Travel Agency Software: Choosing Tools for Booking, Tour Building, Accounting, and Marketing

Today, a traditional brick-and-mortar agency sounds archaic, as most agents digitize their processes and move online. But rolling out advanced booking engines with intricate search and pricing logic or investing 6-digit budgets into back-office systems are the paths of mature businesses. You may learn how the automated back office works from our dedicated article or watch a video.

But if you’re a small entrepreneur, you still have to rely on off-the-shelf software. In this article, we’ll talk about how travel agencies can use available technology to improve operations, automate, and customize their processes today.

What are travel agent tools?

Previously, we’ve talked a lot about mature and fully automated online travel agencies (OTAs), but today we tackle tour operators and smaller stores where people either speak to a human agent and entrust them with all the planning or combine that with some form of self-service experience.

This article is for you if you represent a brick-and-mortar travel agency, a smaller tour operator, a destination management company (DMC), or work as a travel advisor.

Note that we focus on leisure travel since managing corporate travel takes other forms, such as using an online booking tool (OBT), hiring a travel management company (TMC), handling travel and expense management, or using self-service solutions.

The day-to-day operations of an agent working in a leisure travel company usually include scheduling, consultation services, vendor negotiation, creating personalized tours, and finding the best rates for a client’s budget. Of course, this doesn’t have to be done by hand or in Excel spreadsheets. There are already specialized online solutions on the market and they fall into these types:

• Travel booking and itinerary management software,
• Tour and itinerary builders,
• Accounting software, and
• CRM and marketing software.

It’s worth noting that this division is not strict since some products encompass all or almost all of the functions mentioned above. However, additional capabilities can be limited compared to dedicated tools. So, in many cases, travel agents end up leveraging several instruments. Below, we’ll review a few players from each group to better understand what’s available.

For a longer list of travel agency software, see our Travel Tech Landscape infographic.

Travel booking software

Today, most people are fine booking flights, hotels, and other travel products. It’s so easy and convenient! There are metasearch engines that give you the best rates on the market in seconds and tools to predict prices. There are even gen AI assistants that make the booking for you. So, for many travelers, human agents lose their appeal because they often rely on the same websites that a client can comfortably use.

However, with a specialized travel booking system, you not only automate the daily reservation process but also get access to the back office. You can connect your bookings to the accounting service, receive reports, create invoices, manage markups, and more.

Standard features of booking software for small and medium businesses include:

• a booking engine to bоok flights, hotels, cars, activities, and more in one place;
• a channel manager to sync bookings across platforms,
• an itinerary builder to customize and share itineraries with clients,
• travel bundling capabilities,
• customer relationship management (CRM) tools,
• customer-facing interface (website, mobile app, widget) to view itineraries and optionally book and pay,
• payment gateways to accept online payments, and
• reporting.

When choosing a booking system provider, consider the number of travel API integrations with suppliers — global distribution systems (GDSs), bed banks, tours and attractions (T&A), etc.

Availability of a wide range of inventory gives you more opportunities to better meet your customer needs. Also, pay attention to a particular system's focus: Some target travel agents, while others primarily cater to tour operators. In any case, it always makes sense to benefit from a free trial option and test if the platform suits your business.

Amadeus: detailed pricing and offer management

Amadeus is a GDS and a provider of many travel products aimed at airlines, hotels, and travel resellers. Their Selling Platform Connect gives access to travel content display and booking from over 400 airlines (NDC, LCC, and EDIFACT content), 150,000 hotels, 300,000 tours and activities, and more.

Special features:

• Ability to build tailored air travel products with 1000+ parameters.
• Integrating rail and air options together for multimodal offers.
• Real time notifications for travel disruptions and changes.
• Branded mobile app.

Customization. There’s a white label itinerary app to give your customer updates, itineraries, and recommendations.

