Whether you are contemplating a travel startup or wish to modernize and grow your online travel business, you can hardly do it without automating processes. This guide covers all aspects of automated travel system development:
- the basic steps of the process
- the primary features promoting automation
- the recommended technology stack
- the approximate cost of an automation solution
- possible challenges
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Onix! Our experts know how to сreate an automated travel software. For example, our client MisterB&B was able to save the customer support team’s time and reduce fraud risks thanks to automation solutions.
As a travel and hospitality software and travel booking systems development company, we can also help with any travel software-related needs!
Custom automated travel software, such as back-office systems for travel agencies, hotel property management systems (PMSs), and booking apps, can grant businesses and startups total control over business processes and the ability to innovate and tweak the functionalities as their unique business needs require.
Alternatively, a startup can develop an automated system for travel companies, market it as an innovative service (SaaS), and emerge as a new leader in travel agency automation.
This article explains how to build an automated travel system by focusing on functionalities that best promote process automation. The basic recommended steps are:
1. Research and identify the processes you need to automate, list the functionalities to build or improve, determine the project requirements, and plan the budget and timeline for the implementation.
2. If you do not have an in-house team with the necessary expertise, engage external help, such as consultants, software developers, and designers, to do the job.
3. Create a proof of concept to validate each automation idea that raises questions technology-wise.
4. Update the project specification and budget/timeline considering the automation of functionalities that proved practical and feasible.
5. Design visually appealing and easy-to-navigate consumer-facing web pages and mobile screens and user-friendly interfaces for the OTA employees.
6. Program and test the platform, ensuring that it is fast-loading, effective, and secure.
Let us first list the primary objectives of the growing automation in the travel industry; examples will illustrate its applications and benefits.
The Main Benefits of Automated Travel System Implementation
Key Features of Automated Travel Systems
Tech Stack for Travel Automation System Development
Estimated Cost of Developing an Automated Travel System
Challenges to Automated Travel System Development
Final Thoughts
FAQ
The Main Benefits of Automated Travel System Implementation
1. Faster sales
Immediacy and urgency are critical in travel sales. A system for travel agencies and tour operators can automate and speed up reservation management, creation of tours and complex travel packages or groups, booking of travel products from third-party suppliers and global distribution systems, communication with suppliers, etc.
Learn more: Travel APIs: Types, Benefits, Best APIs, and How to Choose Them
Customers send requests to several travel agencies, and sales automation features help respond to clients’ inquiries faster.
Imagine a travel agent receiving an inquiry consisting of three items: accommodation, transfer, and a one-day tour. Having all the information about the inquiry and customer in one system, they can start creating a quote immediately.
The software quickly searches for the necessary travel products in the company’s inventory or checks the offerings of all international providers available on the product search interface without logging into each one’s system.
Access to the latest special deals and packages instantly makes the offer more competitive. Inquiries are automatically emailed to suppliers, and upon their confirmation, the customers would automatically receive quotes and itineraries and the suppliers – confirmations.
An automated travel system calculates all prices, discounts, and special offers and enables invoice generation and processing virtually without any human intervention. Once the customer confirms your booking, the software will automatically create and send them an invoice and voucher.
2. More sales
If a business takes inquiries only during working hours, it loses many potential clients. Automated communication systems can reply to customers 24/7.
Faster quoting with appealing tailored travel itineraries increases conversion rates. Specialized travel software facilitates simultaneous sending of multiple product offers and the creation of coupon codes, early booking discounts, special and last-minute offers.
Instead of reaching out to each potential customer separately, specialized travel software allows for fast and error-free automated email communication from within its interface. An automated series of customized emails can increase the inquiry-to-booking conversion rate. The number of reservations that employees can manage may rise tenfold.
Integration of a website with Google Analytics or Meta Pixel may help retarget visitors for additional bookings. Businesses can identify the best-performing website traffic segments, create similar audiences, and run highly targeted marketing campaigns.
