he travel booking landscape is rapidly changing. Mobile bookings have a greater impact year on year and your customers expect you to be online.
A lot of businesses in the tours and activities sector have resisted using booking systems. Their reasons for this:
- Expensive
- Unable to use
- Not specific to business needs
This is no longer the case. Cloud computing has ensured that online booking systems are extremely affordable, with monthly subscriptions costing as little as a day’s wage bill for a minimum wage employee.
In 2017, an online booking system is a “must have” for any tour or activity business that is spending lots of time answering phone calls, sending emails or considering hiring more staff.
It can be hard figuring out what’s the right online booking system for your business, as there are so many different variations. Once you have identified what is the right one for you however, it can have many benefits, the main one is the fact that it helps businesses increase their bookings, which is what we’re all after.
Increase in Bookings
An online booking system leads to more sales. Without a robust booking engine, you can be like a leaky pipe, where small drips of water are constantly being lost. At first this doesn’t seem like a big deal. The trouble is that a consistent small drips can create huge loss over time. This is the same with bookings. Out of 39% of travel bookings made outside normal office hours and that only 1 in 3 people leave a voicemail when they ring, there is a huge potential for lost bookings.
Less Stress
Is your business taking over your life? Spending all your day in your inbox? There is a short way. With a booking system you manage all your bookings through a central point be it online bookings, bookings received over the phone or walk ups. You don’t even have to be there to check how everything is going. Most booking systems are not mobile based so you can check in on any internet connected device to track and manage your business.
Mobile is important now. Everyone has a smartphone. And yes it is important for your business too as Google is now prioritizing websites with mobile functionality. A good booking system does a lot of this work but should allow simple mobile booking for your customers. This will save you a truck load of time and money with a web developer on how to get your website ready.
So how else can it help you? Well a good system will also allow you to assign and roster staff to your activities so you’re not stuck beating your temples on a Sunday night with the company calendar. This takes a lot of the headache of running the business from you.
Reduction in Costs
The hard facts are that an online booking system can help reduce staffing costs by 20–30%, depending on your size of business and increase efficiency by more than 50%. That means that even if it’s just YOU, you’re saving a truckload of time, which could free you up to spend more time marketing or just put the feet up.
Increase Your Distribution with an Online Booking System
Distribution I hear you ask? What’s that?
Distribution is ideally anywhere else you sell your product. You might sell on a website like Victors or you might sell through a local tourist office, hotel concierge or travel agent. These channels are outside your website and sales office. These channels normally sell tours or activities in exchange for a commission, which ranges between 10–30%. You may even use voucher companies like Group on or Living Social to sell your tours or activities in low times of the year. This is also distribution.
Dealing with these systems can be great way to increase your web presence and get yourself seen, but it can also lead to a lot of work. For instance, if you start getting bookings from these channels are you worried about being double booked? If a customer walks up with a paid voucher from a third party, expecting to be accommodated, when you’ve already sold out your tour can be very uncomfortable. It can also be damaging for your brand if that customer leaves a negative Trip advisor or Yelp review.
Up Selling
Up selling is also a fantastic way to boost your revenue. What’s up selling?
It’s adding additional items at booking that add to the customer experiences. For example, take a hotel pick up, it’s not going to drive the sale but when the customer sees it in the booking form alongside a checkbox for the hotel they’re staying at they may be happy to pay an extra $10–15 for the pleasure. You could add lunch as an extra. Don’t provide food — so what? Do a deal with a local cafe to provide lunches on request and make 50% of the revenue from it Easy.
If you add these options without a booking system, it will become very difficult to manage. Imagine you were booking something and had sent a couple of emails about the purchase and then received an email asking you: “now, would you like to book lunch with or without cream cakes.”
QuadLabs Technologies is premier travel technology company in India. It has an expert team to provide end to end travel technology solutions to its client worldwide including locations US, UK, Brazil, Middle East and many more. One can also contact us for advance software for travel agency,online booking engine, mid office systems, b2b & b2c travel portal systems and many more.
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