Could Your Travel Website Be Improved?

Our Hotel product route allows you to sell either 3rd party accommodation or easily load your own stock. We have introduced a new cleared UI (User Interface) that provides customers with access to detailed information for individual properties including a gallery of photographs, a description with facilities and the ability to locate the hotel on a map. Customers can also use filters to return hotels based on areas and districts, distance from a certain location, hotel name, star rating or average cost per night. We have also made significant speed improvement which we will cover shortly.

Working with a number of travel clients recently we have added a number of new suppliers to our system. Here is a full list;

• Hotelbeds / BedsOnline
• Priceline
• LinksRezHilton
• Tourico
• MultiCOM Hotels

Flights has seen the addition of a flight matrix at the results stage allowing customers to filter flights on direct and multi-stop as well as individual carriers and pricing from both of our integrated suppliers MultiCOM and Amadeus.

We have completely re-designed the dynamic packaging for our travel system; allowing customers to easily select and combine a different selection of flights, accommodation and car hire. Adopting the single product only routes for car, accommodation and flights; customers can filter on a number of categories to create the package holiday they are looking for.

As part of our travel technology review, we have re-designed the checkout stage of the booking process to provide a clear pricing and product break down. Customers can easily see the key information regarding the products they have added to their basket; from check-in and departure times to hotel information and transfer details. We have added postcode lookup to give customers an easier way to provide required information. Discount codes have been included and added a number of new payment gateway providers such as;

• Barclays
• Realex

Like flights, car has seen the addition of a matrix that again allows customers to filter on car hire suppliers, vehicle type from saloon to estate and luxury, as well as price. The car hire product route has seen the inclusion of a number of suppliers as well as decreased search times due to our recent optimisation.

• Hertz
• AVIS
• Budget
• Enterprise
• Dollar
• Thrifty
• Alamo
• Affordable Car Hire

As part of our investment in our travel technology we have made a number of improvements to the UI. These allow our system to offer airport hotels, airport parking and airport lounges as well as a combination of them. Our platform also gives you the ability to add your own extras upsell via our tour operator system such as additional night’s stay, event tickets or equipment hire for example.

• A2B Parking
• A2B Transfers
• ResortHoppa

We have been working closely with our clients and Attractions World to create a brand new attractions route. You can now upsell tickets to major sporting events, London attractions or Orlando theme parks adding to your travel offerings to potential customers. This provides your customers with one platform for all of their travel needs as opposed to having to use several websites for different portions of their holiday.

Let’s face it, the one thing customers look for when booking online is speed. They don’t want to be waiting 30 seconds for their results to appear. Improving this specific area of the system was paramount to us and in something we are constantly working with suppliers to improve further. We are happy to boast that with our latest version of travel technology we are returning accommodation from suppliers in under 3 seconds.

New to the latest travel berry version is something we call the merchandising API (application programming interface) which records search criteria from your website to determine popular destinations and searches. The Merchandising API then populates your offers with the most popular destinations based on what your customers are actually searching for. This provides an intelligent way to offer your customers the holidays they are actually interested in and with this process being automated it provides added benefits of saving time and keeping your content updated daily.

We have built on our existing tours route to provide a cleaner UI, faster results and added functionality. Users of our tours system can pre-load the system with their own stock, adding rules, contracts and availability. These tours can then be attached to flights and extras to provide a complete tour offering to your customers.

Due to impact of mobile devices on the way users browse the internet and the growing amount of travel bookings on this platform we have created a number of templates where the design translates across all media devices including tablets and mobiles. We have made these improvements on our Umbraco travel CMS solutions and hope to include them in our online booking systems very soon.

The ‘manage my booking’ section allows customers to view their booking details post-sale. They can log in to see detailed information about their accommodation, flight, car hire, tour or extras. Customers have the ability make additional payments, print invoices or request certain changes. As part of the latest design overhaul, we have revisited this area of the travel offering also.

Our travel guides provide detailed information about potential destinations to the customer. Landing pages can be created with information about countries, regions, resorts or individual hotels with offers attached at any stage. Key information regarding local currency, time difference or flights time can be highlighted along with image galleries and reviews. The travel guides have been re-designed to display this information clearly and provide a more interesting read.