Modern travel systems can automatically send travel info to customers, collect their feedback, and help conduct loyalty programs to stimulate more purchases. For example, the sales team can configure sending follow-up emails every few days or upselling emails based on a customer’s purchase history a few days before a trip, further boosting sales.
Rezdy, an online booking system for tour and activity businesses focused on automation, claims that its customers generally grew their bookings by 27% in 2022.
Read also: How to Create a Booking Website for Travel & Hospitality Businesses
3. Happier customers
Access to high-quality travel products at the best prices worldwide, personalized offers, recommendations, and other abilities powered by automation foster the consumers’ freedom and control over their trips and expenses.
Travelers may be synced with newsletter software to receive updates about disruptions, news, or promotions. The system may automatically request customer reviews, e.g., after they’ve checked out of a hotel, and generate reports to help improve offers and services.
When automation helps a travel company’s employees perform their tasks easier and faster, they can better serve more customers and solve queries and problems more effectively.
According to Deloitte’s 2023 report, 72% of the surveyed airport managers and 60% of hotel general managers expect automation to improve the guest experience. 74% of airport leaders and 56% of hotel leaders also expect increased profits due to a better guest experience.
For example, the American airline WestJet reported a 24% increase in customer satisfaction rating since the launch of Juliet, an AI voice bot capable of resolving up to 74% of customer service requests without human intervention.
Learn more: The Future of Chatbots: 10 Trends, Latest Stats & Market Size
4. More productive employees
Machines can carry out high-volume and repetitive tasks quicker and more accurately than humans. Machine searching, data collation, and analysis save the employees’ time on the initial tasks and minimize errors and inaccuracies.
For instance, Amadeus claims that its automation solutions can help travel agencies reduce the time employees spend on ticketing processes by up to 49%.
Machines rapidly process large amounts of data and present key performance indicators (KPIs) in readable formats. Business and employee performance reports help the management improve productivity and efficiency and reward and motivate employees.
In automated sales and operations workflows, lots of communication with customers and suppliers occurs via automatic inquiry emails, invoices, reminders, alerts, etc., freeing up human resources for more meaningful and creative tasks.
5. Increased efficiency
Automated travel systems facilitate the ordering process, inventory management, role assignments, and creation of rooming, transfer, bus, and flight lists. Employees can handle more leads and bookings thanks to automated communications and sales operations. Companies thus can do more business with the same staff.
Travel business software can provide an instant overview of all booked products and assigned and unassigned reservations, identify unconfirmed reservations, automatically assign reservations to specific employees and notify them instantly, and track their status. Availability reports help prevent overbooking or signal when additional inventory is needed.
Automated accounting processes also increase efficiency. Modern software makes verifying suppliers’ invoices and tracking invoices and payments easier. For example, it may generate invoices both for each customer listed on a reservation and in batches, simultaneously for several reservations.
Automatic reminders sent to customers accelerate payments. Import of payments automatically linked to reservations from bank accounts will save time.
6. Money saving
Money saving is a direct result from the advantages mentioned above, such as automatic data collation, mining, and analysis or supplier inquiry and confirmation process. Accurate reports on nearly all performance KPIs also empower the management to reduce costs.
According to the saame Deloitte report, 57% of airport managers and 43% of hotel general managers expect automation to decrease labor costs.
Besides these primary benefits, we should also mention:
Centralized data and documentation. For instance, proper travel ERP software automatically tracks all relevant client information, empowering companies to create in-depth customer profiles. It’s especially important with corporate clients.
Reduction of errors and risks. In operations with minimal to zero human intervention, the error rate comes to nothing and nearly eliminates the risk of situations like overbooking.
Greater online visibility. For example, automating your marketing processes can boost traffic to a business’ website, potentially increasing sales.
Here are several automated travel system examples:
Amadeus also uses a data science-powered engine that identifies disruptions and helps address them promptly.
