Category: Blog

15 Ideal Features – You Must Check in Hotel Booking Engine

Ideal Features that a Hotel Booking Engine Must Have Overview Essential Features to Consider in a Hotel Booking Engine Reasons to Choose ZentrumHub Booking Engine Are you thinking about switching from your current booking engine provider to a new one? Or, going from an offline to an online booking model?   Finding the right hotel booking engine that fits your requirements is challenging. However, defining precise requirements will help you choose the right vendor. Below are some things that can help you to outline your needs clearly and in selecting the right vendor as well.   Let’s start with the basics of a hotel booking engine.      A hotel booking engine is a versatile software designed to cater to Hotel Business Owners and Online Travel Agencies (OTAs). It is a centralized platform to showcase hotel information and enables seamless online bookings for end-users.    Read “Understand Hotel Booking Engines – Functionality, Cost, Types, & Ways to Build an IBE” for more in-depth insights.    15 Essential Features to Consider in a Hotel Booking Engine Before you compare different booking engines, evaluating the features they offer and how they can benefit your business is crucial. Here’s a list of must-have features to look for in a hotel booking engine:      Online Travel Agents Integrations: Flexibility to add or remove travel agents based on your business requirements.    Revenue Management: Systematic dashboard to show all bookings, discounts, offers, cancellations, and revenue generated.  Supplier Management: Access to an expansive hotel inventory with the option to add, remove, or pause individual suppliers from the booking engine.    Easy-to-Use Interface for OTA & Customers: A simple, readable, and tailored to meet user requirements    Customizable Booking Engine: The ability to customize options within the system to suit your specific needs.    Back Office: Easy way to manage bookings, analytics, suppliers, revenue, and other essential aspects.    Mark-Up: Flexible mark-ups for different suppliers, different kinds of hotels, city-wise mark-ups, seasonal mark-ups, etc  Device Compatibility: Responsiveness for smooth UI on various devices, like mobile, laptop, and tablet  Fast & Accurate Search Results: Option auto-suggestions and varied results based on search queries for a seamless user experience.    Zero Booking Failure: Ensuring that booking failures are minimized to avoid further issues  AI-enabled Search Patterns: Auto-suggest and search patterns based on ratings, customer feedback, and user behavior.    Multi-Language and Multi-Currency Support: The ability to adapt language and currency preferences based on user locations.    Deduplication or Mapping: Hotel and Room capability for deduplication and accurate listing  Reporting and Analytics: Detailed booking reports for effective analysis and data-driven decision-making  SEO Potential: Built-in SEO capabilities to enhance online visibility and attract organic traffic to your booking platform.    As an OTA, finding the right booking engine can significantly impact your business’ success. If you’re looking for previously mentioned features, we have carefully developed a hotel booking engine that Fortune 500 companies globally trust.   Reasons to Choose ZentrumHub Booking Engine ZentrumHub is an emerging travel tech company renowned for its cutting-edge hotel booking and supplier connectivity platform. With an easy-to-operate interface and AI-enabled features, the intelligent booking API ensures lightning-fast access to hotel inventory within 2 seconds, guaranteeing swift and efficient services.    Leveraging a vast network of 50+ global hotel suppliers, including names like HotelBeds, Expedia, Web Beds, Agoda, Yalago, OYO, Yatra, and more, ZentrumHub offers unparalleled business connectivity options. Whether supplier integration or end-to-end booking engine requirements, ZentrumHub’s universal single platform makes it effortlessly manageable.    ZentrumHub is becoming a preferred choice among travel businesses for global hotel supplier integration and booking engine platforms.       Let’s explore the key features that make ZentrumHub the industry leader:      Features:     ChatGPT Integration: ChatGPT-based search feature to find the best suitable hotels in the intended destinations  Supplier Management: Seamlessly integrate hotel suppliers for a diverse hotel inventory.    Revenue Management: Systematic dashboard to show all bookings, discounts, offers, cancellations, and revenue generated.  Easy-to-Use Interface: User-friendly interface for a smooth booking experience.    Multi-channel: Accepts Booking from mobile, website, and travel agents.    Customizable Booking Engine: Tailor the platform to your brand and unique requirements.    Mark-Up Facility: Flexible mark-ups for different suppliers, different kinds of hotels, city-wise mark-ups, seasonal mark-sups, etc  Fast & Accurate Search Results: Quick loading times and precise search results for user engagement.    Zero Booking Failure: Seamless booking confirmation process to avoid discrepancies.    AI-Enabled Search Patterns: Personalized search options based on user preferences.    Deduplication or Mapping: Hotel and Room capability for deduplication and accurate listing  Price Comparison: Users can easily compare prices, amenities, and special offers from different hotels to find the best deals.    Multi-Language and Multi-Currency Support: Adapts to diverse languages and currencies for global users.    White Label Solution: The platform offers a white label solution, allowing travel agencies and tour operators to brand the system as their own, enhancing their brand presence in the market.    Support and Training: Software provides ongoing technical support, training, and assistance to clients for a smooth implementation    Reporting and Analytics: Detailed booking reports for informed decision-making.    B2B and B2C Portals: ZentrumHub develops B2B and B2C portals, enabling travel agencies and tour operators to manage their business operations    SEO Potential: Built-in SEO capabilities for enhanced online visibility and traffic.    24/7 Customer Support: Access experienced assistance via call, chat & email, with a separate dashboard to track your support tickets.    XML Integration: XML integration with a wide range of suppliers, including global distribution systems (GDS), hotel aggregators, and other travel content providers, expands travel product offerings.    Select the solution that best suits your travel business and maximize your revenue with Zentrum Connect and Zentrum Booking Engine.  Choosing the right hotel booking engine is crucial for success, and each top-ranked booking engine has unique strengths and features.     Hotel businesses should carefully evaluate their needs and requirements to find the best fit that enhances their efficiency, customer experience, and revenue generation.  Read more blogs on Booking Engine Step-by-Step Guide – Go Live with ZentrumHub Know all about Hotel Booking Engine, Functionality, Cost, Types, and Ways to Build Ideal Features that a Hotel Booking Engine Must Have Why Must Every Travel Business Invest in Online Booking Engine?

