Aside from the recent disastrous situations that emerged due to COVID-19 the tourism industry was at its peak of development. Many tourism-based services and products emerged every single day to cater to the growing number of tourists around the world which has provided career opportunities to millions of people worldwide. After these pandemic conditions cease the world will again restart on the growth of tourism as well as people will go back to their old hobbies of traveling and the business will be back to usual. Let us all hope that this day comes sooner than the forecasts as many countries and their people depend on it.

Coming back to our topic of the day,

How can a Travel Agency be really Online?

Travel agencies are at the core of tourism service providers as almost all the services and products for tourists are directly or indirectly sold through travel agencies. Due to this lucrative market, the number of travel agents is constantly uprising while setting new standards for the modern tourism industry.

In the current days, a travel agency needs a variety of features to be able to identify themselves as a fully online agency (OTA). But most market systems currently have a small portion of these, or most have implemented web travel services or sold charter flights and guarantee hotels, with limited management capabilities and lack of full support for the OpenTravel standards.

Another most important feature is the variety of services and service providers that can be provided as options to the customers. Since there are countless service providers for exact same services like hotel bookings and transport, customers do find it convenient to get the best deal out of a selection especially when creating their travel plans. This integration itself will be quiet combustion for a normal Travel Agent and would also have a high cost of implementation due to the variety of different services and providers.

This is why ConnectOTA is such a demanding and value-added product for your Agency. ConnectOTA is a web-based system, which provides all online requirements of a travel agency and facilitates generating more revenue for the agency. It allows adding unlimited numbers of web services, hotels, and travel services. Also, it allows defining charter flights and guaranteed hotels via ConnectOTA. Furthermore, in ConnectOTA you can connect all services as an integrated web service to websites and sales services via an admin panel and based on capacities and B2B and B2C sales policies.

Besides all the mentioned facilities, the sales capacity of travel agencies will have risen significantly by connecting to ConnectOTA’s online agencies’ sales network. Also, this is not just limited to Travel Agents itself. ConnectOTA is a dynamic platform that can be configured to any service provider including Hotels, Transport and even for small Airlines itself to post their capacities in a local inventory for quick sell.

A birds-eye view of ConnectOTA,

Why a Travel Agent should be Online?

Apart from the obvious benefits, you get through integrating the system to the global market, here are the day to day improvements you’ll notice on utilizing ConnectOTA.

1. Your online travel agency is open 24 hours a day

Customers can book their exact hotels at any time they want with or without your consultation. This will help majorly in reducing the hectic communications to be done through email or phone on explaining the tertiary services.

2. You can maximize reservations

If a passenger wishes to cancel their reservation, the canceled service will be automatically reserved for other applicants. This way you won’t miss out on the empty room at the hotel, or the empty seat on the plane.

3. Your money will be paid ahead of time

Through package reservations, customers have to pay in advance for the services they utilize. This will make your product sell faster in your account, so you won’t have to worry about your earnings on the day of your trip.

4. Your employees are not tied to the phone

It’s a tough competition out there with your direct competitors. Therefore making every possible employee available for the call of the new customers is really important in making the best first impression. Its a relief to your employees as they do not have to answer a 1 am call for canceling the reservations as they can do it by themselves. In addition, you will not be involved in complex phone games with passengers.

5. You can easily manage your work calendar

Online booking systems at agencies allow you to check your booking status and access wherever you are with your mobile phone. For this reason, always be aware of your business status and have the management of your agency in place at all times.

6. Better insight into your agency’s business situation

The online booking system for tourism services provides you with an analysis to help you expand your travel agency activities. Get to know your reputable vendors quickly, take advantage of the times when you have the most and least booking requests and estimate what your customers need most.

Why Choose ConnectOTA?

As you are well aware by now that it is essential to go Online as a Travel Agent. But now the most important task is to choose what platform do you choose to go online with? There are many so-called Online Travel Agent Platforms in the market which do not even meet the basic necessities to be “Online“ as described.

These are the key advantages you get choosing ConnectOTA

• Connect OTA provides the complete system to go online for the lowest cost with the minimum risk considering the specific needs of the Travel Agents as well as offering a wide array of online requests through SaaS. Other similar domestic and foreign systems, which exist in the market, can support a part of these features and of course with very high setup costs (in comparison to ConnectOTA).

• Note that the agencies do not need to pay any preliminary cost for ConnectOTA’s solutions, which are provided to enhance the online selling of travel products. Besides, travel agencies can be profited from all these features and facilities based on their requirements and as much as they need.

• Unlimited connectivity to flight web services, hotels, and travel services simply and with the possibility of managing them based on sales policies.

• The vast range of prebuilt connectors for APIs of numerous popular vendors which allow customers to start selling in a plug and play fashion.

• Defining and online selling of charter flights, guaranteed hotels, and travel services with the possibility of totally online managing of capacities and pricing.

• Managing traveler contracts, sales users, and partner agencies with the possibility of defining credit-related conditions alongside with diverse management reports of sale.

• Connecting web services and products directly, in the form of integrated web services, and in order to use in sales channels of B2C, B2B, and ConnectOTA.