Booking.com launched its AI Trip Planner in 2023. The feature is available to travelers in the US on the platform’s mobile app. Built upon existing ML models that already recommend destination and accommodation options to millions of users daily, it is also partially powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT API.
These technologies enable AI Trip Planner to answer users’ questions quickly and conversationally at any stage of the trip planning process.
Learn more: How to Build an AI-Powered Mobile App in 2025
Bookinglayer, an adventure and wellness travel reservation system, features automated emails. Users can schedule their emails based on pre-defined triggers like a new booking, check-in, or change in a booking, or use Rules that offer greater flexibility. Rules include filters, such as an inventory filter that triggers an email only when the booking contains a specific item.
Automated emails that provide travelers with all necessary information reduce queries by phone and WhatsApp. Bookinglayer’s integration with Twilio also enables text message automation.
HotelTonight’s automated processes may restrict or suspend users whose activity they identify as a risk to the platform’s safety, users, or third parties.
Learn more: Machine Learning in Fraud Detection: A Comprehensive Overview
Kayak has a history of automating customer support through virtual assistants on Messenger, Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Slack, WhatsApp, and other services. In 2023, Kayak was the first (along with Expedia Group) to integrate on ChatGPT to facilitate more conversational interactions with its search engine.
Learn more: ChatGPT for Startups: How to Harness the Potential of AI for Your Business
LeadSquared, travel CRM and marketing software for tour package providers, also emphasizes its automation capabilities. Among other things, the solution automates lead distribution based on trip location and budgets, agent notifications, SMS, and email communication to qualification and package customization teams, booking notifications, and follow-up activities.
For example, if customers view beach packages, the system sends them relevant offers.
MisterB&B, the leading accommodation booking service for LGBTQ+ travelers, is Onix’s long-time client. Their automation strategy primarily aimed to free up the customer support team and mitigate fraud risks. Some of the solutions include:
- Identity verification
The integration with Shufti Pro facilitates the automatic verification of the validity and ownership of identification documents.
- Fraud detection
Onix also developed a system that discovers illegitimate and high-risk financial activities, such as credit card transactions, theft, cyber hacking, and suspicious messages. This feature enables MisterB&B to detect scams in real time to keep the users’ money safe.
- Image censoring
The platform required a moderation solution to preclude users from uploading inappropriate profile pictures or photos of properties, such as images containing nudity or property photos with contacts allowing users to arrange stays bypassing MisterB&B. Integration with the Sightengine ensures an automatic identification of such images.
- Automated translation of the users’ descriptions of the accommodations and other texts.
- Payments
A semi-automated system streamlines and significantly speeds up the processing of payments to hosts.
- Tax collection
MisterB&B also collects taxes and sends tax returns for hosts automatically.
- A number of validators help reduce human errors.
Zoho’s Travel Agency CRM can be integrated with your website to capture inquiries and save them in your CRM automatically. It also automates welcome and birthday emails, new lead alerts for the salespeople, and follow-up tasks.
These are just a few reasons to purchase or develop an automated travel solution. If you are interested in the latter scenario, it’s crucial to understand what functionalities are essential to a travel business software and what parts can be automated.
Read also: Revolutionizing Mobility: The Tech Behind Car Rental App Development
Key Features of Automated Travel Systems
The following software features drive travel agency automation:
- Online booking service for travelers
- Booking and reservation software for travel business employees
- Inventory management, reservation, and tour building tools
- Customer relationship and marketing management system
- Billing, invoicing, and accounting software
- Customer support
- Content management system
- Performance management functionality
- Reporting features
Now, let us concentrate on those aspects that can be automated in an internal solution or SaaS.
Learn more: SaaS Software Development: Components & Cost
Search and pricing rules
Behind an OTA’s web and mobile pages with search, listings, and booking functionalities, price aggregators should instantly offer visitors the best available flight, hotel, tour, and other travel product prices.
A travel booking engine connects to suppliers via travel APIs, receives the necessary information, processes it, and displays exactly what the business wants to show on the search results page.
