How to Create Travel Packages and Ways for Technology to Help with This Process

A travel package represents a combination of transportation service, accommodation and additional travel products distributed as a single pack. And just like a lot of things in the modern travel industry, technology has revolutionized the way we create travel packages, making this process a lot more efficient.

Travel package creation is a time-consuming process which entails prior planning, booking arrangements, pricing considerations, along with taking into account the resources allocated for a particular destination. The ever evolving travel software helps tour operators and travel agencies solve problems that happen in this process much more productively. For example, one can make use of:

• Inventory systems;
• API-based supplier integrations;
• Tour publishing software;
• Tour package itinerary builders;
• Booking engines – and so on.

Below we’ll take a closer look at how exactly modern travel tech can optimize package management. But, first, let’s make sure that we are on the same page about the terms.

Travel Package Options

Of course, you can find different classifications depending on the reason for travel and the number of tourists. In this article, we will group travel packages into four major categories – tailor-made, dynamic packages, pre-packaged tours and one-day trips – just for the sake of convenience. In the end, every tour can fall into one of those groups, depending on how much the tour operator prepares in advance and how many change options are left out for the traveler.

Tailor-made tours

This group of tours combines travels created specifically for the given person / group of people. They can choose any accommodation, transfers, excursions or activities they like. Packages of this type are very flexible for tourists and are considerably more expensive. Hence, successful sales of such products depend not only on how well the travel agent manages to find appropriate services that meet budget limits, but also on how well the provided itineraries answer the traveler’s request and boost desire to travel. The dates are also selected by the tourist, which is extremely convenient. Tailor-made tours can take the form of:

• Independent tour packages;
• Custom group tour packages;
• MICE (meeting, incentive, conference, exhibition) tours.

Though the goals of these tours vary, the main idea remains the same: tour operators craft unique packages for every request.

Dynamic packages

Sometimes tour operators offer services in bundles (for example, hotel+flight). Although such options are less flexible, they allow tour operators to sell more services, while the tourist benefits from better pricing.

Pre-packaged tours

In this case the tour operator builds a pre-planned travel package on his own as a fixed itinerary, plans it, fixes the transportation and accommodation options. Such tours lack flexibility in terms of dates and composition. In this case the tour operator need to assemble a group and establish the price per pax based on the size of the group. If the tour operator can’t reach the minimum number of tourists, package sales can be stopped to prevent excessive losses.

Short-term excursions and activities

Those are normally one-day travel events that include several services: a tour guide, tickets, transfer, catering or else. Tourists can’t change the program of the tour and pay per seat.

Travel Software to Help Create and Sell Itinerary Tour Package Proposals

So, how exactly does software assist tour operators in managing and selling packages? Let’s take a look in more detail.

Selling tailor-made tours

Individual tourists usually send inquiries to several travel companies at once. What are they looking for? In fact, not only the price matters. Future travelers are looking to buy security in their future rides and, of course, support their desire to travel to a particular place. Here the tour operator has to succeed in several things simultaneously:

• Assemble a custom tour package fast;
• Show competencies and create a feeling of security;
• Motivate a tourist to buy the tour.

This is exactly where tour package software is of great service. Let’s review step-by-step.

Challenge 1: Assembling a package fast

You can let tourists browse your catalog of accommodations and transfers, and also select appropriate options online on their own before marking a request through your online portal. For example, here is a case study of a Swiss-based international travel consortium headquartered in Zurich, which boosted its online sales by properly redesigning corporate booking websites. The company provided its audience with a colorful and easy-to-search catalog of Flights, Hotels, Dynamic Packaging (Flight+Hotel), Car Rentals, Cruises, Round trips, Apartments, Transfers, Travel Packages, and more. In this scenario the tour operator only needs to check availability of the chosen services and verify online requests, speeding up the booking processing considerably.

Challenge 2: Ensure uninterrupted supply of services

Solving this challenge is mostly about avoiding mistakes in pricing and 3rd-party service availability. The ugly truth is that tourists’ feeling of security and convenience depends a lot on how well the tour operator works with 3rd parties: individual travel service partners and suppliers. Manual supplier management can lead to lots of errors and ruin tour operator’s reputation.

Here is a perfect example of a tour operator who leveraged the benefits of modern technology to solve this challenge. The company implemented an API aggregator GP Travel Hub to synchronize data with their suppliers and obtained an extranet solution to quickly collect data from accommodation providers. The latter supplied real-time data updates on pricing, descriptions and rate plans. Thus, we have a great example of efficient hi-tech supplier management, which eliminates lots of processing issues and increases booking processing speed considerably.

