Living in the era of technological advancements only makes
our lives different because we want to see an impact of technology – in almost
everything that we do in our daily lives. When we speak in terms of travel
companies, they are aggressively looking out for new avenues to market their
products and services, on a global scale by using technological innovations.
The travel and tourism industry in the recent time has undergone a vast change
– thanks to technology. The result is the birth of a new buzzword that has
emerged, out of the fierce competition that exists in the marketplace – a
travel portal development.
The travel companies are looking out for developing a travel portal for themselves, with the
help of an in-house application development team or they take recourse to 3rd
Party Travel Portal Development Companies for building a travel portal. At this
point, we need to know “What is a Travel Portal?”.
What is a Travel
Portal?
Travel management companies, travel agencies and travel
aggregators as well as the tour operators are constantly seeking for a
comprehensive solution that has an online booking system and caters to the
needs of the travel industry, from the same travel portal. These companies
provide feature-rich travel portal
design and development and maintenance services.
Online travel portal development
is a critical task and requires lots of attention to be paid to the various
aspects of technology integration services. One good example is travel APIs on
such services like hotels, flights, car rentals, flight packages, insurance as
well cruise services. The travel portals
also come integrated with Global Distribution System(GDS).
GDS Integration
A GDS is nothing but a computerized reservation network that
acts as a single point of access for the accommodation of airline seats, car
rentals, reservation of hotel rooms as well as other travel related items as
accessed by other travel agencies and by larger corporations too. The GDS feeds
are usually incorporated into a travel portal website through XML. The travel portal development companies are
linked with these companies that offer such GDS services such as Amadeus,
Sabre, Galileo, Abacus and Travelport and many such services.
The advantage of using the above API/GDS integration services lies in the fact that the travelers
can obtain all the information regarding the services desired by them, from a
single point of contact with the travel portal. Other than the above two
integrations, some other type integrations are payment gateway integration and
social media integrations. So, let’s now delve into “What is a Payment Gateway
Integration?”.
Payment Gateway
Integration
The clients of the travel portal for your business will
always want to get online payments from the same website itself. They would
prefer to pay through a chosen payment gateway service provider such as PayPal.
It will make their lives easier and hassle-free as they indulge in such online
business transactions. The clients will be able to make payments through debit,
credit cards or net banking through the highly secured way of payments. This
secured way of payment ensures the complete peace of mind for the client.
Other Design Elements
While developing custom travel portals, one must always look
for certain essential elements, while designing the travel portals and one of
them happens to be an eye-catching User Interface(UI). If the customers opt to
navigate the website for booking through their smartphones, then responsive
design is what is to be considered by the travel portal development company.
To conclude, we must also have social media integration with
your travel portal website, to
effectively harness the power of social media with the help of streamlining
insights and information, related to travel deals and holiday packages – that
provides comprehensive and optimal online travel agency solutions.
