Your on-line travel booking engine is now 4th generation!
Are you using it’s functionally to your best advantage?
Similar to your mobile phone the functionality of on-line booking travel engines (OBE) has dramatically improved in the last three years.
Gone are the days when a booking would drop out half way; or you would be left with that nagging feeling that the flight may not have booked.
Today OBE’s are packed with functionality; and if set up correctly very reliable.
If you are like me and only discover new functionality on your iPhone by chance; then wonder how you existed without it – then this Blog is for you only adapted to OBE’s.
Here is my checklist on how the latest OBE functionalities will save you travel costs and administration time.
If you need more help please email me jmartin@mettrex.com.au or call me 0411 555 848 I will be delighted to talk to you.
Reduced or zero on-line booking fees – some agencies including Mettrex now offer zero on-line booking fees. Robots have taken over many on the manual functions of a travel consultant and this means the operating costs of Agencies has reduced dramatically. A Travel Agent can now often cover OBE costs and make a small profit from the commissions paid by airlines and hotels.
Changes can now be made on-line via the OBE – with certain booking tools you no longer have to call the agency or the airline to make a change to a flight, hotel or car. You can simply change it via your OBE or your mobile OBE App. This eliminates agents service fees
Tickets in credit can be managed through the OBE – now when you log on to your OBE you can see the tickets in credit applicable to each traveller. Using the OBE you can then use the credit to book a ticket in the normal way. You never miss a ticket in credit!
Fully reconciled automated credit card statements – there are credit card products that can be integrated into your OBE so that at the end of the month you receive a fully reconciled statement. Each charge for air, hotel and car is coded by:
- Invoice Number
- Itinerary
- Passenger Name
- Cost Centre
- GL Code
- PO Number
Gone are the days of tedious credit card reconciliations.
Access to discounted hotel rates from Expedia, Wotif and Booking.com – in the past you used hotel rates provided by the Travel Agency. Now you can access the massively discounted rates from on-line hotel websites. This also means that you can prepay hotels eliminating the problem where a traveler does not have a credit card
Book both domestic and international flights – with the correct configuration you can use your OBE to book both domestic and point to point international flights again eliminating costly service fees
Built in approval systems – in the past OBEs approval systems were clunky and unreliable. Now they are stable and approval can be made via a mobile phone app
Travel policy control – with the correct travel policy set up the OBE you can ensure that each staff member only purchases travel that is with policy. This applies to airline tickets hotels and cars
I hope this helps, I have only covered the most significant improvements.
If you would like more help please contact me via contact form below or call me on 1300 850 596.