Integrations. Amadeus provides two sets of APIs: Self-Service APIs, designed for startups and smaller businesses, and Enterprise APIs, aimed at larger, established travel businesses, giving access to nearly 200 REST and SOAP/XML APIs with broader functionality, including low-cost carrier content and negotiated fares. 

Read our practical guide about Amadeus API integration if you want to learn more.

Pricing: Amadeus’ pricing is available on request.

Best for: leisure travel agencies, travel sellers and advisors, tour operators.

Bókun: access a massive inventory and channel management features

Bókun is an all-in-one booking platform from Tripadvisor designed for tour operators, activity providers, and travel agencies specializing in experiential travel. It allows you to manage bookings, inventory, pricing, and customer relationships, all through a single interface, as well as providing a customer-facing interface.

Special features:

• Comprehensive pricing tools to tailor prices according to season, booking channel, etc.
• Zero fees for all bookings made via Viator (another Tripadvisor’s company).

Customization. With Bókun, you can create a new bookable website with vast customization options or integrate their widgets into your own website. Bókun will also cover your domain costs for free.

Integrations. Bókun integrates with 2,600+ resellers and 27,000+ suppliers, including Viator, Klook, Trip.com, and Expedia. See the full list here.

Pricing. Bókun has a free tier for one user, but its pricing starts at $49 per month (plus a 1.5 percent fee per booking). The platform offers a free 14-day trial.

Best for: tour operators, activity providers, and travel agencies focused on experiential travel, such as tours, activities, excursions, and local experiences.

Dolphin: book everything, from low-cost flights to luxury cruises

Dolphin is an all-in-one booking and management platform designed for travel agencies of all sizes. It provides a mid/back-office to manage travel content as well as a customer-facing booking engine.

Special features:

• A booking engine covering cars, train and bus tickets, cruises, insurance, and low-cost carriers.
• Accounting tools for automated invoices and reconciliation.

Customization. Dolphin provides a customer-facing online booking engine that can be adapted to the look and feel of your branded website.

Integrations. Dolphin maintains access to all three major GDSs, Expedia, Viator, key car rental providers, leading rail booking platforms, low-cost carriers (LCCs), airline consolidators, and dozens of other travel suppliers and resellers.

Pricing. Pricing is available upon request based on agency size, booking volume, and required features.

Best for: travel agencies of all sizes, including tour operators and travel management companies.

Ezus: complex trip management with detailed customization

Ezus is a tool for custom itinerary building, travel booking, budgeting, client relations management, and workflow automation. It has an integrated CRM, a supplier management feature to manage bookings and invoices, and multi-currency and multi-language support. They also provide a traveler area – a personalized online space you can generate for every client to view and pay for their trip.

Special features:

• Detailed quotation calculations in a modular budgeting interface.
• FIT (free independent traveler), group and MICE trip management support.
• Flexible supplier management and technical sheets sharing.

Customization. For a Traveler Area, You can choose from a variety of templates and modify them. The space is complete with tabs, buttons, and a personalized URL. And if you have multiple brands, you can change skins in one click.

Integrations. Ezus supports native integrations with day-to-day tools like Mtrip, Stripe, Google Workspace, and more. There’s also access to 7,000+ embeddable applications via a no-code platform Zapier. An API for access to the same content and features is also available.

Pricing. Ezus starts at €75 (~$88) per person per month.

Best for: agencies, DMCs and tour operators.

FareHarbor: tour operator software with space and seat management

FareHarbor is a powerful booking and management platform for operating tours, activities, car rentals, and attractions. You can also use their customizable booking platform with payment capabilities to integrate into your website or build a custom website with FareHarbor’s support. The agent dashboard offers an overview of inventory and bookings, as well as staff management and reporting tools.

Special features:

• Support for booking of spaces, vehicles, and venue tables.
• Support for booking of private events.

Customization. FareHarbor allows creating custom-built sites with translation capabilities.

Integrations. FareHarbor provides connections to top, local and niche OTAs, as well as an API. See more about its capabilities here.

Pricing. FareHarbor pricing is available upon request.

