Deciphering travel technology – Which components should you look for in a travel platform?

Copyright 2013 www.tavisca.com Tavisca is a registered trademark1
Deciphering Travel Technology
Which components should you look for in a travel technology
platform?
Date 15th Aug 2013
Travel technology knowledge forum

About the presenters
Mahendra Yadav
CEO -Tavisca Solutions
Has built technology that powers over a
million travel bookings annually for travel
businesses across the globe.
Rahul Pilkhwal
CTO & Evangelist -Tavisca Solutions
Has architected cutting edge tools and
components for travel companies that solve
key business challenges
Kaustubh Latkar
GM -Tavisca Solutions
Has worked with travel businesses across
the world to implement relevant
technology that brings sustainable benefits
Email: myadav@tavisca.com
Email: rpilkhwal@tavisca.com
Email: klatkar@tavisca.com

Which technology components would we cover today ?

Critical components in travel business value chain-
Booking &
your online
store
Post booking
operations
Niche
inventory-a
differentiator
Standardized
content
Security and
scale
Booking Engine
(IBE)
Back-Office
Inventory
Manager
Hotel content
Standardization
Hosting and data
security

Common elements of a travel technology platform

Part 1
Internet Booking Engine (IBE)

Part 1 Internet Booking Engine (IBE)
An Internet booking engine (IBE) is a software that has the ability to
search and book travel products such as Air, Hotel, Activity and Car in
real time.
An IBE connects to suppliers of travel products such as GDS’s, Direct
connects, Hotel, Activity and Car consolidators.
Agency
Website
IBE
GDS
Consolidators
for hotels,
activity &car

Agency
Website
IBE
Question that we often hear;
Is the IBE and my agency website the same ?

Your agency website can be
completely built on top of the IBE,
a method popularly known as a
white label website
Your agency website can be
independent of the IBE and only
the searches would be directed to
the IBE using a ‘Search Widget’
Integrating your agency website and the IBE

Ideal Search & Booking experience - The Shopping Cart
Air
Hotel
Car
Activity
Deals

Booking on behalf of customers
Email quotation to customers
Agencies with walk-in customers

• White Label & Search widget
Offers both ‘white label’ as well as ‘search widget’ capability
• Create marketing pages
Flexibility to add static marketing offers & pages
• Shopping cart
Should have a shopping cart to book multiple products
• Suppliers
Should search & book through multiple global suppliers
• Travel arranger flow
Should support booking on behalf of customers
• Send Quotations
Should be able to send quotation to customers
• Mobile ready
Should works on desktops as well as mobile devices
Check list for success

Part 2
Back-office
keywords:
back-office, mid-office, configuration manager, MIS, backend,
agency operations

Part 2 The Back-office
A back-office is a software that helps you track all bookings on your IBE,
configure business functions such as markups, enables management of suppliers
and provides reports.
MISSION CONTROL

Simplifies the lives of people working for an agency
Operations
Customer support
Revenue managers
Sales
Marketing
Accounting

Customer support Easy access to booking data
Revenue Managers
Marketing
Sales
Accounting
Customer support

Revenue managers Comprehensive mark-up management
Customer support
Marketing
Sales
Accounting

Ability to create static offers quicklyMarketing
Sales
Accounting
Customer support
Revenue managers

Sales Access to customer data to run CRM activities
Marketing
Accounting
Customer support
Revenue managers

Accounting Primary accounting reports across all bookings
Marketing
Sales
Customer support
Revenue managers

• Customer service
Access booking data easily
• Marketing
Create static offers & SEO for marketing
• Accounting teams
Should be able to reconcile reports
• Revenue managers
Control and manage comprehensive mark-ups
• Sales teams
Easily able to conduct CRM activities
•

Part 3
Inventory manager
Keywords: Paper contracts, negotiated inventory, contracting ,
negotiated hotels and activities, Niche travel

Part 3 Inventory manager
Inventory management applications enable travel businesses to sell their
negotiated hotels and activities through the IBE & create a differentiator.

