Developing B2B Travel Software, Top 10 Things to Do (2024)
28 June, 2024
Simor
Travel has become an increasingly popular pursuit, with a growing number of individuals venturing to various destinations around the globe. This surge in travel is driven by diverse factors, including both personal leisure and professional necessities. Many companies are now sending their representatives to finalize outstanding business deals, reflecting a heightened emphasis on face-to-face interactions in the global marketplace.
In response, travel agencies, tour operators, and online travel agencies (OTAs) are witnessing a significant shift towards complete digitization. The integration of digital travel technology has become essential for these entities to remain competitive and responsive to market demands. Implementing advanced B2C
B2B travel software
and developing robust OTA platforms are crucial steps for maintaining agility and staying ahead in the industry. This digital transformation allows for more efficient booking processes, enhanced customer experiences, and streamlined operations, ultimately positioning travel businesses to better meet the needs of today’s tech-savvy travelers.
The traditional model of making personal visit to any of the travel agency and placing the booking, have totally changed. All the bookings happen online. Hence, your B2C
B2B travel software Solutions
should be technologically advanced to meet the needs and preferences of your client.
If you are a travel agent and you plan to develop a new
b2b travel portal software
or website for your company, make a note of the below mentioned factors. For those who own their own websites, you might be wondering why you are losing business? For all your queries, we are providing 10 important facts to consider before you design your travel website. If these factors are followed you can gain reach and thereby your business develops.
Responsive Design
The B2C
B2B travel agency software
should be developed on a responsive design platform. This enables your travel website to perform well on mobile devices too. Every time customers won’t browse on desktop and make their bookings. Therefore, it’s very important to provide them with the best user experience while they sign-in to your website using tablets or mobile phones.
You can have the website in front end HTML and backend as PHP or Dot Net technologies or you can use CMS tool like wordpress. Alot of new age travel agencies are using the latest technologies like Angular, NodeJS and ReactJS too.
SEO & SEM Benefits
SEO & Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is very vital to ensure top ranking of your travel booking software in the search engine.
Google Adwords and Keywords adds-on to this scenario. A professional travel agency software company’s help is advisable to gain visibility in organic as well as advertisement links on any search engine. Using better digital marketing techniques, you can sell your travel deals better.
Proper Placement of Call-to-Action Buttons
The purpose of your
travel software program
is to generate travel business leads. In that case, it is very important that you place call-to-action buttons in the proper space. Here certain psychological factors are also to be considered. Behavioral psychology will enable your website to choose and create meaningful typography, layouts and colors.
Content Management
Content Management is another major factor to be considered for your travel agency software system. A lot of contents arranged in a messy way will never generate business from your website. The contents should be short and apt for the context. Infographics and images can give more look and feel to your travel reservation portal.
Boost Offers and Deals
Your web design should showcase the best deals or offers to initiate traffic. Many people plan their travel while they get good offers for flight tickets. Some travelers even prefer traveling during the off season to save their money. So a way to make a proper plan on managing the deals and season should be integrated within the website to evoke interest in website visitors.
Integration of Online Chat/ Call Services
24x7 customer support is required if you plan to run a website for your travel agency software platform. If you have clients from all around the world, then online support should be organized on the basis of geographical locations.
Search
Instant
flight search feature has to be embedded in your travel booking website. This helps the visitor to get the required information by entering fields in the available search form. Date, time of travel, location all these are mandatory fields to be included in the form.
Location Based Services
Customized services based on location can generate more clients for your business. For that you need to integrate other service providers to
travel agency system
. Car rental, hotel reservation etc. based on destination helps the traveler to make bookings prior to their arrival.
Partnership with Service Providers
Partnership with local and international service providers will always end up in gaining more customers for your travel agency. All range of bookings starting from budget travel options to 7 star reservations can be included in your list of services.
Integration of Website Translator
If the aim of your business is to gain a global presence then the website translator has to be embedded within the website design. Though English is a global language, people from many parts of the world won’t be able to read and understand the content on your website. To avoid this difficulty, website translator must be a part of the website.
Integration of Travel APIs?
Travel APIs are a set of web services (XMLs/JSONs) using which travel agencies or OTA
portal platforms connect to a source, which may be GDS or any third party travel content aggregators. By integrating travel APIs XMLs, agents can offer real time availability & booking services of flights, hotels, transfers, sightseeing and all ancillary services including bookings, amendments and cancellations.
Hosting & Server Requirements for B2B Travel Software
For a robust travel booking platform, there can be two options 1 - AWS -
Amazon Web Services and 2. Dedicated Server. Depend on traffic expectations on your platform, server company and server parameters can be defined which can range in $60 USD to $500 USD per month. On the other hand, if you want setup the hardware in your local office then the pricing parameters will change significantly. transfers, sightseeing and all ancillary services including bookings, amendments and cancellations.
List of the Best Travel APIs for IATA and Non IATA Agents.
Below is the list of top travel API providers (2022) as per geography and contents. Check top APIs in travel industry as following -
Amadeus API
Amadeus is one of the most preferred GDS systems today. Global travel management companies are using Amadeus gds to access online travel contents including airline, hotels, transfers, sightseeing, cars and other ancillary services through
Amadeus travel APIs / web services. Amadeus processes the highest number of transactions on a day to day basis. In the last 25+ years, Amadeus has become the largest gds system and the biggest travel content aggregator around the world.