Best for: companies offering tours, activities, excursions, and local experiences.

Lemax: calculate itinerary profitability beforehand for operators and DMCs

Lemax offers booking software for tour operators and destination management companies. Besides flights and hotels, Lemax allows you to add transfer services, excursions, vessels, cruises, tickets, etc.

With Lemax, you can also build a B2C portal for customers to search, book, and pay for products online.

Special features:

• Creating packages and group travel itineraries with automatic price and profitability calculations.
• Back-office modules for sales operations, supplier communications, reporting, and accounting.

Customization. Using their WordPress plugin, you can customize the booking process on the B2C portal.

Integrations. Lemax connects with Galileo GDS, Hotelbeds, Travco, GTA, and other third-party suppliers for both air and non-air travel products. It also integrates with accounting software like QuickBooks and Oracle ERP for enhanced financial management.

Pricing: Lemax’s pricing is available upon request and varies depending on the size of the agency and modules selected.

Best for: travel agencies, tour operators, and DMCs that need end-to-end booking, package creation, and profitability management, especially for group travel or complex itineraries.

Peek Pro: travel agent tool with dynamic pricing

Peek Pro is a booking platform designed for tour operators, activity providers, and experiential travel businesses from a tour booking platform Peek. On the customer-facing side, it offers a website with booking and payment capabilities, and on the back-office side, it’s a central system for itinerary creation, calendar views, and reporting.

Special features:

• Dynamic pricing capabilities.
• Disputes center to fight chargebacks with photo evidence.
• Resource management to control guides and equipment.

Customization. Peek Pro allows customization of booking flows, pricing models, and notifications to match the unique needs of your business.

Integrations. There’s a seamless integration with leading distribution platforms like Viator, Klook, and GetYourGuide for greater exposure and inventory access. There’s an API to integrate with other software systems like CRMs, GDSs, and accounting tools.

Pricing. Peek Pro pricing is available on request.

Best for: tour operators, activity providers, and experiential travel businesses focusing on local experiences, tours, activities, and adventure travel.

PHPTRAVELS: open source tour operator software

PHPTRAVELS is a comprehensive B2B/B2C solution that offers flexibility and customization for small to mid-sized travel agencies. The platform allows users to book flights, hotels, cars, and tours while providing invoicing, reporting, and various other essential tools. For agents, it has an admin control panel with inventory management, pricing control, and reporting.

Special features:

• Fully open source.
• Content management features to implement blogs on your website.

Customization. PHPTRAVELS has a library of ready-made themes to easily create your own user-friendly booking platform. It’s also open source, meaning it can be customized by developers to meet specific needs.

Integrations. PHPTRAVELS is integrated out of the box with top travel distributors and GDSs like Amadeus, Kiwi.com, and Viator. See the full list of already supported integrations here. There's API access for tapping into other content sources.

Pricing. PHPTRAVELS’s pricing starts at a $499 one-time payment. See more pricing models here.

Best for: small to mid-sized agencies offering a wide range of travel products. It’s also useful for businesses selling vacation rentals, cruises, or tours.

Rezdy: a leading platform for experiential travel

Rezdy is a tour booking system tailored for tour operators, providing tools to manage bookings, inventory, pricing, and customer communications. The platform supports tours, activities, attractions, tickets, shuttles, and charters. It supports agents with back-office features like channel management, automatic communication, reporting, etc.

Special features:

• Accepts payments in 90 different currencies.
• Ability to resell inventory from other travel providers using Rezdy for commission.
• RezdyPay solution to process card payments as well as Google Pay and Apple Pay transactions.

Customization: Rezdy provides a booking widget that can be embedded directly into a website. For those without a site, Rezdy has a website builder, making it easy to create a fully functional online booking platform.

Integrations: Rezdy is connected to popular aggregators and suppliers like Viator, Klook, Musement, and Get Your Guide, giving agents access to global and local content. It also supports payment gateways such as Stripe, PayPal, Square, and RezdyPay for seamless transactions. There’s also an API suite to import and resell tours.

