5 Features to lookout in B2B Online Platform
Good B2B travel software comprises of advanced and robust features that not only allow travel businesses to achieve the Travel Company’s goals but also provide a fluid booking experience for the travel agents. With the advancements in technology and the huge number of travelers, it is difficult to manage high number of bookings and it becomes important to have an Online Travel portal that not only handle bookings of this size but also make it easy to scale the business. Security and reliability remain two other important concerns of travel businesses that need to be addressed too. Let’s have a look at the top 5 Features to look for in B2B Travel booking engine.
1) Simplified three step search and book experience
Simplifying of the search process is very important in today’s fast world. Most properties and inventories should be correctly mapped in the system. Searching, booking and paying should only take a few seconds and up-to-date data of hotels, airlines and their inventories should be available to the travel agencies on the go. Adding agents, sub-agents, adding custom mark-up, selling own inventories and reaching out to a wide audience should be an easy affair. Even capturing bookings outside working hours should be easier.
2) Complete control over managing Ticket Booking & managing agents in the back office
Adding agents (whether credit or cash agents), adding sub-agents, searching agents by ID, code, branch, name, etc and activating/de-activating agents should be a breeze. Travel businesses should also have complete control over assigning rights, assigning suppliers and mark-ups, sending registration and activation emails, reporting access control for agents and other such advanced agent settings.
From searching existing bookings to viewing complete booking details in a row to viewing agent and supplier paid status to modifying bookings to force cancelling and force rejecting bookings. From viewing booking history to status history to force confirming and modifying history. From adding additional services like transfers, groups and tours to viewing agents’ performance, top booking agents and suppliers’ performance, everything that a travel business needs to gauge business’ progress should be available in the solution.
3) Complete control over back office and system
Back office is the heart of any Travel technology product. Not only managing back office users, profiles and rights should be easy but also it should have the functionalities that are must have for Travel agencies. Managing payment gateways, exchange rates, preferred cities, nationalities, currencies, Offer, promotions, Markups, discounts amongst others should be available in the solution.
4) Auto processes, Auto Cancellation, Auto re-scheduling
Previously travel agents had to open multiple supplier windows and check the discrepancies caused due to difference in rates, inventories and destinations. This involved opening tens of tabs and checking everything manually. Auto reconciliation reduces the overhead involved in this process by giving the travel agents an option to view all the discrepancies in one place and find the variance for further dispute. This saves a lot of time as well as efforts and removes the possibility of manual errors.
Also Auto cancellation and Auto re-scheduling features save a lot of time and hence increases the efficiency of the Travel agency.
5) The power of your Travel Company at your fingertips
An ideal B2B travel technology solution should be able to handle extremely complex operations and at the same time offer the power of your entire travel business at one place so you can manage it from anywhere. The B2B Travel booking system should be mobile responsive, user friendly and functional in addressing the need of the Travel Company and the Travel agents.
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