Friday, April 14, 2017

The Impact of Travel Technology in Online Travel Business


The rise of computer in later half of the 20th century left many to think that they would be jobless, but what we see, the computer technology has greatly revolutionized the life of mankind. The same is true for travel technology. According to Questex Travel Group, in spite of continuous pressure from third parties and direct vendor having more access to travelers, travel agents have accomplished almost 77% of the cruise bookings, 55%of air travels and 73% of travel package bookings. According to a research, the growth and advancement in technology have helped to enhance the communication, convenience, productivity, speed of business and marketing.

Travel technology is the application of information technology in the field of travel, tour and hospitality. Travel means to go one place to another, so it is associated with computer reservation system (CRS). The system restore data related to air travel, car rental, hotels and others, the data is retrieved whenever it is required for conducting transactions. The major CRS transactions for booking and selling tickets for multiple airlines are called Global Distribution System (GDS). Although earlier it was developed by airlines to make the work easy but nowadays it is mostly used by OTA (online travel agent).

Application of Internet has greatly affected the way of working of travel agents and their intermediaries. The development of specialized portal (vertical portal) has greatly helped to redefine the travel business. This has led to the formation of many last minute online portals which can organize and distribute distressed inventories to the clients. The application of ecommerce by the airways companies have allowed the customers to directly access the reservation system. Now a customer can search various flights before booking a flight of his/her choice.  Internet has facilitated the customers to access the service 24x7. The technology has made possible for travel agents to keep themselves in touch with their clientele through various mediums like mobile devices.  They can contact them whenever they want. We can aptly said that travel technology change the whole face of travel business, now travel agencies are represented by a system that is controlled by technology.

The way of searching and booking travel deals have witnessed a lot of change in last decade. The trend shows that there is a clear cut growth of OTAs and usage of travel technology solutions. Online Travel agencies (OTAs) wants to make their works 100% online starting from the consultation required for IATA license, to GDS and APIs access.

Source: http://www.axissoftech.com/blog/the-impact-of-travel-technology-in-online-travel-business/

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