BULLETINS

Travel Technology is understood by many as working with Flights vertical by many. This is more driven by the fact that it is Flights which is more in the lime light always and Travel agents tend to focus more on Flights business. In the recent days it is an open secret that Non-Air business has started to drive agency business in a great way and Travel agents are focusing on Non-Air verticals like Hotels, Cars and Sightseeing etc. Of these Hotels is one of the prime growth avenues for agents.

Teknokraaft has been working on providing solutions to Hotels verticals for the couple of months now and we will agree that it is quite challenging and at the same time an interesting one.

On one side is the pure XML integration kind of works. We have wide options of integrating with many suppliers who have XML feeds – GTA, Tourico, Travco, HRS etc.  The traditional GDS also have decent hotel inventory and the advantage is that for those who have already taken a web services connect for Flights, Hotels will also come free (that is what we have seen). That means you just need to get the development part completed for it to work.

We have developed a Hotel Engine Platform which enables multiple XML connect to work at the same time. At present this is working with GTA and Galileo Hotels and the results are displayed in the same result screen. The challenge here is that GTA Hotels work on the Pre-paid model whereas Galileo Hotels work on the post-paid model.  We have managed this difference in workflow internally in our engine so that the user does not feel the difference at all.

We are also working on providing a DB for the agents to store their contracted rates. This would mean that along with results pulled out from XML feeds, your contracted rates will also be displayed on the result screen. Users can choose which one to go ahead with by looking at the offered prices.