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The Challenges Of Providing A Good Online Booking Capability
RWA has been talking to many Tour Operators regarding the challenges and opportunities associated with selling holiday products online. We have identified five key challenges to selling online.
There are five key challenges for any Tour Operator looking to sell their holidays online. These are:
- The lack of a good online booking solution in the marketplace.
- Technology inhibitors e.g. limitations with current reservation system.
- Prohibitive costs associated with purchasing online booking solutions.
- Uncertainty over the return on the investment from providing online booking.
- Questions regarding the suitability of the Tour Operator's products and customer base for online selling
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Recognising these challenges, we at RWA set out to help Tour Operators overcome them. In particular, we set out to use RWA's extensive technology expertise coupled with our year's of travel industry experience to help resolve items 1 to 4 above. (We believe that number 5 is a valid consideration for any Tour Operator). The development of RWA's new Sell-It Suite solution is specifically focused on:
- Providing Tour Operators with a robust and reliable online booking capability
- Sell-It Suite is underpinned by RWA's Sell-It Services, an integration platform based on proven RWA technology powering over 650 web sites throughout Europe.
- Providing a solution which, while recognising the limitations that exist with a number of current reservation systems, has the flexibility and capability to be able to sit in front of, and work with those solutions, to provide a compelling online browsing and booking capability.
- Sell-It Suite's architecture is based on a set of "services" utilising XML and web services technologies. Sell-It Suite's Adaptors and Brochure Mapping Service can be used to provide a variety of connections to current reservation systems and brochure content databases.
- Providing a total solution cost at a more attractive price.
- Sell-It Suite is built using low-cost, open technology enabling Sell-It to be deployed on a range of operating systems and application servers, removing the need for expensive hardware and software licences.
- Reducing the investment costs required to a point where the returns required to justify the initial investment are more realistic
- The reduced total cost of a Sell-It Suite solution reduces the time, and volume of bookings, Tour Operators require to gain a return on their investment (ROI) whilst provide a compelling and reliable online booking solution for their customers.
Sell-It Online, the first member of RWA's Sell-It Suite family, was launched in November last year. Further family members will be launched later this year.
