How is travel portal development fuelling the online travel market?

At present, if you are into travel business you need to have a travel portal for its outreach to the different customers all over the world. If you are one of those travel agents/travel agencies who are still into brick and mortar form of business, you might be unaware of the term travel portal. And you might be wondering what is it, how it will help my business and all. Take a chill pill, I’m here to explain most of your queries through this blog.

A travel portal is a portal (website/site) on the World Wide Web which is developed to expand business on a global level. Necessarily developed by the purpose of growing travel business. There are different travel portal development companies in India which help travel business to explore global market opportunities. TravQ - Travel portal development company is one of them that enables users to experience quality services from their end. Travel portal is generally associated with providing services to the ultimate customers to book flights and hotel rooms or availing travel advice, etc.

Travel portals are generally centralized with services such as travel bookings, trip reviews, fares, and much more, Travel portal development has a greater impact on the working of travel companies. Nowadays, it is rare to find travel companies that don’t have their travel portals to carry out different days-to-day operations. At present, different travel agencies in India are getting a smooth entry into the world of the online market. This helps them to explore more potential customers. 

It is very important to have your brand presence over the online market as it helps them to fuel up their business over the internet. The internet has very dynamic capabilities and it enables the promotion of different businesses across several industries including the travel and tourism sector as well. The future of this industry is very fruitful as people nowadays want to travel and explore the world. As we all know our mother nature is full of surprises. This mindset of common people is a boost for the travel business. Recent changes that occurred in the travel portal development solutions has led travel industries towards a new path. 

Features offered by a travel portal

Travel portals are not less than a gift for different players in the travel industry as they help them to capitalize on their business well and helps them to be on the top position in the online travel market. Developing an appealing travel portal is not a child’s play, it requires sufficient time, money and continuous effort. Let’s see some of the features a travel portal offers to a business.

• Provides responsive web design.
• Real-time availability of hotel rooms, flights, cars and much more from third-party suppliers.
• Sorting, paging allows result filtration.
• Alluring HQ banners images on the website.
• Multiple currency support with one payment gateway.
• Instant confirmation of reservations from third party suppliers.

Booking agents and customers are benefited in major by the use of travel portal as it helps them with various travel information, bookings and all the information required by the travelers during travel. Users are provided with the best service at an affordable price including exclusive ad customized offers by fetching pieces of information from central servers by the travel portal. 

We can bifurcate travel portals into different types including the major ones such as flight booking, holiday packages, car/ taxi/ bus booking. Users simply need to search for hotels on the portal as per their choice of location and book them online. It allows them to view their account details, booking stage, their seat number. It simplifies the booking and cancellation of tickets as well.

Benefits derived from travel portal by travel agents

Travel Portal is an exhaustive and affecting web-based Online Booking Engine, intended for Travel Industry particularly for travel and tourism-related companies. Booking software can be developed for all parts of B2B and B2C travel websites and integration of travel API for flight ticket booking, hotel reservation booking, holiday & travel packages, car/taxi booking as well as insurance. Travel portals are helpful for:

• Effective use of the products & services should be possible by utilizing user statistics reports.
• Amplify business on the web and accomplish a more prominent exposure resulting in increased turnover.
• Real-time information access and support.
• Zero investment in training of the users of this application since the entire application is browser-based.
• Reduction in order processing costs.
• The economic cost of interacting with customers.
• Make your mark in the online travel market with TravQ

TravQ is the best travel portal development service provider that is known for delivering quality services in this field with the help of simplified UI&UX and customized elements. Our skillful travel portal development team delivers a high-quality product at the same time share the client’s passion and beliefs.

TravQ - Let us create business opportunities for you!

Technological advancements that are easing travel businesses

Technology has been the hottest topic of all time as this determines the success and demise of any company in almost all industries. We are very much aware of the impact of technology in the travel industry as well. As per the Google Travel study, it was found out that 74% of travellers plan their trips over the internet, while a mere 13% of the travellers look for travel agencies for doing so.

 

Technology is helping travel and tourism sector evolve

If you’re a technical person, you must be aware of the impact that technology brought in the travel and tourism industry. Undoubtedly, it has significantly transformed the travel industry and its operations; be it customer satisfaction or online booking. With the changing travellers’ expectation and behaviour, technology is aiding firms to help them grow. Different players in the travel and technology sector are adopting different types of technologies in their business to improve customer experience.

Let’s discuss these technologies here.