Pricing: Rezdy’s pricing starts at $49 per month (plus 3 percent per online booking) for small operators, with higher tiers based on the number of bookings and additional features. See full pricing details here. There’s also a 21-day free trial.

Best for: tour operators and travel agencies specializing in experiential or adventure travel, including activities, excursions, and tickets, as well as agents looking to offer local and global experiences.

Travel Booster: sell travel products to businesses and customers

Travel Booster is an ERP platform for travel agency management and automation from reservations and invoicing to reporting, reconciliations, and customer messaging. It centralizes all trip details in one travel file, integrates seamlessly with multiple reservation systems, and supports both FITs and groups. Travel Booster also provides advanced customer engagement, cross-selling opportunities, performance tracking, and multi-channel sales.

Special features:

• Selling through B2C, B2B, and B2B2C channels.
• Support for gift cards and promo codes.
• Integrations with GDSs, low-cost carriers, NDC airlines, car rentals, tours, activities, and transportation.

Customization. You can build and customize proposals with various options for hotel, flight, experiences, and more.

Integrations. Various integrations are available out of the box. On top of that, Travel Booster has an API.

Pricing. Travel Booster’s pricing is available on request.

Best for: travel agents, inbound and outbound tour operators.

Travelport+: broad content access with smart servicing tools

Another GDS, Travelport offers Travelport+, a retailing platform built for leisure travel agencies of all sizes. It gives access to broad, retail-ready travel content from three million properties, 470 airlines, including 23 NDC airlines, 42 car rental brands, and 35 rail operators. The fastest way to access all this content is Smartpoint Cloud, a retailing solution for travel agents to personalize, compare, and sell trips as well as perform servicing and customer management tasks.

Special features:

• Enhanced, automated ticket exchange capabilities.
• Access to a network of airline consolidators covering 60+ countries.
• EU-aligned rail options with features like split ticketing, branded fares, and ancillary management.

Integrations: Travelport APIs support integration of travel content from all types of suppliers.

Pricing: Travelport’s exact pricing depends on agency size, usage, and the modules chosen.

Best for: leisure travel agencies of all sizes, online travel agents, and travel advisors.

TrekkSoft: tour operator and DMC software

TrekkSoft is an all-in-one booking and management platform designed specifically for adventure tours, sightseeing tours, transport and transfer tours and DMCs. Their back-office tool provides an overview of bookings, has channel management capabilities, allows to track resources and analyze data for reporting.

Special features:

• Ability for drivers to take transfer bookings and payments on-the-go.
• Own payment gateway Payyo with fees starting at 2.5 percent + €0.55 per online transaction.
• Tools for tour guides.

Customization. TrekkSoft offers a customizable booking widget, allowing you to build your site with WordPress, Squarespace, Wix or any other website builder.

Integrations. TrekkSoft supports integrations with major content management systems, over 100 OTAs, leading payment gateways, etc. There’s also an API.

Pricing. TrekkSoft pricing starts at €49 (~$58) per month. Find more options here.

Best for: companies offering group tours, adventure travel, and local experiences.

SabreMosaic: modular retailing tools

SabreMosaic Travel Marketplace is Sabre’s modular suite of products for travel agents to search and sell travel content, covering 38 NDC airlines, over 150 low-cost carriers, over 2 million lodging options and over 70 car and rail providers. The suite includes 20+ tools from Vacations for planning leisure packages to Automation Hub to automate routine travel agency tasks. All these products are united into one cloud platform.

Special features:

• Built-in AI for personalized recommendations.
• Dynamic pricing support.
• Access to reports about booking trends from data-rich PNR and ticketing reports.
• Access to accurate flight schedules and availability inventory.

Customization. SabreMosaic Ecommerce is a module providing web-based storefront that allows customizing your workflows and building personalized booking experience.

