Is it vital for travel agents and the travel industry as a whole to embrace the cloud?
With holidays being booked in a few clicks of a mouse and vacationers looking for top notch information and easy booking right now, the answer is a resounding yes. Who has the time to stroll down to their nearest travel agent, and come home with armfuls of brochures to pore over?
Travel companies need to offer services that are responsive and flexible to customer’s needs, while meeting their own needs of increased efficiency and budget friendly solutions.
Here are some of the ways the cloud helps the travel industry to achieve that:
Bookings and Information Anywhere
From hotel chains hoping to attract high booking numbers to travel agents calling up the latest information on a family-friendly resort, the cloud grants the travel industry the ability to offer and access information at the touch of a button.
This is a truly flexible way to do business which meets customers’ needs there and then. Agents can call up information on the best hotels and book them from anywhere with an internet connection, while an airline could offer flexible booking for customers on the go.
Such responsiveness is a key part of building customer satisfaction and meeting their changing needs.
Scalability For Peak Times
Who isn’t watching their budget these days?
With cloud computing travel agents and other industry professionals can benefit from storage and application solutions that can be scaled up and down according to the time of year.
No more paying the premium for servers and software that can handle consumer demand at peak times such as Christmas and the summer holidays, only to find the money is wasted during quieter times when less capacity is needed.
With cloud-based solutions, travel companies of all kinds can scale their cloud storage up and down depending on the time of year. It’s a more flexible way of working which can mean significant savings.
Better Connection With Customers
Travel customers these days are used to flexibility and the ability to plan and book a trip on the go, from anywhere. Cloud-based solutions offer travel companies the means to offer the flexibility their customers want.
Travel agents can stay connected to their customers any time, day or night, allowing them to be responsive both in terms of customer service and in offering useful information and applications that can be accessed from anywhere with an internet connection. In terms of customer satisfaction and loyalty, the connectivity of the cloud is a boon for travel companies everywhere.
The Latest Greatest Applications
With cloud solutions, travel companies can implement new applications and ways of working company-wide, including overseas offices, without needing to invest huge amounts in physical servers and new IT infrastructure for each office.
As well as making updates to software or working practices much more streamlined, the cloud offers a good level of standardization.
Because each office is accessing the cloud instead of working from an individual system, everything can be streamlined and neatly packaged, which can do wonders for both efficiency and brand continuity.
The Whole Package
The cloud really comes into its own when it comes to the ability to offer travel customers everything they need to organize, book and enjoy their holiday.
From the initial search to creating an itinerary, from booking a flight to creating electronic travel tickets, the cloud is the perfect resource for placing everything a customer could need, right where they can easily find it.
Companies can even use the cloud to increase customers’ comfort en route, such as German airline Lufthansa using their innovative cloud-based CloudStream application to allow customers to hand pick digital content and create a playlist before boarding. No more boredom if the in-flight movie or magazines aren’t up to scratch!
For travel agents and companies, the cloud is the go-to solution for meeting customer demand for flexibility and quick responses.
Not to mention its potential to increase efficiency and decrease the budget, so both the companies and their customers will be on cloud nine.
About the Author: Tristan Anwyn is an author who writes on subjects as diverse as health, marketing, online reputation management services, and SEO.
 License: Creative Commons image source