• Virtual Reality (VR)

VR is providing a cutting-edge experience for travellers around the world as they can experience what their dream destination looks like in mere phone screens. Let’s take an example of 360-degree video, travellers are likely to experience the surfing experience (this was used in World Surf Leauge as well to give viewers what it’s like to be on top of a surfing board). Not only this there are several different examples that I have found while researching.

A South African Tourist agency has developed VR content and allows customers to experience what it’s like to be above the land with a virtual video of paragliding. VR helps to give customers first-hand adventure experience even before they book them. This technology is welcomed by most customers as it gives you a sense of decision-making as well to go for it or not.

• Wearables

Be it Google Glass or Samsung galaxy gear smartwatch, wearable devices offer customers a personalised experience. Wearables are used as safety and security measures during the course of travel. Talking about the success of wearables in the travel and tourism sector, I remember Disney World’s MagicBand which acts as a theme park ticket, guest room key’s. The company has sold more than 29 million magic bands until 2017.

• Mobile Technology

Mobile has been undoubtedly the most important among all as it plays a vital role in the growth of the travel industry. Our mobile acts as a tour guide, restaurant locator, hotel locator, map and much more which is a must during travelling. Everything now revolves around your palm, from boarding pass to train tickets and much more. With the help of mobile technology, the user can have all the information accessed through a mobile phone regarding their trip.

• WiFi Connectivity

These days we all are internet geek, we need to browse different things over the internet, post pics over social media sites and much more. It won’t be wrong to say, that we are very much addicted to the internet.

While travelling, people need to connect with their friends and family in order to keep them updated about what’s going on in the trip and much more. That is the reason why Travel and Tourism companies are offering fast & free wifi services to enhance customers’ travelling experience.

Insta story and Facebook posts are mandatory indeed. Haha!

• Blockchain

Blockchain is an extraordinary technology that helps to transform the travel business in a holistic way. However, this technology is mainly concerned with finance yet it appears that it is having a major impact in the lives of people in the travel business.

From time to time we have seen that there hasn’t been much experimentation going on with it, yet there’re possibilities that it will be handy in identifying passengers at the airport, guaranteeing transparency in tourists' opinions, and enables ease and security of payments.

Blockchain is an innovation ready to change the world as we are probably aware of it. Despite that it's essentially connected with fund, it likewise gives the idea that it can affect travel.

• Big Data

In recent time, Big data has been a talk of the town. Still, they need to show all the opportunities it offers for the travel industry. Since this technology yields much more for different players in a different industry, it has been widely being used.

This technology is widely used in the hotel chain. This helps them to figure out different information about their guest which allows them to target what is best for the marketing campaigns.

Essentially, they inspect their database to look out for the amount spent, the reason for the trip, the country of origin and cross-checks this information with public data from government sources in order to create the most suitable customer profile at the same time achieve a higher success rate.

• Internet of Things (IoT)

Technology is backing up the overall process of the travel industry by the time. As a result, IoT is easing the end operations of the hotels, airlines as well as different other companies by connecting smart devices, systems and processes. With the help of this technology, the travel industry can uplift the operational efficiency and customer experience. From allowing tourists for automated check-ins and check-outs to the hotels, IoT is helping each player in the travel industry in a significant way.

Concluding, it won’t be wrong to say that technology has an abundant impact on the travel industry. Technology acts as a middleman because it comes into play from the time travellers start to plan their trip to the time it gets concluded. This shows how dependent travel industry players are on technology.

Just in case, you are looking for travel technology solutions you can opt for a travel technology service provider. Being a pioneer travel technology company, TravQ delivers top-notch services to its clients across the globe. Having said that, it provides most of the services that a travel business needs to excel. In fact, TravQ’s industry-leading services that have been designed not only to include all of the features we have talked about here but many more which can be added as per clients requirement.

Top three GDS API’s to evolve your travel business worldwide

It was suggested by TripAdvisor and comScore in 2017 that travellers who make around 10 to 30 web site visits on an average before booking any kind of trip. While this seems like a lot for booking hotels, for instance, travellers visit only 4.4 unique websites, according to the study by Fuel and Flip.to. People prefer to make their reservations through ‘all-in-one-place’ platforms. They’ve reshaped user experience unifying and eventually simplifying it for average travellers.

The biggest reason for this is the openness towards the sharing of data with each other between different players in the travel industry. A good example of this is Uber which in 2014 allowed third parties to incorporate the Request the ride functionality in their applications. Today, your local sightseeing app can let users commute from one landmark to another without switching apps.

