Case Study: How TravelCarma helped a Tour Operator in South America streamline operations and generate more bookings

Client Overview

The client is an incoming tour operator based in Peru, providing customized packages to its b2c and b2b clients. It has direct contracts with over 200 hotels across Peru as well as 250+ fixed tour packages of its own.

Challenges

• Managing their large inventory of contracted hotels, tours and activities
• Distributing the contracted inventory with real-time rates and availability to their sub-agents as well as B2C customers.
• Managing separate markups and commissions for B2C clients and B2B agents
• Integrating live Hotel and Activity feeds from Tourico via XML API
• Taking online payments in USD from both local and overseas clients

How TravelCarma Helped

• We provided the client a complete Inventory Management System with Extranets that allowed them to load all their contracted hotels, excursions as well as fixed packages into the system.
• With that they could control rates, allocations, promotions as well as manage all the content and policies from a centralized web-based interface, rather than maintaining multiple excel sheets.
• The Extranets further reduced the client’s workload as their suppliers, such as hoteliers and excursion providers could directly log into the system and update the inventory on their own.
• We also integrated the Tourico API to help them distribute third-party hotel and activities, along with their contracted inventory
• We provided them B2C and B2B websites in Spanish and English with booking engines for hotels, activities and tours. This helped them distribute their products online with their own branding.
• The portals were connected to the inventory management system and Tourico API in the back end to display consolidated results.
• We also provided them a Content Management system with the website, using which they could easily manage various aspects of their website, such as product descriptions, images, meta titles and descriptions(for SEO), inquiry forms etc without any technical knowledge.
• The portals were integrated with the Stripe payment gateway to help the client process online payments from clients and sub-agents.
• We also provided them with an Admin Module that allowed them to configure separate markups for their agents and retail clients. The admin system also facilitated the classification of clients and class-wise markups for better revenue management.
• A reporting module was also provided in conjunction with the admin system to simplify accounting reconciliation for the client and help them monitor product-wise sales through various channels as well as track commissions owed to agents.

Results

• Using TravelCarma solutions, the client was able to streamline its tour operations and manage various aspects of their business in one place.
• The system significantly improved the client’s productivity, as their staff was spending less time and effort on the phone and in writing hundreds of emails to clients detailing their products and pricing
• It allowed their staff to service more queries and ultimately generate more bookings per month compared to what they were doing before using the system

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About the Author

Chintan is the senior marketing manager at TravelCarma. He is a data-driven inbound marketing specialist with strong experience and a proven track record in strategizing and executing omni-channel marketing campaigns. He enjoys traveling and exploring off-the-beaten-tracks.