Negotiated contracts, especially for hotels, have complex clauses
and terms.
• Black out dates
• Early bird offers
• Inclusions and meals
• Extra adult/child pricing
• Advanced purchase restrictions

eva@hilton.com
Auto
notifications
to hotels for
bookings
Black out
dates &
availability
Advanced
purchase
norms
Manage room
allocations
Build 3 D/4 N
deals

• Booking notifications
Auto booking notifications to hotel and activity vendors
• Dates
Manage availability
• Allocation & Rates
Manage room allocation and pricing options
• Define deals
Ability to define deals such as 2 Nights - 3 Days in hotels
• Static data
Manage static hotel & activities data. ( Such as update latest
feedback about that property/activity )

Part 4
Content standardization
Keywords: De-duplication, hotel static content, hotel
mapping, hotel matching, clarifi

Part 4 Hotel content standardization
Challenge- communicating the right information about the hotel that a
customer is booking ….
Hotel Parktown Hotel Parktown Annex

Why is hotel content standardization a BIGproblem for agencies ?
• Thousands of hotels (Non Unique) from multiple suppliers
• Millions of hotel images – some good, some bad
• Variance is address and location
• Leads to ‘incorrectly mapped’ hotels visible through your IBE
Hotel content standardization applications work with your IBE, ensuring
that the hotel data shown to your customers is accurate for location, hotel
name, star rating and latest updated information of the property

A great platform is the one with reliable & regular hotel content standardization process

• Auto download content
Automatic update of hotel static content from hotel suppliers
• De-duplicate hotels
Automatically find duplicate hotels
• Correct hotel data
Ability to fix incorrect hotel data such as address, name etc.
• Ability to publish such data to your IBE regularly

Part 5
Why hosting and security
matters….
Keyword: PCI compliant, PCI PA DSS, Cloud hosting,
payment gateway

Part 5 Hosting and security
Your booking
technology should be
compliant with online
payment processing
standards such as PCI
PA DSS
Your booking
technology should be
hosted on secure cloud
infrastructure
Your booking
technology should
follow good practices in
encrypting payment
related data

• Cloud Ready
Should offer benefit of Cloud - ROI, performance and ease of
scaling up your business
• Payment standards
Should comply with payment processing data standards – PCI
PA DSS compliant
• Data Security & ownership
Should follow data security standards using encryption of
relevant data

TravelNxt Ready Reckoner
TravelNxt’s ready reckoner
A checklist for basic evaluation of a
travel technology platform

• White Label & Search widget
Offers both ‘white label’ as well as ‘search widget’ capability
• Create marketing pages
Flexibility to add static marketing offers & pages
• Shopping cart
Should have a shopping cart to book multiple products
• Suppliers
Should search & book through multiple global suppliers
• Travel arranger flow
Should support booking on behalf of customers
• Send Quotations
Should be able to send quotation to customers
• Mobile ready
Should works on desktops as well as mobile devices

• Customer service
Access booking data easily
• Marketing
Create static offers & SEO for marketing
• Accounting teams
Should be able to reconcile reports
• Revenue managers
Control and manage comprehensive mark-ups
• Sales teams
Easily able to conduct CRM activities
•

• Booking notifications
Auto booking notifications to hotel and activity vendors
• Dates
Manage availability
• Allocation & Rates
Manage room allocation and pricing options
• Define deals
Ability to define deals such as 2 Nights - 3 Days in hotels
• Static data
Manage static hotel & activities data. ( Such as update latest
feedback about that property/activity )

• Auto download content
Automatic update of hotel static content from hotel suppliers
• De-duplicate hotels
Automatically find duplicate hotels
• Correct hotel data
Ability to fix incorrect hotel data such as address, name etc.
• Ability to publish such data to your IBE regularly

• Cloud Ready
Should offer benefit of Cloud - ROI, performance and ease of
scaling up your business
• Payment standards
Should comply with payment processing data standards – PCI
PA DSS compliant
• Data Security & ownership
Should follow data security standards using encryption of
relevant data

Webinar Recording & our complimentary checklist
Webinar recording would be made available to participants
Complimentary ‘Ready Reckoner’ for evaluating technology

Tavisca – Contact us
For any additional information and in-depth support on
choosing travel technology, do get in touch with us on
info@tavisca.com
www.tavisca.com
@Tavisca

About the presenters
Mahendra Yadav
CEO -Tavisca Solutions
Has built technology that powers over a
million travel bookings annually for travel
businesses across the globe.
Rahul Pilkhwal
CTO & Evangelist -Tavisca Solutions
Has architected cutting edge tools and
components for travel companies that solve
key business challenges
Kaustubh Latkar
GM -Tavisca Solutions
Has worked with travel businesses across
the world to implement relevant
technology that brings sustainable benefits
Email: myadav@tavisca.com
Email: rpilkhwal@tavisca.com
Email: klatkar@tavisca.com

Deciphering travel technology – Which components should you look for in a travel platform?

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

Similar to Deciphering travel technology – Which components should you look for in a travel platform?

Similar to Deciphering travel technology – Which components should you look for in a travel platform? (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (16)

Deciphering travel technology – Which components should you look for in a travel platform?