Before moving forward you should know the concept of APIs. API an acronym for  Application User Interface that allows connecting stream of data and functionalities among different software products. APIs simply acts as a control panel for developers to link software components without disrupting source code. 

You might be thinking, what relevance does this API thing have in the travel industry? The answer would be many. Suppose you are a hotel owner, by the use of the APIs you can allow your customer to book a car straight from your own website by integrating your room booking services with local car booking providers. There might be many travel API integration service providers in your area. Talking about the above example, here customers get ease in their booking process as they needn’t spend time browsing to rent a car over the internet.

By now, you should have got the idea of  API and its working. In this blog, I am going to focus on the important types of APIs used for unifying the travel industry features and information. I will keep this one short and sweet, unlike my other blogs. 

Travel Agents driving monetary benefits with these famous GDSs API

GDS API integration is preferred by most of the travel agents around the world seek for their own monetary profit. Global Distribution System (GDS) fills in as the immediate sellers of the AirFares, travel agents get into an agreement with GDS and gain access to a list of fares what they can resell to the clients. So gaining access to the GDS would enable you to serve direct Air tickets and you can draw more benefits out of them as compared to buying and reselling it. 

There are mainly five different types of reservation focused by GDSs:

• Aeroplane seats
• Railways
• Cruise lines and ferries
• Car rentals
• Hotel rooms

Talking about the major players of GDS, you will get to hear names as Amadeus, Sabre, and Travelport. According to the Sabre, these three actively cover approximately 99.9 % of the market share. 

Amadeus APIs

Back in 2018, Amadeus introduced its new portal Amadeus for developers and withdraw their old set of APIs. Amadeus representatives were asked in general regarding more detailed information and we all got to know that APIs are still in development. Presently, amadeus APIs are of two types viz. Self-service and enterprise. 

Self-Service APIs. In the event that you’ve been utilizing the old Travel Innovation Sandbox, realize that Self-Service APIs have come to supplant them. Sandbox APIs were made for new businesses trying different things with GDS capacities and couldn’t be utilized underway.

So, Where to use them?

• Flight and fare search (including lowest fares, most booked destinations, cheapest dates, and so on)
• Hotel search

REST/JSON measures are utilized in the APIs. For testing purposes you can attempt all accessible APIs from this set for nothing with 2,000 – 10,000 month to month demands relying upon a specific service. In production, you would need to pay € 0.0025 – € 0.030 ($0.0028 – $0.034) for them.

Enterprise APIs. It’s the main set of Amadeus APIs that covers nine distribution types and additional services:

• Airlines
• Railroads
• Hotels
• Car rentals
• Transfers (airport private or taxi transfers, which is a new feature that we discussed in the July 2017 news and trends report)
• Cruises
• Travel insurance booking
• Utilities
• Customer profiles

Each type contains numerous APIs, some of which are absolutely educational like finding the most reduced fares or looking through adaptable plan tolls. Others are made for ticket booking. This takes into account more prominent adaptivity while configuring the the set of services for your product. These APIs come both in REST/JSON and SOAP/XML formats. To look at estimating and get to, you need to contact Amadeus directly. 

Sabre APIs

In general, Sabre APIs also cover the same set of functions as the Amadeus APIs. However, Sabre divides its APIs into eight different groups:

• Airlines
• Session management
• Utility
• Ground transportation (car rentals and rails)
• Profiles
• Trip management
• Cruises
• Hotels

The APIs division at Sabre is identical to Amadeus’, including such classes as profiles, trip and session management, and utilities. Note that, as of now, the system doesn’t give protection and airport transfers.

Travelport APIs

Travelport joins three GDS systems: Apollo, Worldspan, and Galileo. While the systems have their own image names, regarding APIs, they are joined into a solitary Travelport Universal API. Dissimilar to Amadeus and Sabre, the universal API is a heap of capacities that grasp:

• Three GDSs: Apollo, Worldspan, and Galileo
• Air API connect
• Rail API connect
• Travelport rooms
• Fares and Ancillaries
• Customer profiles

Currently, Travelport doesn’t provide cruise API options for online travel agencies that want to automate sea travel booking for their customers. Cruise is only available for direct manual booking by travel agents. Along with Sabre, Travelport doesn’t include insurance and transfers into their APIs.