PROVAB API
Provab Technosoft is a leading travel GDS provider and along with its IATA accredited fully owned subsidiary, it helps you to maximize your need of travel inventory through a single unified travel booking API connection while providing rich flight contents aggregated through several IATA and Non IATA consolidators. Provab’s open travel API XML suite
includes flight API, hotel API, car API, transfer API and sightseeing API.
Travelport UAPI
Galileo GDS system - offered by
TravelPort, is one of the most sophisticated global distribution systems for travel domain. Galileo GDS provides global distribution services for the travel industry with advanced computer reservation software, top of the line travel system and web services XMLs. B2B and B2C booking software with Travelport universal APIs are surging in India, United States, Mexico, Europe, South Africa and Malaysia. In the last 22+ years, Galileo GDS has become one of the largest gds systems.
Sabre API
Sabre GDS system is the connect between the travel services buyers and sellers. Sabre GDS is supported (in terms of travel inventory) by more than 400 flight carriers, 200,000 hotels, global tour operators and several car and cruise providers. Sabre system is connected to more than 400,000 travel agents worldwide, who are serving to end clients. Sabre GDS system processes more than a million travel booking transactions per minute during the high season. B2B and B2C travel portals with Sabre software system are surging in United States, Europe, UAE, India, Africa (Nigeria, Egypt) and Indonesia.
TBO API
TBO Holidays is one of the leading travel aggregator, connected with 70,000 travel agencies across 100+ countries while using TBO’s award winning platform to book global travel contents online. TBO offers flights, accommodations, cruise, cars, transfers and sightseeing.
PKFare API
PKFARE aggregates real time big data from over 600 airlines, 400,000 properties and 20 DMCs, covering over 100 countries and regions. PKFARE is an innovative global travel trade marketplace offering air tickets, hospitality and destination products. Empowered by its global resources, machine learning technology, big data and dynamic hedging and payment model, PKFARE provides global travel players with smart integrated solutions including real time inventory data, best buy rate, seamless multilingual customer service and diversified product portfolios.
Hotelbeds API
Hotelbeds is one of the largest aggregators with 1,80,000 hotels in around 185 destinations worldwide. Hotelbeds API enables any hotel booking system or distribution platform to provide their agents and B2C clients, best hotels and activities at lowest wholesale rates. Simply using Hotelbeds API integration solution is enough to gain access to vast inventory from multiple sources with competitive prices. Hotelbeds booking API additionally provides you access to additional services such as sightseeing, transfers and even car rentals.
Skyscanner API
Skyscanner was established in 2003 with the unique objective of showing all flight options in one place. Today it has gone from a flight search engine to a global leader in travel. More than 100 million people across the world (that's quite a few!) rely on its app and website each month to help them with their travel plans. It also provides skyscanner APIs to distribute the contents on global OTA platforms.
Booking.com API
If you are an OTA or a destination website, want to have top of the hotel inventory on your booking platform, integrate Booking.com API. It offers solutions for OTAs, hotel channel managers, property owners and affiliates like travel bloggers and media outlets. The online accommodation platform currently offers over 29,420,861 properties, 12,500 affiliates, and well-architected framework features in 41 languages, 23 countries with payment card supports Visa, American, Express, MasterCard. The Booking.com APIs support both XML and JSON formats using HTTP basic authentication.
Expedia API
Expedia Affiliate Network (EAN) APIs robust structure brings quick responses and retrieves data from multiple sources instantly to give real-time updates on rates and availability on your booking platform. The EAN APIs are used to book hotels, flights and cars. Expedia's well designed framework enables 200+ travel booking sites across 75 countries and 150+ mobile websites. Expedia API Integration connects any online booking system to 140,000 hotels spread across 245 countries. Expedia has a great user base in the United States, Canada, Mexico, India and UAE.
Kiwi API
Kiwi.com is a leading flight aggregator, based in Czech. The OTA platform of Kiwi.com connects with 750 carriers, including over 250 low-cost carriers. Startup travel agencies can also KIWI API to find flight data and make online reservations and generate business.
Priceline API
Priceline offers strong inventory of flights, hotels, cars and holiday packages.
List of things to consider before hiring a B2C B2B Travel Software Provider?
Now that you are well aware of travel APIs and
why to integrate travel APIs, you must find the
best b2b travel software company. While plenty of travel technology companies are available, the question is how to find the best travel technology provider? Following is a questionnaire that can be used for that -
- What are the major API integration services you offer?
- Please provide 7-8 benefits you offer to travel agents?
- Do you make custom web design or use the theme?
- Can you provide the portfolio?
- Do you provide case studies to showcase the results of your web design?
- What is the policy for building websites in comparison with the competitors?
- How do I get the timely work progress of the project?
- What are the types of travel technologies you are specialized in?
- Do you give round the clock support and also handling the updates of the applications?
Main Advantages of Hiring B2C B2B Travel Software Product Company
Demand of b2c
b2b travel software is growing in USA
, Canada and Europe. India has a vast pool of talent that is available at a comparatively inexpensive rate. By shifting their software development requirements to India, companies can leverage cost differences and get their services completed at a lower price.