Integrations. You can integrate any content and services with Sabre’s vast collection of APIs. 

Make sure to check out our article detailing the process of Sabre API integration.

Pricing: SabreMosaic’s pricing is customized based on organization size, usage, and service needs. Contact Sabre for details.

Best for: travel agencies, OTAs, consolidators, and TMCs.

Tour and itinerary building software

Designing tours is one of the most time-consuming operations in a travel agency. It requires booking, planning, scheduling, and pricing – all considering the most popular, budget, or unique inventory for each location. Thankfully, there is software for this. A typical tour builder would include:

• a drag-and-drop interface;
• access to detailed content from hotels, restaurants, city guides, etc.;
• photo libraries;
• tour templates, and
• exporting itineraries into PDF and other convenient formats.

Tour creation is usually associated with tour operators, so you can check our article specifically dedicated to tour operator software. Itinerary-building tools also streamline the work of travel consultants, destination management companies, and host travel agencies.

Read our dedicated articles to learn why travel agents need host travel agencies and how they can tap into DMC potential.

Travefy: import detailed itineraries from 200+ suppliers

Travefy is a powerful tool for tour operators, travel advisors, and DMCs, designed to simplify the creation and sharing of custom itineraries. With its drag-and-drop interface, Travefy allows businesses to build personalized trips for clients and manage client relationships.

Special features:

• Detailed itineraries, complete with pictures and videos, from over 200 suppliers, offering content for hundreds of destinations.
• Access 625 city guides covering nearly 50,000 points of interest worldwide, plus an internal photo library for visual storytelling.
• An integrated CRM designed to track customer details, preferences, and booking history.
• Website builder with professional templates.

Content. Travefy’s trip builder allows importing itineraries and bookings from over 200 suppliers, including more than 80 cruise lines and 60 land operators. It provides a cruise database with cabin details, deck plans, and port information, as well as access to over 1,300 destination guides and a global hotel database covering 1.3 million properties with photo galleries. Users can also add photos and videos from Travefy’s library, the web, or their own uploads.

Pricing. Travefy offers subscription plans starting at $39 per month.

Best for: tour operators, travel advisors, DMCs, and host travel agencies.

TravelJoy: streamline client management

TravelJoy is an all-in-one platform designed for travel advisors to manage clients, create branded itineraries, and handle payments efficiently. It also supports booking, group trip management, and automation.

Special features:

• A CRM for communication and client management.
• Travel insurance booking via Faye integration.
• Ability to create and sell gift cards.

Content. TravelJoy has a built-in hotel and cruise content library.

Pricing: the starter plan is $19/month. The free trial lasts 7 days.

Best for: independent travel advisors, small agencies, and solo entrepreneurs.

TripCreator: create, validate, share, and publish your trips

TripCreator helps operators design tours for the website and custom tours for each client. The platform has a rather broad inventory of hotels, destinations, and attractions, but your offline inventories are also available.

Special features:

• A custom itinerary builder with options to create dynamically packaged tours or combine activities manually using your own content and images.
• Validating dates, opening hours, and driving distances to ensure accuracy in your itineraries.

Content. The product management system allows creating travel products and services that can be added to itineraries through the drag-and-drop builder. Products can be stored in multiple languages with detailed properties and images to outline inclusions and exclusions. The system also integrates with Google Places, FlightStats, and Pixabay. You can also retrieve itineraries from third parties using an API. 

Pricing. TripCreator’s pricing starts at $69 per month.

Best for: tour operators, travel agencies, DMCs, and custom tour planners.

Tourwriter: take advantage of analytical dashboards

Another tool wired for tailor-made experiences, Tourwriter allows you to design itineraries using media libraries and supplier databases and embed them on websites or export them to PDF files. You also get access to booking automation, commission management, and a CRM.

Special features:

• Access Zoho-powered dashboards to evaluate performance, sales, and customer data, helping you make data-driven decisions.
• Integration with Google Maps.

Content. You can use Tourwriter API to automatically provide data to and from your website.