Booking engines can be programmed to show search results favorably using search rules. They dictate what products from what suppliers at what price and to what users to show. AI can help predict who will pay more under certain circumstances.
Pricing rules allow businesses to always choose the most profitable pricing considering multiple factors, such as season, suppliers, customer acquisition sources, etc.
Self-learning ML tools can also predict fluctuations, e.g., in hotel pricing and room availability, using historical data, seasonal trends, current demand, competition, weather forecasts, special offers from airlines, and other factors. It’s also possible to identify the best destination pairs and the most profitable routes.
Automated price tracking software also helps gain market intelligence for dynamic pricing. All of this allows adjusting the prices to increase revenue automatically.
A commission rules engine automatically calculates commission and then the final booking price. OTAs write commission rules depending on multiple factors. For example, they can set a larger commission ahead of high season or popular events. Customers with more complex itineraries can get a discount.
It’s also reasonable to cut the commission for users on the metasearch website and raise it when they come directly to your website. OTAs can use analytics, tweak rules, or configure the engine to deliver the best deals consistently.
Customer-facing booking and reservation software
Consumers like it when online services remember their preferences and personalize their bookings with add-ons. AI-powered engines help address these customer needs and customize offerings using various data, such as
- Metadata (location, browser, device, referral source, etc.)
- Behavioral data (previous bookings, searches, subscriptions, and other online activities)
- A detailed history of purchases and preferences
- Social media data (ratings, customer feedback, shared photos, comments, geo-tagged locations, etc.)
Modern software can create user segment types based on their role, location, behavioral patterns, and other factors and automatically adapt interfaces, layouts, feeds, and other website elements to different user groups’ needs.
More cases of process automation involve bots:
- Chatbots, AI-based assistants, can guide visitors throughout the search and booking journey.
- These assistants can be integrated into Slack, Telegram, or Messenger.
For example, they can use input data, customer-specific info, and other external factors to recommend the best flights, check room availability, provide travel ideas, update customers about booking status and flight schedules, etc.
Learn more: Core features, tech stack, and cost of building a travel mobile app
Booking office for the employees
Instead of creating a reservation from scratch, travel agents can use templates for similar reservations. The system will then calculate the net prices based on component costs, add a margin, and produce the selling price.
Travel software can be programmed to fill out auto-filling forms. For example, passenger name records (PNR) hold passengers’ names and contact and ticket details. Robotic process automation (RPA) bots can enter and update PNR information for travel agents quickly and accurately.
RPA software can also check document accuracy, verify signatures in uploaded scanned documents, and automate approval or rejection recommendations.
Tour and itinerary building
Travel and tourism management software should enable a tour company to respond to incoming customer requests 24/7, automatically analyzing the details and comments submitted by users, gathering the requested information, and creating proposals with a personal touch.
Tour planning software helps create a package, tour, or group itinerary by combining components previously made in the travel system and automatically extracting photos and descriptions. It should also allow for dynamic generation of packaged tours, validating dates, opening hours, and other important info, and calculating tour prices in the background.
Customer service
Travelers often demand instantaneous advice and support. Many apps and websites offer chatbots that provide automated answers to general queries. AI helps reduce average response time to minutes, effectively substituting travel agents.
Advanced algorithms can process weather forecasts and info from carriers to help predict disruptions, such as flight delays, and anticipate extra services for their clients. This information can be automatically sent to travelers and companies so they can plan alternative routes or check for available hotels to spend the night.
Up-to-the-minute risk reports and GPS tracking systems also enable better communication between travel companies and customers. It’s possible to use AI and ML in conjunction with trackers to plan regular services.
You can get client feedback through automated emailing to find out what they liked and what your business needs to improve on.
Customer relationship management (CRM) and marketing systems
The system should capture all inquiries made via a website directly into a CRM and create lead and client profiles using data provided by visitors, such as names, desired destination, dates, number of people, etc.
