travel tech insights

Think about the concept of spring cleaning. That one day every spring when you go through your house, organize your possessions, give every room a good cleaning, and clear out any clutter that has accumulated during the past year, Without this yearly ritual, it’s not hard to imagine a scenario where you can’t find certain possessions, where important documents like bills go missing, and your house falls into complete disarray.

The same is true for agencies when it comes to continuously cleaning and mapping their content databases to ensure updated, accurate information about the products and services available from suppliers and for customers. Much like how spring cleaning makes for a better overall living situation in your home where things are neat and organized, continuously mapped databases means travel agency operators won’t miss out on the latest and greatest offers from suppliers, book inaccurate allocated hotels or accommodations, or be bogged down by slow search response times in their booking engine, travel ERP suite, or other technologies.

It’s no secret that millennials are a driving force in today’s travel industry. Whether we’re talking about adventure of budget travelers, the buying power and influence millennial travelers have is increasing each and every year, particularly as more and more travel markets emerge and mature, especially in Asia and Central Europe. What’s more, millennials are now set to emerge as a critical customer pool in yet another burgeoning travel and tourism market: Corporate travel.

According to a recent released earlier this year titled The Portrait of Business Travelers by travel industry group MMGY Global, millennials are poised to become the largest segment of the corporate travel sphere in 2017 and beyond. The report indicated the average business traveler booked about 6.8 trips per year, while millennials completed roughly 7.4 bookings per year in 2016 - a figure that is only expected to increase in the next 12 months.

Imagine a restaurant without a menu where the chef and kitchen staff simply presented diners with a list of available ingredients with the intent of making customers whatever dishes they desired. This means the kitchen staff could, at any given moment, be making a wide variety of dishes from meatloaf and roasted chicken to salads and stews. This might sound great from a diner’s perspective, but from the point of the view chef, it would be chaos. A menu not only help diners dial-in on what meal they’d like prepared, but it also allows a restaurant to limit its number of offerings, which helps drive down cost, increase efficiency, and enhance the overall quality of product it provides to its customers.

Just like menus in the restaurant world, the same is true of voucher and offer templates in today’s travel industry. Because travel agencies and travel management companies work with so many suppliers on the back-end and customers on the front-end, the importance of a streamlined offer and voucher system cannot be overstated in leveraging optimal productivity and efficiency. Utilizing a flexible, agile voucher and offer template platform is increasingly an important value proposition as travel agencies must complete more and more transactions each day to remain competitive and relevant in today’s global travel landscape.

It’s something we’ve all experienced before: You input the wrong address on your GPS and you suddenly find yourself completely lost in an unfamiliar section of town. It’s easy to get frustrated and blame the GPS for this error, however, the GPS didn’t know you entered the wrong address - rather, it simply directed you to the right location based on the information you provided. This equates to lost time, more money spent on gas, and more wear and tear on your car.

Sounds familiar, right? This same concept holds true when it comes to content mapping for travel agencies. The process of content mapping - which helps travel agencies and suppliers coordinate the availability, inventory, and pricing of various accommodations and services - is much like using your GPS to help you get to where you’re going. Enter the right information and the GPS is likely to guide to your destination quickly and efficiently. On the other hand, enter the wrong information, not enough information, or poorly sourced information and you’re likely to lose your way entirely. A content database that is not consistently mapped can result in travel agencies using wrong or outdated information in their supplier and customer relations.

Think about your favorite sports team as they begin to ready themselves for a new season. The team meets to watch and discuss game film; they work on game strategy, conceive new, and revise old plays; they engage in individual and team practices to sharpen or refine their skills; and they work closely with coaches and other levels of team management to ensure optimal levels of fitness and mental readiness for the long season ahead.

For tour operators in today’s global travel industry, the preparation necessary to ready themselves for the next travel season is not unlike the measures teams take to prep for their next campaign. The operational, back-office, and even customer-facing duties and tasks tour operators engage in before the season directly reflects business outcomes by the season’s end. Of course, tour operators aren’t watching game film of an opponent or taking part in intense practice sessions, but strategizing about which products and services to offer, where and how to source them, selecting the right itineraries to promote, and more are critical drivers for tour operators in ensuring an efficient, productive travel campaign.