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A customer was stranded in a foreign country for over 6 hours because the hotel denied him check-in. Another traveler reached the hotel and found out that they are going under a massive renovation work. Have you encountered scenarios like this?  

If you were the travel agent for the above customers, how do you think it would have impacted your business? Would the customer come back to you? Will you be able to win their trust again?  

Acquiring one new customer takes as much effort as maintaining 10 existing customers. The math is simple! Provide a consistent experience every single time. Avoid errors in bookings. Re-verify your travel bookings thoroughly! 

Easier said than done right? Let’s look at what is at stake here:  

How can your travel agency provide superior experience?

Our research shows, over 30% of online bookings have a mismatch. The travel agents need to ensure that the booking is error free, and customers have a seamless experience from the start to the end.  

Customers have multiple choices and in case of a poor experience they will have no trouble switching their choices from one travel company to another. The travel company, on the other hand, will bear the loss of income and reputation. 

Here are key areas travel agencies need to focus on  

  • Excellent customer service: Your customers should never feel that they are not getting their money’s worth. Good customer service starts from the moment they initiate a query to the moment their trip ends.  
  • Earning customer loyalty: Your customers will be loyal to you as long as you provide them with good services consistently. An error in the travel industry is not just a bad reputation but also losing business. 
  • Value-added services: Customers love extra, so extra care to ensure a better experience is a value-added service that will bring them back to you 
  • Seamless services: One of the biggest issues in the travel industry is errors in booking, transactions and services provided incorrectly. These are unacceptable, especially now since the stakes are so high. 

Booking mismatch can really hurt your business: 

Travel agencies and travel companies face many challenges. The key to good business lies in mitigating their challenges successfully. There are various situations that not just travelers but also the agency is quite familiar with.  

While these may not happen on a regular basis, just one occurrence is enough for a brand to suffer a loss of reputation and this is often accompanied by loss of income in the form of offering the aggrieved customers’ compensation.  Here are a few scenarios that show how things can go wrong when there is no reverification system to fall back upon.  

Scenario 1 
Customer reaches the hotel and finds that the hotel is closed

A customer who has booked a hotel through a travel company or agency has received confirmation of the booking. But when they arrive at the hotel, they find it closed! This is a scenario that is more common than you think. This has become more prevalent since covid pandemic as many hotels have shut down due to lack of footfall while others may be closed temporarily due to covid cases.  

There are many reasons for a hotel to be temporarily or permanently closed but in any case, the customer will blame the travel company. They trust their travel agency to take care of such details. The customers who reach the hotel after a long journey are tired, frustrated and due to such a situation will suddenly find themselves without a place to stay or any alternative solutions.  

Here is how rePUSHTI can help you prevent such a situation  

Scenario 2 
Mismatch between booked amenities and available amenities

Often when customers reach their hotels, they find that what they paid for isn’t what they get. A customer asks for specific amenities while booking their rooms and might even pay extra for it. However, when they reach the hotel, they are disappointed and frustrated to find that they are not provided with the facilities they paid for.  

For e.g., customers book a room with a balcony but are given a room with no balcony. The customer may have booked a suite with jacuzzi but the room has no jacuzzi. A customer may have booked a room at a hotel with food inclusive only to know that it’s either not available or partially available. Such a situation can be highly frustrating for the customer who has probably requested amenities for specific needs.  

Learn how rePUSHTI can help you avoid such a situation with your customers. 

Scenario 3
Inhouse reverification is an expensive process and non-standard process

Reverification done in-house is non-standard. The reason is that this is an expensive and time-consuming process. The travel agency will have set up phone lines, an office and have dedicated staff for this.  

Travel companies will end up utilizing a good part of their income for reverification. This increases the overall cost of reverification. For eg . If the travel company makes 20 dollars on booking and spends 4 to 5 dollars on reverifying that booking. 20-30% of the profit is loss.  Instead using rePUSHTI cuts this cost down to 1 dollar without as manty personnel or infrastructure involved.  

Scenario 4
Multi-Lingual Re-verification can be a tough task

Your customers will travel to multiple locations that are home to different languages and cultures, Language barrier has always been one of the biggest issues with both the traveler and the travel industry. A lot of things can be lost in translation and that is how many booking errors happen. 

 For example, your agency is based in India and your customers is traveling to Germany. The hotel staff is probably fluent only in Germany, but your customer isn’t and neither is your staff. Even if they know English, the communication won’t be refined and there will be issues with reverification  

Watch how you can tackle the issue of multi-lingual reverification with rePUSHTI  

Scenario No 5
Payment issues

Hotels sometimes deny check-in to the guest as they do not receive the payment. For example, the customer has already paid the travel agent. But the reconciliation of payment between the supplier through whom the travel agent has booked the hotel hasn’t happened. In such cases the hotel is not able to confirm whether the payment has been made or not. This results in a hotel denying the customer check-in. Customers go through a lot of stress while trying to solve the issue. Meanwhile they could be left stranded without a hotel for hours.  

rePUSHTI can highlight such issues in advance before the customer reaches the hotel. rePUSHTI can highlight these issues and the travel agent ca reach out to the supplier to clear the payment and ensure that the customer has a seamless experience.  

Scenario No 6 
RT-PCR and Vaccination details

To stay safe and keep their guests and everyone associated with the hotel safe, most hotels require the guests to submit proof of a negative RT PCR test or double vaccination proof. Not all hotels demand this but those that do; take such rules very seriously.  

A guest who is unaware of such rules might get an unpleasant surprise when they are asked for the requisite documentation. They may be denied rooms despite conformation. Or the customer may have to pay a premium to undergo a RTPCR test to comply with the hotel rules which will cost extra.  

rePUSHTI can reverify RTPCR information much in advance and can avoid such a situation.  

To boost their business, growth and profit, travel companies should avoid situations where their credibility, work or system is called into question. 

The easiest way to avoid such losses and potential ruin is by re-verifying the booking. This does not need to be a grueling manual task; this can be completely done with no room for error with rePUSHTI. 

Avoid these Issues
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rePUSHTI from Qtech software, is a reverification service that provides an error-free booking service. Travel Businesses can utilize rePUSHTI, an online travel re-verification service to re-verify all their hotel bookings. This service is an online ready to integrate solution that re-verified every hotel booking across 50+ parameters. To know more about making rePUSHTI a part of your business click here. 

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