There are travel agencies which are still managing travels and tour packages manually. Too many papers are wasted daily to check on tours and collaboration among departments in the travel agencies is difficult.
Walk in to a typical travel agency and you see stack of papers on the shelf with all tour itineraries, some may even be outdated. If you are lucky enough, you get a good pricing for your tour because the travel agency did not update the pricing or tours on a real-time basis. Main challenges for travel agencies include business operations, costings and employee management.
Business Operations Challenges
- Updates of travel packages were not applied across all departments and branches, affecting front desk staffs selling packages with old pricing - incurring losses
- Difficulties for front desk staffs to check on updates as there were no online, centralized database
- Break-down in communications among departments and difficulty to communicate among branches
Costing Challenges
- Tremendous amount of papers used and wasteful printings for travel packages and itineraries - incurring extra overheads
- Employees need to work extra hours to complete checkings and coordination manually - incurring extra employees wages
- Communications using traditional methods including faxes, scans, phone calls and land lines incurring additional costs
Employee Management Challenges
- Fraud of employees punching cards for each other, making losses for extra overtime payments
- Leaves are managed manually without accuracy and often miscalculated
- Additional employees needed every end of month to calculate working hours to compute payroll
Travel Agency Management System - What is Good?
For a travel agency management system to work, it should at least have the below features. I am, however, generalizing based on typical travel agencies which still operate manually in Malaysia. For any IT systems to work, it should solve the biggest challenges and bottlenecks in your business. Therefore the below list is just a general one.
Real-time, centralized travel itineraries and uploading of tour files
- XeerSoft centralizes data and its powerful online engine allows uploads of tour files for immediate viewing, real-time information across whole company, branches and even with external agents, also allowing front desk staffs to disseminate information accurately
Fully integrated with back-end system
- XeerSoft is the first and only IT solution in Malaysia for travel agencies with full-fledged back-end system, including payroll, online photo-capturing time attendance system, e-leave management system, billing, accounting and financial implementation, customer relationship management and loyalty programs to name a few
Accurately calculate payroll and overtime for employees
- At month-end, time attendance information could be exported to XeerSoft Payroll System for calculation of basic salary, overtime and allowances, saving costs and time
Reduce frauds with photo-capturing time attendance system
- Employees punch cards no more! With XeerSoft, time attendance log is taken digitally with photo capture each time your employee logs in and out. It is online, so you can view attendance online, real-time
Audit log files for transactions
- Monitor transactions by viewing transaction history or audit logs of each amendment done to the system to avoid frauds
Multiple payment types
- XeerSoft systems allow multiple payment types including by cash, cheque, direct transfer, credit card or tele transfer
Integration with Google Apps
- Easily integrate with Google Apps and Google Maps for easy viewing of tours, tours management and arrangement as well as easier explanations to travellers
Connect and maintain centralized customer base with CRM system
- Customers registered for tours can be centralized in a common database for better customer relationship management. No more paper, filings and manual records of clients details - easy to search and store information digitally
For screenshots, more information and details on ERP system for Travel Agencies, kindly visit
http://www.XeerSoft.com/Travel or call us for a complimentary, no-obligation consultation at +603-9284 8286 or email us at
sales@xeersoft.com
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