BLOG – DISCOVERY SERIES: REVENUE GROWTH
All businesses, no matter the industry or market they operate in, share an aim to grow their revenues. When a new customer chooses an Open Destinations product or service, growing their revenue is nearly always a key objective for the project. Throughout the last two decades of business, we have proven that we can deliver in this regard. Below are a selection of key software functionalities that directly impact growth in our customers’ travel businesses.
Drag & Drop Itinerary Builder
Itinerary Builder arms tour operator and DMC sales teams with a powerful productivity-boosting tool. The technology enables tour operators to build custom itineraries by simply clicking and dragging various trip elements into a template. For example, start and end dates either side of flights, transfers, various excursions and accommodation. The Itinerary Builder for groups has been specifically designed to cope with the intricacies of group pricing, including free places and flexible passenger breaks.
Once a Drag & Drop itinerary has been created, the software’s Document Generator can be used to automatically create a highly formatted proposal from a range of defined templates, which can be saved in various formats (PDF, HTML, Word Doc) before being sent to the client.
How does this help increase revenue?
The Itinerary Builder is all about increasing speed to market. Using Drag & Drop an itinerary can be built three to four times faster and then sent on the end-customer for approval. This means better customer service and a boost in efficiency and turnaround times. The quicker travel providers can react, the more likely they are to achieve a sale and have more time to deal with other customers.
Caching Module
Travel Studio customers can pull in cached prices and availability for any part of a travel itinerary over a specific period. Flight prices, hotel availability and more can be saved offline enabling users to access price and availability data immediately rather than using time-consuming live requests that access APIs over the web for each individual query. Travel Studio is capable of storing millions of prices and availabilities at once ensuring that users work more efficiently and can deliver accurate quotes, itineraries and packages to their end-users in far less time.
Travel Studio’s cached price and availability data can be pulled in from suppliers within Open Destinations’ extensive partner network. These include the likes of GTA, Hotelbeds, Expedia, JacTravel and Miki Travel as well as the major GDS systems Amadeus, Sabre and Travelport.
How does this help increase revenue?
The Caching module combats the latency of live search by being able to use a cache database greatly enhances the user experience. We know from talking to our clients that using a cache has a massive effect on booking conversions. As the travel market gets more competitive this technology will give tour operators a clear edge over their competitors.
Flexible Operations & Upselling
Travel Studio is used by tour operators, DMCs and wholesalers selling FIT, group and packaged travel. With functionality built for all these types of business and types of product, Travel Studio is an extremely flexible tool. The software also enables upselling via offering ancillary services, a tactic most commonly used by airlines.
How does this help increase revenue?
Companies running their operations with Travel Studio are working with a tool that can scale with their business. For example, if an enterprising tour operator wants to expand into the DMC category, the functionality they need to sell their new product and reach their new B2B customers is already there.
Yield Rules
Yield Rules is a functionality within Travel Studio enabling users to change the selling prices for specific locations or regions or for a period of time. This tool is about defining rules for price changes. Such changes can be based on service types, travel dates or booking period, for a percentage/margin increase or decrease. Yield Rules can be applied to all clients or some specifically selected groups. The parameters are numerous and once created, they will be applied to searches and modify the existing prices as per the rules set.
How does this help increase revenue?
Yield rules are there to help clients who need to update prices at short notice and for specific periods. By creating such rules they will implement tactical price change to win more bookings or to cover for increases due to specific market changes. By defining the rules these changes can be applied at booking stage without affecting the data already loaded in the database.
Tineri App
Tineri is Open Destinations’ mobile app that puts travel itineraries and more in the hands of travellers. After downloading the app and logging in, travellers can access a range of useful information for their trip. This includes: Daily itineraries, accommodation information, key contacts, travel documents, maps, weather forecasts, language translation and more. On top of this information is functionality that links the tour operator or provider with the end-traveller: Live chat and feedback. Live chat enables real-time conversation between tour operator and traveller, traveller and guide, traveller and co-traveller and more. Feedback comes in the form of daily and end-of-tour surveys. These are completed by the traveller and the provider has access to results and reports from within Tineri CMS.
How does this help increase revenue?
With travellers getting access to the app before they travel, it increases their engagement with the tour operator. This connection is valuable in making their experience as memorable as possible. Similarly, live chat delivers fantastic responsiveness, meaning that tour operators can be on hand to help travellers with any questions before they turn into problems. Finally, feedback gathered by the tour operator can be used as intelligence to improve future tours and to satisfy future customers in the longer term. Ultimately, Tineri is built to boost customer satisfaction and increase the chances of a re-book with your brand.