Know All About Expedia API – Integration, Cost, Time, Business & Pricing Models

Know All About Expedia API – Integration, Cost, Time, Business & Pricing Models Overview Different Types of Expedia API Reasons to Integrate Expedia API With Your Travel Agency Technical Requirements to Integrate Expedia API The Cost, Time, and Steps to Integrate Expedia API Business & Pricing Models of Expedia API Expedia’s Pricing Models for End Customers Takeaway We are Certified and Official Hotel API Provider and Integration Partner for Expedia Group. Connect Expedia’s hotel inventory with your hotel booking engine instantly!——————————————————————————————————————————————— Let’s start with the primary question – What is Expedia API?  As you know, Expedia is a well-known online travel company offering a vast inventory of hotels, cars, and flights. It works as a travel agent and the supplier providing retail rates in the booking transaction. Under its brand name, Expedia provides net booking rates. Its API is designed for software developers who wish to develop apps that enable other businesses to integrate and share this inventory data.  In this era of big data, online travel agencies must equip themselves with the right analytics tools to make data-driven decisions and understand evolving consumer behaviors. We know data analysis can be time-consuming, so we are here to explain which data analytics OTAs must focus on to make data-driven decisions. Different Types of Expedia API Expedia’s APIs are tailored to specific business needs, and here are the 4 types of APIs that you can choose from  1. Rapid API This API helps to build custom end-to-end lodging booking experiences for OTAs, the world’s leading airlines, and loyalty and membership programs.   It offers all the essential data you and your travelers require to book a property. Based on how you wish to build the user experience, you can access properties, region mappings, rates, and much more.    This API’s modular design helps quickly customize the traveler booking journey per your business needs.      Rapid API offers leading lodging inventory, with 700,000 properties across 250,000 destinations and over 25 different property types & their intelligent geography mappings make search smarter. It also provides over 29 million high-resolution property images and 21 million high-resolution room images optimized for increased conversion. It shows over 82 million traveler ratings and over 57 million traveler reviews across Expedia Group brands. Also, unique user-generated content is refreshed on the API every day.  2. Booking API The Booking API helps to book rooms where the Price Check response confirms rates.   The Booking API’s primary itinerary method helps reserve the chosen property, room, occupancy, and rate. Payment details, like billing/cardholder contact information, are included in the request.   The successful booking response has the links to fetch the itinerary or cancel the reservation. You can make multi-room bookings for the same room type through a Shop request and pass the occupancy parameter separately for each room. You should include corresponding separate room instances in the array for each booking.     3. Shopping API This helps get the rates and availability of different room types for chosen properties (maximum 250 properties per request). The response consists of rate details like promos, cancellation penalties, whether the rate is refundable, and a total price breakdown to meet your market’s price display requirements.   Multiple instances of the occupancy parameter can request numerous rooms of the same type. If one request has various calls for the same occupancy, the response will have a single set of rates. Only eight rooms may be requested at a time. You must contact the account manager about their group booking for more than eight rooms simultaneously.  3. Content API These APIs provide you with access to content for all of Rapid’s properties.   Property Content    The Property Content returns a list of property IDs or complete details for the selected active properties in the chosen language.   This API can be used to retrieve property IDs or complete content based on your search criteria.    Inactive Properties    The properties can become inactive for the time being for various reasons; therefore, the Inactive Property API can be used to get the inactive property list from a provided whole date, helping you update your storage or cache to exclude unsellable or unbookable properties within Rapid.   Reasons to Integrate Expedia API With Your Travel Agency? Expedia API is a top-rated travel company with a vast network of suppliers and vendors, allowing you to offer multiple choices to your customers. This API lets your customers get detailed information about the room and destination, such as availability, reviews, pricing, etc. The booking experience becomes more seamless with proper content and a wide choice of relevant options.    Integrating such reputed APIs has multiple advantages, such as providing advanced search and booking functionalities, a wide range of travel products/services, and a comprehensive set of tools for business growth.  Let’s take a look at the features of Expedia API. It facilitates the following:  Integrating advanced functionality into agents’ travel portals.  Checking all hotel-related information like pricing, room availability, and ratings before booking or cancellation.  Offering faster responses from multiple hotels to provide accurate and real-time availability with rates  Receiving customer booking information in almost real-time.  Reading, creating, and editing room types and rate plans without depending on any market manager.  Technical Requirements to Integrate Expedia API It is crucial to have specific technical requirements, like TLS 1.2 for encryption, XML messages for bookings, and secure communication protocols to integrate any API. It is a time-consuming and cost-consuming task, even if you have a skilled in-house development team. So, travel businesses looking for suppliers like Expedia often choose supplier connectivity platforms like Zentrum Connect to quickly yet efficiently integrate the API and manage all its complexities.     The Cost, Time, and Steps to Integrate Expedia API Integrating any API is a tricky process and requires a lot of expertise, but here are the surface-level steps that you will have to follow to become an Expedia API partner –   First, you will have to register on the Expedia Partner Solutions website.  Complete the API application form.  Submit the form for review.  Once your form is approved, you will