Pricing. Tourwriter has several pricing plans, starting from $111 per month.

Best for: custom tour designers, DMCs, and travel agencies that specialize in bespoke travel experiences, requiring advanced CRM, commission management, and reporting tools.

WeTravel: powering group trips and making payments simpler

WeTravel is a popular booking and payment platform designed to streamline the management of group trips in over 80 countries. It serves a variety of travel businesses, from affinity group travel to outdoor and adventure travel, luxury travel, and more.

Special features:

• Building a dedicated booking page for each trip with all the relevant details and sharing it with participants, who can then book and pay directly on WeTravel or your website via the WeTravel widget
• Collecting payments in 34 currencies, with automatic conversion to USD, GBP, EUR, CAD, ZAR, and AUD
• Instant payments to suppliers

Content. The itinerary builder supports AI text generation, importing supplier details from online sources, and reusing content from a personal library, allowing faster creation of customized trips.

Pricing. Apart from a free pricing plan, WeTravel’s pro features start at $79 per month.

Best for: group travel organizers and businesses in adventure, luxury, and affinity group travel.

Wetu: create and integrate interactive itineraries

Wetu is a digital platform designed for tour operators, travel agencies, and activity providers to build, showcase, and distribute interactive itineraries and travel experiences. It integrates with reservation systems such as Travefy, Lemax, and Dolphin to make bookable itineraries.

Special features:

• Mobile app available online and offline.
• Customizable URLs.
• 17 languages supported.

Content. Wetu sources and curates quality travel content from destinations and hospitality suppliers worldwide.

Pricing. Wetu pricing starts at $75 per user per month. There’s a 14-day free trial available.

Best for: tour operators, travel agencies, and activity providers.

Accounting software

Most reservation tools we listed above provide financial management capabilities for travel agencies. However, as a rule, any business that has to do something with sales needs a more complex accounting system. Some of the must-have features include

• invoicing,
• tracking and scheduling payments,
• monitoring expenses and income,
• bank reconciliation,
• Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliance, and
• financial analytics and reporting.

Now, let’s quickly review what the market offers in accounting for travel agencies.

TravelWorks: BSP-ARC support and group planning

TravelWorks allows you to easily control travel agent commissions, even in complex cases, such as sharing commissions between different agents. To be eligible to sell flights, agencies must have accreditations from the Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC) in the US or IATA and its Billing Settlement Plan (BSP) outside of the US. TravelWorks supports BSP-ARC management and exception reporting that automatically identifies errors. It also simplifies group planning with templates.

TravelWorks interfaces with major GDSs and can easily integrate with your booking engine. Besides an accounting module, its suite of tools includes

• a reservation management module connected with SIREV booking engine (available exclusively to Canadian travel agents);
• a tour management component for tour operators and travel management specialists; and
• a CRM module (PC contact) to run travel marketing campaigns.

TravelWorks partners with a number of payment gateways including Square, Stripe, PayPal, and Global Payments.

 Xero: secure and feature-rich solution for small travel businesses

Xero is a cross-platform accounting service that offers three pricing plans for different business needs. All basic features are available in each plan. These include invoicing, mobile access via Android and iOS apps, connection to bank accounts, and secure SSL encryption.

Xero is a good fit for small travel agencies, hotels, and hostels. It works with more than 160 currencies and can be integrated with third-party tourism apps.

OnlineInvoices: profits calculation and performance monitoring

Targeted at companies in all sectors, OnlineInvoices also offers advanced features to travel agencies. You can send invoices to tourists and partners via email and receive payment by credit card, PayPal, Stripe, or bank transfer. You can analyze travel data to locate the most popular hotels and sights and assign each agent to accomplish specific tour services as well.

