Software for Tour Operators and Travel Agents

Introduction

Axum for Travel Agents includes most of the features present in the Tour Operator system that are essential for your business (such as the Customer Relationship Management module amd the Marketing module). It also includes additional features that are specific to travel agency business, such as earned commission tracking and ATOL-to-ATOL agnecy sales.

Client Management

Individual Clients, Agents and Corporate Clients
“Client Type” classification enables the system to determine for example, when to apply an agent commission, when to request “client contact” detail, which document template to apply etc. The system can make these decisions based on the client Record Type, thus relieving the consultant of having to be constantly mindful of these issues while building an itinerary and generating client documents.
Lead Capture
Ability to capture client information via the web as well as traditional means (email, telephone, mail etc.).
Lead Management
Enquiry fulfilment and tracking. Integrated address lookup for accurate address capture. Unlimited number of postal addresses, emails and telephone numbers can be specified per client.
Client Profiling
Identify your clients’ interests and keep tabs on their product interests and purchasing history.
Passenger Profiling
Identify your clients’ and their travelling companions’ needs and interests. Keep “roaming” profiles so your clients’ needs, wishes and other important information are observed in all future bookings.

Enquiry Capture

Quick Enquiry Launch
Capture client/agent requirements quickly, without having to abandon the work at hand. Capture basic information (client name, point of contact, number of adults, children etc.) quickly. Existing clients will be automatically flagged, with immediate access to quotes and bookings history (to avoid duplicated requests). Optionally, use the Detailed Itinerary editor to garnish your proposal with as much detail as necessary, using a simple single-click product search and pricing.
New Enquiries Queue
Individual enquiries automatically queued to the relevant consultant or department to make sure that no enquiry is left unattended. An “escalation procedure” guarantees that no enquiry is left in a queue longer than what your business considers to be acceptable.

Bookings & Reservations

Passenger Records & Passenger Profiles
Passenger details can be entered either in “Spreadsheet” mode, or in “Form Fill” mode, depending on consultant’s preference. Passenger profiling data can be customised (new profile data added, unwanted profiling fields removed), at any time to suit your company’s needs. Passenger Grouping and Party Pricing. A booking can be organised into “groups of passengers”, each group with its own lead passenger. This enables the consultant to issue “group specific” itinerary, pro-forma and final invoices. Ideal for large groups, such as Fam. Tours, conferences and large groups with optional extras. Note that Group Bookings are multi-currency. So for example, one group can be invoiced in GBP and another in USD within the same Group Booking. Also note that Group Bookings are multi-client-type. So for example, one group can be invoiced to an “individual client”, while another group within the same Group Booking can be invoiced to an Agent (with all the commission accounting implications). Passenger Manifest can be generated on demand from individual bookings, group bookings, group tours, as well as in batches through the Bulk Generation module.
Booking Preferences
Specifying passenger preferences before adding itinerary and other services enables the system to automate the booking and pricing process. For example, if the system is made aware of the rooming preferences (1 double and 1 single, say), only hotels that match this criteria will be searched, and pricing will be based on 1 double and 1 single. Where the system cannot meet the stated preferences, options will be made available for the user to choose from.
Full Booking History & Audit Trial
Every booking activity is recorded in the booking History Log. The Log acts like a “letter box”, everyone can add data to it, but once it is added the data cannot be removed or modified. This make the History Log a reliable source of reference of “what was promised” and “what was delivered”. The History Log also maintains a copy of all generated documents, including re-generations.
Booking Notes
These are “free form” text fields, entered by the Consultant as and when needed. Three type of notes are made available in a booking: 1. Financial Notes: Exceptional text that needs to appear on pro-forma and invoice in a given booking. E.g. an explicit statement that “Insurance was offered and was turned down”, which is a legal requirement in some countries. 2. Service Notes: Exceptional text that needs to appear on all generated proposals, confirmations and final itinerary in a given booking. E.g. Special Terms & Conditions that are not your company’s standard Ts & Cs, but imposed by the supplier for a specific product. 3. Consultant Notes: This is a “memo pad” for the consultant to add exceptional notes that are not to be included on any of the client documents (i.e. not for client eyes), but necessary information to be shared within your company.
Supplier Filter
Instantly identify the suppliers involved in a booking. A simple drop-down list enable you to filter on the products and services provided by a given supplier, together with the predicted/actual cost in both “bought” and “home” currencies. A useful tool when scrutinising invoices received from suppliers. Note that there is a similar tool in the Purchase Ledger that can be applied across bookings (useful when supplier invoice covers more than one booking).
Booking Alerts
These are “must see” notes, designed to bring important information to the attention of the user accessing the booking. Booking alerts are presented in a dialog form, which forces the user to “confirm & close” in order to continue, thus ensuring the alert has been noticed and read.

