. Such CRM modules’ functionalities may differ, depending on the end user of their services. It’s perfect for handling an abundant customer database, providing support services, data analysis, booking tools and all kinds of schedulers.
Admin module comes with a package of extended features, enabling users with deeper system access and more executive planning as to the overall system features. This module usually includes CC authorization and anti-fraud validation, tax and commission management, ads administration, B2C management, leads profile, travel checklist, report management and many more.
Web or Mobile? Maybe Both?
Before choosing specific travel management software or building one on your own, you need to understand what kind of software you need exactly. Selecting between web and mobile formats isn’t always easy.
Web apps can be accessed through any browser, adapting to the device you’re using. They do not need to be installed separately. They look similar to mobile apps in many ways.
Mobile apps are developed for a particular operating system, such as iOS or Android, and must be uploaded and installed to your mobile device. Unlike web apps, mobile ones cannot be viewed from desktop devices. Nevertheless, since mobile apps are developed for smooth integration with certain mobile devices, they tend to offer wider functionality and easily integrate with your other native mobile apps.
Major factors determining the final choice are:
- the size of a company
- whether it’s globally or locally oriented
- its target audience
- main features it offers
By analyzing your current operations and existing client base, and by creating a careful strategic plan for further scaling a company, you can come up with the most suitable option addressing your software’s service supply and demand. The issue of financing is also a factor. However, for some ventures, the question of choice is not a matter of concern, as they prefer to reap the benefits of both solutions.
Conclusion
The variety of travel management software solutions on the market offer a wide choice of automated services and handy tools to simplify the decision-making process. On the bright side, available separate modules can ease the pain of picking the app or developing your own solution and address partially or wholly the sore points all agencies have at some point. In any case, like in other industries, the approachability of smart systems successfully challenging niche problems only proves the travel industry’s evolution and growth potential.