CRM for travel agency

How is travel customer relationship management different from any other? Why can’t you use one of the traditional solutions from Zoho, HubSpot, or Salesforce? Every industry has marketing properties that can’t be covered by one universal tool. So, here are the capabilities to look for in a travel CRM system:

• lead distribution among agents,
• travel-specific customer categories,
• support for travel marketing channels (booking websites, TripAdvisor, etc.),
• automated departure and arrival notifications, and
• customized dashboards.

Let’s see how existing solutions help travel agencies solve marketing challenges.

Zoho’s Travel Agency CRM: comprehensive tool from an industry leader

One of the biggest CRM providers, Zoho has a targeted Travel Agency CRM with features beneficial for companies selling travel services. Here you’ll find a lead-capturing machine that gets all inquiries made via your website directly into a CRM with the ability to distribute them among your agents.

You can also set up quota templates that get sent out to customers according to your own rules. Zoho simplifies passenger handling, allowing you to classify them according to their role.

LeadSquared Travel CRM: exhaustive marketing software

LeadSquared provides marketing software for all businesses, but it also has a specific CRM and marketing solution for travel brands. It’s divided into three functions: travel marketing, package sales, and partner management.

Besides the CRM function, the tool automates all marketing and sales tasks, supporting detailed reports, customized dashboards, and lead distribution based on trip location and budgets.

Kapture Travel CRM: Automatic itineraries and travel sales tunnel

Besides basic customer profiles and interaction, Kapture creates itineraries semi-automatically and directly in a CRM. The sales funnel here is also customized for travel agencies and allows you to track clients from their interest in a vacation to the booking itself. Kapture also saves all important travel documents, such as passports, tickets, and visas, in one place.

What to look for in travel software: our recommendations

Good travel agency software shouldn’t only perform the functions your clients can already easily access online. It must bring out the advantages of traditional agencies and strengthen their operations without creating new obstacles, such as a complicated interface that will make your agents return to their Excel spreadsheets.

When looking for either accounting, reservation, or marketing software, pay attention to the factors mentioned below and pick out a tool that will make your business shine.

Tech support. This includes not only 24/7 chat or call service but also a knowledge base, FAQs, and tutorials. TripCreator, for example, provides webinar training to all users, while Orioly creates video instructions.

Business flow, similar to yours. Thanks to trial options available in many cloud platforms, you can determine which software follows the same processes you and your agents already have.

User-friendly interface. Just like a tool’s workflow should be familiar to your agents, its user experience must rely on the same familiar language they do.

Localization. Check whether the booking or tour building software of your choice supports the languages and currencies of countries where your customers live. Read our article on website localization in travel to dive deeper into details.

Automatic confirmations and notifications. Make sure that both agents and clients get notified about the main touchpoints of their journeys. While not required, it’s also useful to have a disruption management tool to help travelers already on their trip navigate during flight delays.

Automatic client database creation. Most CRMs create lead and client profiles automatically when you receive a quote request online, with data provided by travelers: names, desired destinations and dates, and the number of people in the group.

Secure access. Travel agents handle sensitive and personal client information, so data protection is not optional for travel agency tools. You probably also want to protect information about each agent’s sales from other agents.

Advanced reports. What’s the point in gathering and managing all this data if you can’t draw insights from it? Reporting functions will show you which destinations, dates, seasons, and agents bring you the most value.

Start thinking of automation and your own systems

The competition in the travel agency market is fierce. Booking Holdings and Expedia are close to becoming an oligopoly, capturing the majority of travelers thanks to great service and unlimited marketing capabilities.

And yet, smaller niche agencies may still thrive if they manage to access the best deals or offer unique travel products unavailable with industry behemoths. To do that, you have to take control of the systems and tweak them to work for your value proposition. This is rarely available with off-the-shelf tools. You can’t configure advanced commissions management, you can’t customize the way you work with metasearch engines, and you’re quite limited in terms of inventory that you don’t source directly from suppliers.

So, if you’re thinking of a bespoke system and custom development route, check our article on travel APIs that generalizes supplier integration options in the industry, and learn how booking engines and OTA back-office work. You may also watch our video on commission management.