Companies also may automate
- the distribution of requests among their agents
- classification of customers by travel-specific categories
- order processing
- confirmations and notifications about the main touchpoints of the booking journey via emails, SMS, and push notifications for agents and clients
- departure and arrival notifications
- emailing to reach potential customers
- social media posts for each new blog published on the website
- real-time recommendations to staff based on the guest preferences analysis
- billing, invoicing, cancellation, issue resolution, and refunds
- compliance reporting
- spreadsheets updates
AI-powered applications can process thousands of factors to predict users’ needs, help tailor deals to a customer’s family status, goals, favorite cities and hotels, etc., and market them through the optimal channels at the right time. Analytics should help you understand what works and what doesn’t.
Natural language processing and sentimental analysis technologies can process user reviews on websites and social media to provide insights that can improve your service.
Billing, payment processing, and accounting
Automatic invoice generation and processing after a booking are essential. In the case of currency fluctuations, the software would automatically calculate the difference and charge the customer for it a few days before the trip. You can also set due dates and automatic payment rules for supplier invoices, preventing delays and improving relationships with vendors.
RPA software can track down and notify businesses about malicious data patterns and evaluate transactions to detect illicit activity, reducing chargebacks.
Content management system (CMS)
Travel portals need to automate the creation, organization, and management of their content. RPA software also helps moderate content, e.g., identifying inappropriate images and texts.
Reports
Bots can provide customer insights and analytics from social media, company websites, booking websites, and top destination pages, classifying them based on demographics, average spend per annum, and other criteria.
The software should automate the needs to sort through your organization’s data, clean it up, and present the findings via instant reports and spreadsheets to various departments.
Besides sales and growth trends, bots can track competitors and their strategies and alert you when they change their prices.
Tech Stack for Travel Automation System Development
It’s possible to build an automated travel software using a variety of programming languages, frameworks, libraries, and integrations. The list of options includes, but is not limited to:
- Front-end programming languages: JavaScript, HTML5, CSS3, TypeScript
- Front-end frameworks: Angular, React.js, Vue, Apollo, NextJS, JSF, Rebass, Jest, Kendo
- Back-end programming languages: PHP, Node.js, Java, Ruby, Python, C#
- Back-end frameworks: Ruby on Rails, Spring, ActiveAdmin, Hibernate, Laravel, CakePHP, Django, Node.js, Meteor.js, Flask, Express.js, .NET, ASP.NET, Micronaut, gRPC, RxJava, CloudCMS
- Cloud storage: Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, Azure Storage
- Cloud hosting: Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Heroku
- Automation frameworks: RSpec, Capybara, PhantomJS, Selenium
- SQL data storage: PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, SQL server
- Key-value/data storage: Redis, Memcached
- Web server: Nginx, Apache
- Cloud-native platforms: MongoDB, AWS DynamoDB
- Native mobile apps: Kotlin or Swift
- Cross-platform mobile app: Flutter, React Native
- Global payment s: PayPal, Braintree, Stripe, Adyen
- CMS: Drupal, Joomla, Magento, Shopify, Webflow, WordPress
- Messaging and communication: Twilio, Vero, MailChimp, SendGrid, Intercom
- Other integrations: New Relic, Sentry.io, Skylight
Estimated Cost of Developing an Automated Travel System
One can calculate the cost of travel software development by multiplying the time required to deliver the necessary functionalities by the man/hour rate.
For example, here’s Onix’s rough estimate of a mid-range OTA project.
However, it can give you only an idea of what to expect, because each business and each project is unique. Too many factors can impact the budget, such as:
- the number of desired functionalities
- the technical complexity of the features and their automation
- the number of platforms and devices the system is designed for
- app architecture solutions
- technology choices
- whether licensed APIs and third-party services are used
- any set deadline
- the number of specialists on the development team
- the location and qualifications of the developers
- their salaries or hourly rates of the outsourcing partner
- the cooperation model…
… and more. For instance, a development team for such projects may include:
- 1 UX/UI designer
- 1 product architect
- 2 or 3 programmers, with at least one senior developer
- 1- 2 QA engineers
- 1 project manager
The developers’ salaries are the second most important determinant. The broad range of fees IT professionals charge worldwide means entrepreneurs can develop an automated travel solution in South America or South Asia much cheaper than in the US.