Agent Commission

Agent Commission Calculation
Flexible commission structure that can be applied: — Company-wide (the default for new agents). — Sspecific to Agent. Commission can be calculated based on one of the following rules: — Percentage-based (e.g. 10% of gross sell). — Fixed multiplier (e.g. £10 per room per night). — Fixed amount (e.g. $400 per booking). Commissions can be applied at: — Booking level, making it applicable to ALL products and services in a booking. — Product level, applicable to selected products and services
Agent Commission Accounting
— Agent commission tracking, identifying amount of commission earned, commission outstanding and commission paid. — Commissions can be calculated per agent or per consortium (group of agents). — Commission adjustment and re-allocation subsequent to booking “closure”. — Agent and Commission statement reports.
Agent Invoicing
Net or Kick-Back. Commission can be deducted and source (i.e. net invoice), or subsequently paid (as a kick-back commission). Tax on commission calculations. E.g. VAT in UK, GST/HST in Canada, etc. Invoicing Options: — Single-Invoice, where the agent issues own invoice to client. — Duel-Invoice, one is sent to agent’s client, and one is retained by the agent (showing commission and applicable taxes).

Supplier Communication

Request Quotes from Suppliers (Outbound model)
Request quotes from suppliers (via email, fax, MS Word or MS Excel), using plain text, “similar” itinerary from a previous booking, saved “itinerary template” of popular combination, locally-maintained products, ad-hoc products or a combination of all such sources.
Request Quotes from Suppliers (Inbound model)
Optionally provide your Suppliers with a “simple-to-fill” MS Excel spreadsheet that you can automatically import into your Axum Quote file, thus saving your consultant valuable response time. Alternatively, import “similar” package/F.I.T. product from previous booking received from a supplier, or setup a “booking template” that your consultants can quickly insert, amend if necessary, then send to the supplier for confirmation and price quotation. Alternatively, import individual products (hotels, excursions, transfers etc.) from your pre-populated database, using “intelligent” search.
Language Support
Multi-language support in Unicode format providing support to most of the languages of the Far East, such as Japanese and Chinese, as well as most of the Latin languages.

Marketing

Marketing Campaigns
Plan and execute multi-stage targeted marketing campaigns, including advertising, telemarketing, product launch, and more. Define “targets” to execute multi-stage, event-driven campaigns. Measure and analyse the performance of every campaign using comprehensive reporting tools to provide immediate feedback on campaign success factors.
Client Surveys
Design and conduct surveys to capture passenger preferences, monitor client satisfaction, and conduct targeted advertising campaigns for maximum impact. Analyse collected data to improve your products and services.
List Management
Precisely segment clients and prospects to build highly targeted lists for focused marketing activities, such as mailing campaigns. Use simple data querying tools to build reusable data lists that can be exported to an external program (such as Excel), or used for mass-mailing.

Productivity Tools

Bulk Operations
A time saving device designed for businesses that deal with large volumes and/or small profit margins. Client and supplier business fulfilment can be carried out on an enterprise scale. For example, Service Requests can be generated based on “departure date range”, Rooming Lists can be generated based on “supplier terms”, Passenger Manifests can be generated based on “destination”. A comprehensive list of selection criteria is made available for this purpose.
Personalised Views
End-user productivity is enhanced by allowing consultants to customise screen-based lists and views to suit individual needs. E.g. the “Passenger List” view can be customised to include commonly used profiling data (such as Passport Number, Nationality or Occupation). This way, the consultant can then modify frequently-entered data in a “spreadsheet fashion”, without having to open a separate dialog form for each passenger.
Itinerary Templates
A labour-saving tool that enables the consultant to quickly produce complex tailored itinerary based on popular combinations. The chosen “itinerary combination” is applied against the booking criteria in real-time to give exact pricing based on number of passengers, ages groups, rooming preferences, etc.
“Save As” Feature
Itinerary variations and options can be generated with a single button click. This makes the production of multiple quotes to present the client with variances and price options simple and fast.