At present, Travelport doesn’t give cruise API integration service choices to online travel organizations that need to automate sea travel reservations for their clients. Cruise is accessible for direct manual booking by travel agents. Alongside Sabre, Travelport does exclude insurance and transfer into their APIs.

In any case if you need travel api integration you can always contact to one of the best travel api providers in india – TravQ. We provide the best GDS API integration services to the clients as per the structure of their business and their target customers.

Top 5 Tips to Improve SEO for Travel Websites

We all are aware of the fact that the internet holds somewhat great power to boost marketing and brand awareness of a particular firm/company. The internet holds a better position when it comes to promoting a travel-related entity (i.e. travel websites/portals/agencies/agents). In order to get recognized in the crowd of millions, one must get their business listed in the first page of some major search engines. There’re many travel SEO service providers in the IT sector which are helping travel businesses to set up a new face over the internet. TravQ is a travel business-centric company that provides travel SEO services to different travel agencies/agents around the globe. 

When done right, SEO acts as a powerful long-term marketing strategy that helps a travel website to get placed at the top of the search results for a longer period of time. By reading this, you must be curious about how to ace SEO for travel websites. Let’s discuss some of the major tips that act as an effective measure for your travel website.

Mobile-friendly websites

A mobile-friendly travel website is need of the hour as there’re more mobile users than the laptop/tablet users all over the world. Post the advancement in technology, the mobile industry has been growing rapidly attracting a lot of users. These tips will help you to build better mobile-friendly sites.

• Use of responsive web design
• Reduction of page load time
• Image optimization
• Avoidance of small texts
• Pop-up ads should be restricted

Use of relevant Keywords

Let’s assume someone wants to visit Paris. Guess, when their trip begins? The moment they set their foot Paris or the boarding time in the plane or when they grab a taxi to leave for the airport. Which option according to you is right? You might be guessing first, second or third option. Let me tell you my options are wrong as well your guess, haha!

The truth is it starts as soon as they make up the mind of visiting Paris. As an SEO expert, your work begins even earlier as the questions that might pop up in their mind might be the keywords you need to fit in your website contain. This will allow your site to appear in front of them. Keywords such as “direct flights to Paris from London”, “cheap hotels near Eiffel Tower”, etc. are the keywords that fit in as the given scenario.

Start Blog Posting

Blogging goes very well with travel businesses as well. There’s no better way to get backlinks for your website than creating new content and posting it internally or externally. It is considered as a top tool to excel travel SEO for travel agency. As we are talking about travel-related blogs no doubt it should be exotic as well as exciting. This helps to gain readers moreover it will help different users to land on your site. The world is made up of several exotic destinations which you can feature in your wordings to make your blog posts crisp.

If you have a section for the blog on your website and it features countless amazing posts and exciting locations to read about. I’d be the one who will read that for hours. Mention lots of travel stories that inspire your visitors to travel with you and allow them to share their story afterwards on your site.

Place Navigation on your travel website

We all are aware that every website has a large number of web pages in it. To make the browsing experience of visitors good you must have a well-designed internal link structure. It is considered good that no two pages be further than three clicks away from one another. The best way to do this is to put website navigation. 

Keep an eye on your competitors every move

If you have opened or plan to open a travel agency, then you are in the middle of heavy competition, my friend! My tip for you to keep a track on every single movement of your competitors so that you can use some of them to your own benefit. There are some things you can do:

• Keeping an eye on the keyword they’re using and how they rank.
• Keep yourself updated about their activity on social networking sites.
• Domains that link to them should be looked for.

It is important for you to business by keeping yourself updated with a competitor analysis strategy else you are going to fail miserably. 

Apart from these tips, there are some more like you can use visually attractive images on your travel websites that allure the visitors, fill out a schema markup for your website and try to build links from some authoritative travel-related sources. By doing so, you can have an upper hand in the market. If you are finding it difficult doing yourself, you can always avail travel SEO services from companies which are expertise in these fields.

Summing up, we can say SEO acts as an important tool that will leverage your travel business. TravQ has been providing its clients with travel SEO services to travel agencies for years and has tremendous success in this field. With a large number of travellers relying upon the internet to avail different services, it is a golden opportunity for any business in the travel industry to make the most out of it through proper implementation of on-page and off-page SEO.

