The Advantages of Partnering with a Travel Technology Company

If you're looking for an online solution for your travel business, you typically have three options:

• Build it indoors
• Outsourcing it to a service-based IT company
• Outsourcing to a travel technology company

You can only do the first option if you have an in-house engineering team. Even then, it can be a difficult project depending on the type of application/solution you are looking to develop. Your in-house team may lack the skills and expertise to plan and build a solution that is comparable to what is available from specialist vendors in quality and functionality. If you hire outside consultants to help your team, it will cost you a lot of money. So unless you are a very large organization, this option is not really viable.

The second option, although it is more feasible, also comes with its own challenges. For example, a generalist IT Company that caters to all areas under the sun with no in-depth knowledge and expertise in any field including tourism. This is fine if you have basic requirements, such as a white-label website/mobile app.

However, if you want something more sophisticated, such as an end-to-end travel e-commerce solution with multi-vendor integration, business rule management, contract inventory management, contracts, overseas distribution, and channel management, and more, you're better off partnering with a trusted travel technology company with a track record of providing these types of solutions to a wide range of travel agencies. 

Ready Solution

Another advantage of working with a travel technology company is that they have ready-to-use solutions for different business areas including:

• online booking
• Support Office & Accounting
• B2B agency management
• Road construction
• XML API integration
• Inventory management
• Distribution and channel management, etc.

Their solutions have been refined over the years based on regular market research and input from a wide range of industrial customers.

So whatever your needs are, chances are they'll have a solution. Not to mention the flexibility you'll get in terms of pricing, hosting/deployment model - SaaS (plug and play), On-Premise, or Hybrid, you can choose the right model for your business. IT companies are generally less likely to have a solution ready and will often develop a solution for you from scratch, a process that can take anywhere from a few weeks to several months depending on the scope.

You also need to spend more time explaining to them what you need, as their staff will not have the same industry and product knowledge as employees of a travel technology company.

Having access to off-the-shelf solutions means faster time to market and the ability to integrate technology into your daily workflow faster to respond to market needs.