Travel Business: A Reshaping Industry
In late 20th century, about 30 to 20 years ago, we need to visit a travel agent to book a trip. What would happen next is your hospitable travel agent would book your flights, give you a list of itineraries with a stack of maps and brochures.
Then, the internet came and knocked on their doors.
Today, in the world of Skyscanner, Expedia, and a rewarding frequent flyer, or any other loyalty programs, people might wonder why there is still such a travel agency. People thought those travel agencies would go extinct. This is actually the farthest thing from reality. Of course, brick-and-mortar travel agencies are not as common as they were in the past. But, they are still largely in demand.
According to Forbes, in 2015, 34% of millennials used an offline travel agent. This is essentially because the customers want an advice from the experts in the agencies. Moreover, Airline Weekly published a note where travel agencies which are specialising in corporate solutions remain competitive. The question is, how can the experts stay up-to-date to provide useful advice? Well, they need to understand more about the customers’ profile and characteristics. By doing so, they can deliver a premier service which converts into customer loyalty. More often, they use technologies to do these jobs.
CRM for Travel Agencies: Today and Tomorrow
In recent years, the traveling industry has grown more complex and challenging than ever before. Moving forward, the travel agents in the future will be technical, specialised, and agile. The software and systems that they use will have to be sophisticated, allowing them to understand the insight behind the data collected from various sources and allowing them to understand their traits better.
Hence, Travel Agencies typically employs agents who should not focus on selling their products but also to foster long-term customer relationships. Thus, the salesperson needs to know customer information to nurture personal relationships and has to be equipped with a tool that supports them to do so.
“The travel agencies of the future cannot afford to offer anything but exceptional services when a free online do-it-yourself alternative is a click away for travellers. In other words, it has to be a service that far exceeds anything a traveller could achieve by doing it alone” David Fatuca, Locomote.
Here, SugarCRM helps travel agencies from one end-to-end of the customer journey, which spans from pre-sales activities, selling products, and after-sales services, which is equipped with personalised workflows in one streamlined interface, which can be integrated with your systems. Moreover, with customisable Module Builder and Module Loader, the CRM can be utilised for two different market segments such as Corporate and Individual Customers.
Figure – An example of SugarCRM Implementation for Travel AgenciesEcosystem
CRM for Corporate Customers: Nurture the Leads into Customers
Equipped with fundamental yet intuitive out-of-box modules, SugarCRM will allow you to nurture your prospects into loyal customers better. These include the following modules:
Additionally, Sugar’s Dashboards show real-time insights into customer data like Leads, Opportunities, and Accounts. This will also allow your team to continuously monitor account progress, pipeline by sales stages, including closed deals and expected revenue. Also, each user can customise his/her own dashboard according to different needs.
Figure – Corporate Accounts Grouped by Industry
CRM for Individual Customers: Easy Integration with Booking Systems
With SugarCRM, the integration with your backend system will be done in a breeze. With hundreds of years of accumulative experience from our experts, Sugar’s easy to integrate platform will allow integration with booking and back-office systems such as Hotel and Flight online booking systems.
A flexible data model will also help travel agencies model complex client relationships from a commercial perspective, while also allowing the tracking across travel destinations and product purchased at every client.
Figure – Flight Booking Details
From the booking and transactions data, Sugar will allow your team to segregate your customers depending on different tiers and/or categories. An example of such implementation is illustrated in the following figure below, where customers are divided into different classifications such as Sapphire, Gold, Diamond, Platinum, and Titanium.
Figure – High-Level Customers by Category (Loyalty Programme)
How about visualising the proposed or planned a trip for your customer? Fret not, Sugar’s Google Maps integration allows for fully-functional maps. Users can get Google location information and directions right within the SugarCRM desktop client. Want to further customise? Sugar Administrators can use Sugar Studio to add the Google Maps integration to any standard or custom Sugar Modules.
To summarise, the best travel agents will have the technical ability to use software and tools in its full capacity. As discussed in the above points, SugarCRM can help you to unlock the maximum possibility for your travel agencies. From corporate to individual customers, SugarCRM for Travel Agencies by iZeno can be tailored based on your unique requirements and integrate it with your systems. Based on our experience working with leading Tour and Travel Agency in Indonesia, we have transformed the CRM into a platform which is designed to ensure a smooth operation of mission-critical activities across different departments such as Corporate Travel Sales, Retail Bookings, and Customer Service Support.