Challenge 3: Motivate tourists to buy your tour

Of course, tourists will compare several proposals. Unlike other products, a tour package is intangible and vague. Tour operators sell the idea of pleasurable rest, and that is why it is so important to pay attention to the way you handle communications regarding tour package requests.

A good way to address this challenge is by using Itinerary builders.

The idea is that the tour operator can quickly visualize the future trip and support the customer’s desire to travel. Itinerary builders can specify day-by-day details of the trip, add colorful photos and tempting descriptions of the tour. Instead of boring price specifications one can create and send tour itinerary descriptions that are tailored for the given customer. Thanks to automation, you don’t waste time and let your customers feel valued.

Summing it up, selling tailor-made tours seems a luxury service that requires plenty of attention. Yet, in fact, it can be now automated to a larger extent and hence live up to tourist expectations faster and with more accuracy. While technology takes good care of mundane tasks, you have more time to think about your customer and look for the better marketing options to convert more sales.

Creating and selling dynamic packaging

The main distincitve feature of dynamic packages is their cross-selling nature. Dynamic packages allow tour operators to sell more services, increase the average cart value and build up loyal customer base. By offering customers additional services, you make their lives easier and improve their experience.

After analyzing the typical customer requirements, it is possible to include either a more standardized service into your dynamic package (say, transfer), or a more specific one (like excursions or admission tickets). For example, you can create a dynamic package including Hotel+Flight, giving the tourist a discount for buying the package.

To explain how dynamic packaging tools for travel agencies and tour operators can help, we can take GP Travel Enterprise as an example. This platform allows you to create dynamic packages, letting the tourist search for a flight and a hotel simultaneously and get a bundle discount. The tour operator can hide the markup from the tourist, while the latter receives a confirmation for the whole package at once.

Selling pre-packaged tours and excursions

As prepacked tours are created by the tour operator in advance, their programs are fixed and scripted. Successful sales in this case depend largely on how well the tour operator understands the trends, applies analytics, previous experience and intuition to create marketable packages.

Travel tech comes to the rescue in this case in numerous ways. Let’s deal with the most common scenarios.

Challenge 1: Tour component prices can change

As tour packages consist of several components (say, accommodation + flight + excursion), the price for each component depends on the supplier. So the tour operator has either to hide the price and calculate it dynamically for every request – or provide an estimated total price.

The first option is financially beneficial for the tour operator as the company avoids losses. The second one is more convenient in terms of marketing as it’s hard to make tourists feel secure when they don’t know the total price. Let’s check how software can simplify sales of prepackaged tours, whatever option you may prefer.

Dynamic pricing for prepackaged tours

Travel software (we again address GP Travel Enterprise as a good example of such) can let you dynamically calculate accurate pricing when the tourist requests a particular tour. Through API (in the case of GP Travel, it can be implemented via GP Travel Hub), which can automatically update the prices and availability data and help process tour package bookings accurately. So, the tour operator doesn’t have to check the pricing and availability manually – it happens automatically and saves a world of time.

Hypothesis-based pricing for prepackaged tours

If the tour operator wants to provide a precise tour package price, everything gets a bit trickier. You have to take into account the probability of assembling the whole group. You will probably need to hire different vehicles depending on the number of tourists and to cover the costing of free-of-charge people (e.g., guides). In this case, a tour operator has to take the risk and calculate an approximate price based on different group sizes.

Technology can help avoid generating lengthy Excel sheets and cover this challenge, including creating a pricing strategy based on hypotheses and your calculation matrix. You might want to check out GP Travel Enterprise’s package tour calculator as an example of such technology.

Challenge 2: It takes time to persuade a client

Travel software can include an automatic itinerary builder. In some kits, you can also add tempting images and descriptions. This means that tour operators can use software to structure their ideas and create a day-by-day colorful itinerary description. You can later show this itinerary directly to potential tourists via your booking portal, or use it as helping notes when a tourist comes for consultation.

Itinerary automation software is a great way to handle tour templates, making the daily routine of travel agents much more straightforward.

Conclusion

We’ve explored several ways software can solve specific challenges related to creation and sales of tour packages. Stay tuned for more articles! Also make sure to subscribe to our newsletter in order not to miss more insightful travel technology content from our team.