These are 8 important features that travellers demand in a basic travel app

Mobile apps are becoming home to billions of active users worldwide, especially for travel enthusiasts. The travellers today are deeply reliant on mobile app technology to serve their purpose – whether it is ticket booking, hotel reservation or planning for the itinerary with a checklist – the travel apps are smart enough to provide great support & help to new as well as frequent travellers – says travel application development services.

With the power of automation, these apps are now able to deliver real-time tracking details of flights, tells about airport itinerary, finds the best bet & worth-visiting travel spots, helps in budget allocation & books cab services or meals at the airport. These apps are getting smart and acts just like an intelligent traveller.

If you are planning to cater the hospitality or travel sector with the help of travel apps that are engaging & relatable to travellers query – continue reading as TravQ – a travel app development company has brought some key & must-have features for travel apps. Let’s begin!

1. Smart & automated itinerary generator

• There are first time travellers who often struggle with planning for their trips in terms of – what places to visit in a given budget or what mode of travel to select in terms of feasibility or cost.
• It is a must for apps to have an “ automated itinerary generator” that can allow app users to create a journey or itinerary.
• Under such a feature, the user would only have to feed the desired location on the map, the generator would automatically fetch the custom travelling plan along with required details & outlay for the trip.
• There are apps already in the market with “itinerary generator” feature which allows users to plan & share their trips better, even if they are travelling for the first time.

2. Ride-sharing or cab booking features 

• Whenever travelling to distant or new places, commuting locally is one thing that has to be super easy for travellers.
• Every basic travel app must have cab booking features for travellers who are looking for comfortable travel.
• Whether the traveller wants to commute from airport to hotel or from the hotel to some tourist spot in a city, an app that holds the easy to access feature of cab booking will be a definite plus for the ardent/frequent travellers – believed by travel mobile apps development company.

3. Trip reviews where travellers exchange their views

• Travel app should aim at connecting travellers or building a network of different & distant travellers.
• A review feature is a must inside the app where users would care to share their experienced reviews or suggestions for peer or first-time travellers.
• There should be a community or feed where people can exchange their views towards a certain place, adventure sport, budget allocation & many more topics that every user would like to learn about.

4. Geo-location tracking system for the exploring travel-seekers

• No matter travel-seekers plan to visit some country or nearby location for a quick road trip, an app should have an advanced & real-time GPS system.
• So that users can allocate the place or particular spot in an instant without the need to carry gigantic maps or travel books.
• Just by feeding the location, an app must show a detailed & real-time accessible route to travel-seekers during their journey – says travel app development services.

5. An intelligent booking system for a smart traveller

• There should be an intelligent booking system within the app that not only take care of the booking part but also performs functions like price comparison, categorization, sorting/filtering, reminders set up, timely notification regarding new & attractive offers.
• Even search, plan & save deals for a future booking.
• In short, an app should have a compact system that deals with all the necessities of the trip for users looking for quick results during their journey.

6. Share feature integrated with social media handles

• A travel app should have a “sharing feature” where users could share their expected or desired travel wishes with their peers or travel partners.
• Such a feature should integrate well with social media accounts of users like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Email & more.
• So that user can easily share & spread his desired trip details with his troop to plan ahead easily & better.

7. Integration of safest reliant payment gateways

• Online payment options are still security taboo in many areas. With the number of data breaches & hacks, people are still hesitant to share their card details or any monetary details & believes that only plastic money or COD could be better scope for payment means.
• For them, the app should integrate the most advanced & safest payment gateways – the trusted ones like Paypal, Paytm, Google Wallet, Apple pay, online banking and more – to have smooth transactions.
• This feature is a must to note when planning for travel app development.

8. Customer grievance or feedback segment to vision at improved user-experience

• To analyze the user experience or how the users are liking your app, care to mention a customer grievance or feedback segment within the app where users would share their honest reviews, suggestions about the app.
• To offer an optimum travel experience to users, embed this segment inside the core logic of the app – it can be in the form of a checklist, FAQ form, survey list, poll or any other creative idea that your brand image would like to implement.

About Us!

TravQ is an advanced generation-led travel portal & travel application development company, delivering the most exceptional travel technology projects with crisp UI & UX, speedy, quality assured & tailor-made elements. Strict dedication to budget allocation, time scarcity & desired functionality of the app model.

Also, focused on restructuring the backend systems of travel portal with automated & groundbreaking technologies to help brands funnel their hospitality or travel business with utmost ease & rewarding revenues.

Let’s set up a quick consultation for your travel app or portal’s example model to turn it into a trending one!