Travel technology has come a long way over the last decade. Traditional methods of travel planning and booking are almost vanished in thin air. Today, travelers use technology to great extent to plan the travel, book the travel deals there by making travel process easier. Young travelers are the generation born towards the end of the last millennium and grew in the arena of wireless internet, smart-phones, considered as gen Y. The ratio of this generation using the travel technology is high, when compared to people with 40+ age. With smartphone and mobile internet in hand, travelers are searching all the travel deals on the responsive travel websites and mobile compatible travel software. Survey shows that major part of online travel booking now comes through hand held devices. Travel technology has evolved, not only as online booking and itinerary processing system, but it has become a way to plan the whole travel starting from flight booking, hotel booking, car booking, reminder for important documents, creating a common travel group and sharing the images / videos. The whole travel process and post travel activities are now all connected through the travel technology. Travelers are checking the travel websites for everything, it may be weather, fight / train / bus timing update or any value added information. Mobile has become a tool for checking and sharing on the go. The mobile phone with the travel mobile app, has become an online travel agency. Searching, booking, sharing – everything is available right at finger tips. Travel technology companies have taken a great part in this growth story. These companies have developed some great travel products in last few years. Travel website development and travel apps are much in demand. All the leading travel agencies are partnering with top travel technology company to deliver a product, which can actually create a wave in travel domain. Next two years, it will be interesting to see as to how the travel domain grows. Author is a travel technology expert and has been involved in several travel portal development projects.
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Global Distribution System / GDS System is computerized and centralized web service that provide travel related transactions covering airline reservation, hotel reservation, cruise reservation and car rentals. In brief, central reservation systems that book and process the PNR for global airlines are known as Global Distribution Systems / GDS Systems. Originally, GDS systems were set up for airline reservations but later its extended to process hotels, cars, cruise and holiday packages. GDS system makes it convenient for users to purchase tickets from different airlines or providers thereby forming the backbone of internet based travel booking services. GDS system reaches out to more than 300,000 plus IATA registered travel agents powered by four major GDS networks like Sabre, Amadeus, Worldspan and Galileo. Thus the GDS systems today, are used by travel agents and online customers all over the world to book flights, hotels, rentals and other travel related services. The key point here is that any GDS system will not hold the inventory, but the inventory is held on vendor’s reservation system itself as GDS has real-time access to the vendor’s database.
GDS can also be understood as a network operated by a company that enables automated transactions between booking agents and vendors so as to provide travel related services to end consumers. A GDS system usually links rates, services, bookings consolidating products and services across the major travel sectors like hotel reservations, car rentals, airline reservations and other activities. GDS system’s primary customers are mainly travel agents, who are either following OTA model or using a web based software to connect to GDS. To understand, how global distribution system works, take for example the case of Amadeus GDS. Amadeus is used globally by over 90,000 travel agency locations and over 32,000 airline sales offices for distribution and selling of travel services. This service processes more than 480 million transactions per day, which is huge and over 3 million total bookings per day. GDS along with Online Distribution Data or ODD in the form of connectivity modules allow hotels to connect with Travel agents and online customers. GDS are owned and operated as joint ventures by major airlines, hotel groups, companies and car rentals. Sometimes they are also called as automated reservation system or ARS or computerized reservation system or CRS. Modern GDS system typically allow users to take advantage of booking hotel rooms, rental cars, airline tickets, as well as for other activities like outdoor tours. They also provide access to railway and bus reservations in some segments of markets, although these are not always integrated with the main system. For many years, GDS had a dominating position and role in the travel sector. To avoid high GDS fees airlines have started to distribute flights directly from their websites through web services or APIs, thus bypassing GDS to a large extent, another way of bypassing is by facilitating direct connections to the travel agencies. Author: Author is a travel technology expert and has been involved in several travel portal development projects. A merchant account is a specific kind of bank account intended to hold funds taken from credit and debit card sales through online payment interfaces on travel software and POS. When a customer pays for booking travel products using credit or debit card, money from his account is immediately transferred to the travel agent’s merchant account. From there, money will be transferred out to a normal business bank account through a standard protocol. Taking payment individually from those who book flights, hotel rooms, etc, through you travel agency might have become a little difficult because of increased transactions on a day to day basis. Often, smaller travel agents don’t get the merchant accounts directly through the banks so easily. But online travel software definitely needs payment gateways to survive. That’s why third party payment gateways like PayPal, 2CO etc are used worldwide. With the merchant account, you can entertain all the widely recognized cards and never send back a customer telling her credit card is not accepted by you. Since it works in real-time, merchant accounts reduce deposit times for your company and avoid the prospect of inadequate funds landing you and your customer in uneasy situations. Most of the travel portal development companies suggest their clients to use the direct merchant account for the same reason. Your new customers should be made your regular customers. Merchant account will help you to make them come back to you to buy travel products in future. This can be done by asking your provider to customize a loyalty program for you. They can get some discounts at the places they spend their vacations or when they next book travel products from you. A valuable gift from merchant account is online payments. With this visitors to your site can click on the pay button in your website after choosing the flights and hotels, and pay by just filling in their payment data on the secure online form. Immediate validation of payments will occur. You’ll get the money within 24 hours. As a business person this is a great boon to you. Regarding Author: Author is a senior business analyst and an expert in travel portal development and marketing strategy implementation. With OTA – Online Travel Agencies have changed the way, users searched and booked the travel deals. With the evolution of online hotel booking system, traveling has become easy and comfortable. Travelers now have the flexibility of choosing the hotel deals from anywhere. One can avail the ease of planning an exotic holiday vacation in your dream location with the help of online hotel booking system. Nowadays, hotel booking systems are popular travel portals as they connect users to an extensive inventory from multiple hotels wholesalers across thousands of destinations worldwide. The leading hotels also incorporate hotel booking software to help their clients do the booking online. The hotel booking software plays a significant role in the planning as it allows the users to find the most competitive hotel rates as per their choice along with the multiple suppliers and get the best results for a specific geographic area or product category which suits their budget. Key Features of hotel booking system software, are:
Key Benefits of Hotel Booking Systems:
Regarding Author: Author is a senior business analyst and an expert in travel software development and marketing strategy implementation. |
AuthorPROVAB TECHNOSOFT is an award winning travel technology company , delivering B2B / B2C travel software, travel CRM, accounting software, car rental software and mobility solutions to global travel & hospitality companies. ArchivesCategories
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