Top 10 B2B Travel Software Features, Cost and Technology Providers (2024)
27 Apr, 2024
Simona
Travel has become more popular than ever, with an increasing number of people exploring destinations worldwide. This rise in travel is fueled by a range of factors, from personal leisure to professional needs. Many businesses are now dispatching employees to close important deals in person, highlighting the growing importance of face-to-face interactions in today’s global economy.
In response, travel agencies, tour operators, and online travel agencies (OTAs) are undergoing a major shift toward full digitalization. Embracing digital travel technology has become vital for these businesses to stay competitive and adapt to market demands. Adopting advanced B2C and
B2B travel software
, along with building robust OTA platforms, is essential for maintaining flexibility and staying ahead in the industry. This digital transformation leads to more efficient booking systems, improved customer experiences, and smoother operations, positioning travel companies to better serve today’s tech-savvy travelers.
As per the current market research, the global tourism market size is expected to record a CAGR of 3.7% from 2023 to 2032. In 2023, the market size is projected to reach a valuation of US$ 8,880 Billion. By 2032, the valuation is anticipated to
reach US$ 12,314 Billion. ‘All-in-one-place’ online travel portal platforms have improved the user experiences to another level. According to
Statista, OTA revenue is expected to show an annual growth rate of 10.8% over the next five years.
How to Develop Best B2B Travel Software : A Quick Guide in 6 Steps
Developing a top class
B2B travel system
involves a series of carefully planned steps to ensure the solution meets the unique needs of businesses in the travel industry, such as travel agencies, tour operators, and corporate clients. Here's a concise 6-step guide to building B2B travel software:
Step 1 : Define Business Requirements
Begin by understanding the needs of your business clients. Identify essential features such as multi-product booking, payment integration, client management, and reporting tools. This ensures the software aligns with the specific challenges of travel businesses.
Step 2 : Choose the Right Technology Stack
Select a scalable and secure technology stack for both back-end (e.g., Node.js, Django) and front-end (e.g., React, Angular). Choose a reliable database (e.g., PostgreSQL, MySQL) and cloud platform (e.g., AWS, Azure) for hosting and scalability.
Step 3 : Design User-Friendly UI/UX
Focus on building a clean and intuitive user interface that makes it easy for business users to book, manage, and report on travel products. Optimize the user experience to minimize friction and ensure accessibility across devices.
Step 4 : Develop Core Features
Create essential features like a booking engine, payment gateway, inventory management, CRM system, and reporting tools. These features should allow for seamless operations and support multiple currencies and travel products.
Step 5 : Testing and Quality Assurance
Conduct rigorous testing, including functional, security, and load testing, to ensure the software is stable, secure, and performs well under high usage. Address bugs and ensure compliance with
b2b travel agency
regulations.
Step 6 : Deployment and Ongoing Maintenance
Deploy the software on a scalable cloud platform. After launch, continuously monitor performance, gather user feedback, and release regular updates to improve features, fix issues, and enhance security.
Web Server & Cloud Hosting 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. Depending 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.
Must Have Elements of B2B Travel Software Platform
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 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.
List of the Best Travel APIs to Setup B2B Travel Software System
BBelow is the list of top travel API providers (2024) 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.
Above is the list of travel aggregator recognized globally.
Definition of A B2B Travel Software
B2B travel software/ refers to a digital platform or system designed to facilitate business-to-business (B2B) transactions and operations in the travel industry. This type of software enables travel agencies, tour operators, corporate travel managers, and other business entities to manage and streamline the booking, distribution, and sales of travel products and services (such as flights, hotels, car rentals, and tours) for their clients or partners. B2B travel software typically includes features like booking engines, inventory management, client relationship management (CRM), pricing tools, payment gateways, and reporting dashboards. It helps businesses efficiently manage operations, process transactions, and deliver personalized services while integrating with third-party suppliers, booking systems, and global distribution networks (GDS).
List of things to consider before hiring a B2B Travel Software Company?
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?