4 Data Analytics for OTAs to Improve Customer Experience and Business Operations

4 Data Analytics for OTAs to Improve Customer Experience and Business Operations Overview Different Data Analytics for OTAs Conclusion Demand for travel has grown significantly faster than in previous years, putting additional pressure on online travel agencies (OTAs) to increase customer loyalty and customer experience. Intensifying competitive landscape with new players is a constant struggle for OTAs to sustain their business and retain customers. Data analytics for OTAs is the most valuable asset to derive informative insights about your customers and gain a competitive advantage. In this era of big data, online travel agencies must equip themselves with the right analytics tools to make data-driven decisions and understand evolving consumer behaviors. We know data analysis can be time-consuming, so we are here to explain which data analytics OTAs must focus on to make data-driven decisions. Different Data Analytics for OTAs OTAs have a rich source of information directly from the customers. This helps them understand the entire ecosystem of their customer’s travel. Let’s dive into five data analytics that can make a profitable impact on travel agencies. Customer data analysis Wondering what is on your customers’ minds as they begin to plan their next holiday? Well, the answer to this is customer data analysis that will help you understand the preference and behavior of your customer. It is a gold mine for travel agencies to provide a better customer experience and build better customer-centric products. Commonly data generated by customers are classified as web behavior data, transaction data, product usage data and customer-generated text data. Once analysis is done, OTAs can categorize their customers into market segments and develop a well-defined strategy for customer acquisition, retention and active engagement. Demand forecasting Now that you have gathered customer data, it’s time to focus on demand forecasting analysis. Accurate demand forecasting is an essential factor for revenue management. Using historical booking data and competitor analysis, revenue managers at OTAs can predict future guest demand and manage their hotel suppliers and inventory effectively. One tip we suggest is to segment your forecasts into different categories, such as Geographical origin of the guests Room type Type of traveler (leisure, business, bleisure) Demand forecast analysis will estimate room demand and determine highly profitable room rates in real-time for maximum income. User experience analytics Poor user experience can have a negative impact on your brand, hence the next data analysis that OTAs must focus on is user experience (UX). UX analytics will provide actionable insights on your platform design performance and provide answers to questions like Are they too many touchpoints on your website and mobile? Is my interface conversational for users? Why are my users leaving without booking a hotel? Is my platform content arranged to git user’s intention? OTAs can perform quantitative and qualitative data measurements to build data-informed design so that it’s easy for users to engage how you want them to, such as by booking a hotel or signing up for your newsletter. The end goal of UX analysis is to deliver a frictionless and intuitive user experience, driving better customer retention. Price optimization Moving away from customer-centric data analytics, price management initiatives is one of the most powerful data for improving profitability. According to research, pricing analytics can yield 200-350% ROI. By analyzing various real-time data metrics such as customer buying patterns, weather, seasonal booking pattern, etc., the machine learning models can identify optimum prices to drive conversions. With pricing analytics, the guess work or gut instincts are out of the window, and OTAs can synchronize their pricing strategies in real-time and present the right price at the right time. Conclusion Data is the cornerstone for every travel business’s growth and, ideally, the secret to launching successful strategies and stellar customer experience. In the travel industry, OTAs have the advantage of having valuable customer data, which they can convert into actionable insights and make smarter decisions about their business. Focus on the aforementioned data analytics for OTAs to stay ahead of your competitors, deliver excellent customer experience and sustain optimum business performance. Read more useful blogs for Travel Agencies (OTAs) How Slow Booking System Can Ruin Online Travel Agencies? Why Traditional Hotel Booking Methods Are Costing You Time and Money? Should OTAs Prefer In-House VS Outsourcing Tech Solutions How to Choose Payment Gateways for OTAs? 8 Factors to Consider Before Choosing the Right Hotel Supplier for OTAs How Can B2B Hotel Booking Portal Save Your OTA Business Time & Money? 4 Data Analytics for OTAs to Improve Customer Experience and Business Operations