For instance, the same set of features built by the same number of specialists with similar qualifications might cost $223K in the US and $68K in Ukraine without compromising the quality.
Source: Accelerance
Challenges to Automated Travel System Development
Data dependency
For example, AI needs large amounts of data to generate actionable insights, which may be problematic for smaller businesses. Collecting sufficient data sets for ML may take months. They also need a reliable and secure platform to collect and analyze large volumes of data from different sources, e.g., social media and review platforms.
Read also: Travel Data Migration Strategies
Third-party restrictions
Some data aggregation APIs prohibit agencies from analyzing data. A custom data processing platform may offer a solution.
Data security
Customers expect their financial information and personal details to be safe when making online bookings. Data leaks and violations of international security standards are fraught with huge penalties and litigations. Cybersecurity should be an essential part of your automated travel services platform from the onset.
Finding the right travel software development team
For instance, robotic process automation in travel industry settings has certain workflow-related technicalities. The team you plan to engage must confirm their expertise both in custom travel software development and ML and AI implementation.
You can test it by asking them to assess your existing systems and whether they could interfere with the rules-based and cognitive automation, or developing proof of concept for an automation case that raises most questions.
Onix counts over ten years of user-oriented travel software development and partnering with travel, tourism, and hospitality companies. Our team acquired a wealth of skills and knowledge of industry-specific challenges on diverse projects. We apply best practices and tech stacks to help our clients save costs and launch quickly.
Aside from developing end-to-end software, we can augment your existing workforce with dedicated development teams.
Final Thoughts
Data science and automation profoundly affect businesses across multiple industries, from finance to health and fitness. Travel agents, hoteliers, and tour operators can also automate document generation, marketing efforts, customer communication, invoicing, finances, reporting, and other processes.
Automation is most valuable when it helps ensure compliance, e.g., in the case of taxes or other processes required by law, and when it saves significant time, i.e., if humans would do the same work for an incomparably longer time and use much more resources. In the ever-evolving cut-throat travel market, such automation is essential for staying afloat.
Travel businesses and startups may leverage either off-the-shelf software or custom solutions. In the latter case, please don’t hesitate to contact Onix.
Our specialists can answer any question, advise you on implementing custom booking systems, AI and ML-powered middleware, chatbots, or speech recognition tools for your particular business case, recommend a tech stack and experienced developers of automated solutions, or create a custom automated travel system from start to finish.
FAQ
What are the benefits of automation in tourism industry contexts?
An automated travel system can help a travel agency, tour provider, or hospitality business:
- boost sales
- accelerate sales and service provision
- increase customer satisfaction and loyalty
- improve the employees’ productivity and satisfaction
- increase the efficiency of the key business processes
- cut costs
- centralize the organization’s data and documents
- minimize risks and errors
- enhance a business’s online presence.
What travel business processes should be automated first?
Automation is best implemented for processes that are:
- repeatable
- not subject to frequent change
- rules-based and have no exceptions
- need to be error-free
- taking a big part of the employees’ work time
- potentially better performed by a machine than by humans
Some of the use cases for process automation in the travel industry include:
- pricing
- booking and reservation request processing
- approvals
- answering calls and queries
- cancellations
- accounting
- marketing
- analytics
How much does it cost to make an automated travel system?
Travel software development costs directly depend on the number of required features, their complexity, etc. For example, a version with only essential features may take ~1,700 hours.
As the average hourly rate in Eastern Europe is $60 per hour, the same feature set built by the same number of specialists of like qualifications might cost around $102K ($68K in Ukraine) against $220K in North America or Western Europe.
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