TripAdvisor Acquires Viator: What it Means for Tours & Activities
The travel industry is notorious for relying on trends and predictions. Experts are always saying to watch out for a certain market segment, because they are planning to travel the globe in the next year. They might suggest that a particular type of tour — such as an adventure or culinary experience — is going to be more popular than other options during the height of the travel season. Then the next year comes along and with it the next round of trends. You can’t completely reinvent your business every year in the face of every passing fad. However, every now and then along comes a more lasting trend to which you need to adapt regardless of what happens. Offering real-time availability on your website is an absolute necessity when it comes to surviving in the competitive, global travel market that exists today.
It is important to be aware of all trends, but at the same time you need to know which ones are passing fads and which are here to stay. You may not need to adapt your business for every passing fad, but a lasting trend like the need for real-time availability is one you will need to incorporate.
Why is Real-time Availability Essential to Your Tour and Activity Business?
- Travelers have come to expect that tour and activity providers are including their real-time availability online. The majority of people who are interested in booking a trip will complete their research online, and they also expect to be able to book hotels, transportation and tours from a desktop or mobile device. They no longer consider it a benefit to be receiving accurate, live information about the availability of a tour company — they consider it a baseline expectation that real-time availability is being displayed.
- Travelers do not want to deal with the hassle of trying to contact you directly in order to verify your availability. Without live availability features, your customers would have to contact you on the phone or via e-mail in order to find out more information about what dates and times were available for the tour they were interested in. Given the fact that you spend your days giving tours, it’s likely that they would have to wait a day or two for a response. During this time, they will have gone to another tour provider who offered real-time availability and booked directly with them online.
- Without real-time availability, you are significantly increasing your risk of overbooking your tours and activities. It is too difficult to manage manual availability when you are promoting your tours across your entire distribution network. Without real-time availability, two different agents might simultaneously resell the same tour to two different customers. Then, you will be stuck explaining to one customer why they don’t get to enjoy your tour.
Real-time availability is also necessary if you plan on increasing your distribution network in hopes of improving your brand recognition across the industry. Agents need to have access to live information about the actual availability of your tours, or else they are not going to be able to book their customers with your company. The Rezdy Channel Manager broadcasts your real-time availability to all of your associated agents from the one place. In order to learn more about the importance of real-time availability and how it can impact the effectiveness of your distribution strategy, download the Rezdy distribution ebook today.
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Simon has over 15 years’ experience as an IT professional. He also has extensive experience in the travel industry from being an around-the-world traveller and managing a dive centre in Southeast Asia for over 3 years. Simon is now dedicated to providing the best online booking solution for tours and activities operators; he is the brains behind Rezdy.Outside office hours Simon is a true activity addict – mountain biking, sailing, swimming, beach volleyball – just to name a few. But most of all he loves diving in Australian waters.