Why Must Every Travel Business Invest in Online Booking Engine?

Why Must Every Travel Business Invest in Online Booking Engine? Why is an Online Booking Engine a Must for Travel Agents? Features of Booking Engine Advantages of Online Booking Engine for Travel Agents Conclusion Why is an Online Booking Engine a Must for Travel Agents? Are your customers abandoning your website before making a booking? Do your customers complain of complicated website experience or checkout process? Then it’s time you invest in a robust booking engine. A booking engine is the backbone of every travel business. It is a SaaS application that enables travelers to easily make online hotel reservations and manage travel companies’ business operations. A booking engine for travel agents acts as an intermediary between travelers and travel providers. The front end, which is customer-facing, lets travelers search and book rooms, whereas the back end allows travel providers to manage, search, view reservations, manage suppliers, apply business rules, track bookings etc.  A booking engine removes friction points throughout the booking process and minimizes the chances of cart abandonment. Also, it maximizes a company’s gross revenue by increasing customer reach. Let’s understand the essential features and advantages of a booking engine for travel companies which will help you evaluate your software provider. Features of Booking Engine  As various software companies are selling booking engines, finding the perfect booking engine that would meet your company’s needs, preferences, and budgets can be challenging. Here are some of the must-have features of a booking engine for travel agents. Easy navigation Just like eCommerce, travelers expect the booking process to be fast, easy and convenient. Make your user interface straightforward and clear with easy access to search for dates, check room availability, view room images, and complete payment. Simplicity and easy navigation will result in less complexity and confusion for your website visitors. Faster load times We are all aware of how smartphones have changed consumer shopping behavior. So, your next focus must be on a booking engine that’s optimized for smartphones. A mobile-friendly booking engine that’s fast loading is sure to increase your sales and conversion rates.  Multiple languages and currency options If you want to enter the international market, then allow your customers to book their reservations in their preferred language. Along with multi-language options, it would be an advantage if the booking engine supports payment in multi-currency. Flexible and secure payment options Ensure your desired booking engine provider is integrated with various payment methods such as PayPal, Amazon Pay, Google Pay, Apple Pay, etc. Since online payment is convenient for both travel providers and travelers, it is necessary that a booking engine maintains Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) Compliance for secure payment transactions. Integrations When it comes to room rates, room availability, pricing, hotel data duplication, booking engine software must be reliable, and that’s why real-time integrations with channel managers and hotel mapping tools are necessary. This way, you can save your business from pricing errors, overbookings, inconsistent hotel listings, manual data transfer, and much more. Advantages of Online Booking Engine for Travel Agents Some of the advantages of the booking engine are:   Customer loyalty: Customers love a seamless booking experience, and a booking engine will increase customer satisfaction, leading to customer loyalty for your brand. Gain valuable business insights: An online booking engine for travel agents gathers data on customers’ shopping patterns that helps you understand your customer and focus on areas on how to improve conversion rates and ROI. Also, if you are in the B2B space, booking engine software will help you gather insights into your suppliers, their performance, etc. Increase total booking revenue: With the booking engine, you can offer diverse travel products to your customers, such as flight tickets, hotels, transfers, car rentals, and much more. This automatically increases your total booking revenue, taking your business profits to the next level. Build brand reputation: An intuitive travel website brings a better opportunity of converting leads to sales while improving brand image effortlessly. Access to large hotel inventory: You can integrate your booking engine with multiple suppliers, wholesalers, and GDS to gain access to maximum hotel inventory, which will help you offer various options to your customers and maximize revenue. Conclusion Let’s face it, even with maximum hotel inventory, your customer reach strategy can fall flat without the right tech stack to optimize its execution. That’s why we strongly recommend an online booking engine that suits your travel business needs and will help you streamline your business efficiently and increase customer reach. Read more blogs on Booking Engine Step-by-Step Guide – Go Live with ZentrumHub Know all about Hotel Booking Engine, Functionality, Cost, Types, and Ways to Build Ideal Features that a Hotel Booking Engine Must Have Why Must Every Travel Business Invest in Online Booking Engine?