No two travel businesses are the same; and thus, if you are looking for a ‘one size fits it all’ travel agency CRM, then you are in for a rude awakening. Whether you specialize in FIT (Frequent Independent Travel) or Fixed Departure Tours, chances are your requirements are highly varied from that of another travel agency. Thus, the perfect CRM for travel agents is the one that is minutely customized to snugly fit the particular business and its unique needs.
So, the question arises, how to select the best travel agency CRM for your business?
Now, before you start looking for the answer to this question, one must understand the uniqueness of Travel Agency business.
A travel agency is different than any other business by quite a few parameters. There are more than one stakeholders here and managing all the vendors, tracking reservations and calculating agent commissions is a pretty complex task. A CRM software developed to address the unique needs of your business is the perfect tool for making your life easier and your trips more organized.
So, here are the characteristics you should look for in your travel agency CRM.
A successful travel agency operation requires a lot of traveling around! Thus, the perfect CRM for travel industry will have to be accessible from anywhere at any time.
Here, a cloud application is your best bet! This way, all your data are saved on cloud and hosted by the CRM provider; you can simply log in with a browser and manage your sales funnel.
Mobile accessibility is another crucial point here. With a fully mobile friendly CRM system in place, you don’t need to carry your laptop around. You can get every update and manage leads, clients, reservations, and transportation at your fingertips with a mobile optimized travel agency CRM.
When you are running a travel agency that has several upcoming tours in the pipeline, managing details of each and every trip can be more than a little cumbersome. Here, you need a CRM especially built for your business, that lets you see all your trips in one place and lets you manage every single detail from there too!Be it capturing leads from different sources, managing reservations in hotels, cars, and airlines, managing different vendors and agents, with the perfect travel agency CRM, you should be able to do all this from your CRM home page only.
Generating a quotation or an invoice for the clients is one of the most complex tasks for travel agents, and this is especially true for FIT trips where you tailor the tour as per the requirements of your clients.
Here, you take into consideration the accommodation and transportation costs, reservation costs for any activity that you may arrange during the trip, commission payable to the booking agents, profit percentage of your agency as well as any other complimentary service cost that you may be incurring. Needless to say, this calculation tends to become pretty complex and many travel agents end up sending a random quotation, sacrificing their profit share.
A customized CRM for travel agents should be able to calculate all these factors and generate quick quotations for each client and each trip.
Thus, while investing in a travel agency CRM, it is crucial that you go for a system that offers you smooth quote generation feature and in turn, helps you gain more from each trip.
As a travel agent, your reputation is your biggest asset. And building a great reputation comes with the challenge of client satisfaction.
Thus, a CRM for travel industry must come with guest management features. No matter how small or big your operation size is, managing every single guest (including their VISA and Passport details, meal preferences, accommodation preferences, contact details etc.) is no small task.
Here, opting for a CRM that lets you organize and keep track of all your guests can lead to awesome client relation and in turn referral sales as well as repeat clients.
One of the major challenges for any travel agency is calculating the commissions for each of their agents. Tracking revenue for each trip is also pretty complex thanks to the myriad number of vendors and other costs.
Thus, one should always go for a travel agency CRM that can help calculate the commissions and give a clear picture about how much revenue the agency has earned after removing all costs.
This insight will not only make your life way easier (as you won’t have to do the cumbersome calculations manually) but also will give you a clear picture regarding the health of your business.
This again is a vital point to keep in mind. When you are busy growing your business, you certainly don’t have the time to use five different software to get the job done. Going for a CRM that offers you all necessary integrations such as e-mail, analytics, reporting and e-mail marketing will practically ensure that you are running your business from your CRM homepage itself.
Last but not the least, flexibility is one vital feature that you simply cannot do without!
As mentioned in the beginning, no two travel businesses are the same. No matter how many workflows the CRM system is offering, there should always be room for adding more functions or eliminating the unnecessary ones.
While you will obviously look for a feature-rich robust software, make sure that your travel agency CRM is flexible enough to accommodate your business needs.
So, if you are looking at scaling your travel agency, don’t just buy any CRM, invest in a highly-customized travel agency CRM that accommodates your requirements and make your life easier. For more information on travel agency CRM get in touch with our experts or book a demonstration here.