Case Study
Cutting-edge cloud-based software for Travel & Activity Operators
Different Roads
Tour operator based in Valencia, Spain.
Project
In 2019 Different Roads organised the holidays of more than 10,000 people.
Project Description
TWS was founded in 2009 and sells tours through their own agency Different Roads and through resellers (OTAs, high-street travel agencies, etc).
Categories
  • The Need
  • The Solution
  • The Benefits

The Need

Different Roads initially managed all aspects of their tours (private hotel contracts, airline quotas, buses, guides…) using email and excel sheets. All services in an inventory had to be listed in a separate excel sheet for each departure, keeping track of whether a service was quota based or on request. This method was so labour intensive, each tour required a dedicated agent, and Different Roads couldn’t offer many departures for each tour or costly errors would be made. In 2016 a decision was made to invest in management software.

A customised solution was contracted enabling Different Roads to sell online with instant confirmation thanks to automated pricing and availability data – a major breakthrough – however the system still had many limitations. Different Roads had to hire a lot of extra staff in the high season to manage and found it was difficult to scale the business without increasing staff members and costs disproportionately. Different Roads Management therefore decided that in order to continue growing while keeping costs at a reasonable level, they needed to invest in a more technologically advanced solution.

Amongst other requirements, the solution needed to be able to:

1.

Provide a detailed view of tours including all services and their status, so that missing services would not be overlooked and services with no further availability could be detected.

2.

Automate management of quotas and pricing with suppliers, avoiding costly errors when reservations with multiple suppliers are not picked up and cancelled.

3.

For each specific activity in an itinerary, automatically replace a service with no remaining stock with an alternative, ensuring the tour can remain on sale online.

4.

Enable opening and making changes to all aspects of a booking, instead of needing to cancel and rebook as was previously the case.

5.

Automate communication with retailers (stop sales, price changes, etc.) reducing errors caused by manual communications.

6.

Track price and commission evolution over time and track who booked what, when, etc.

7.

Connect each service (with related price & stock data) to various tours and departures, ensuring availability is not exceeded for a specific hotel or flight quota.

8.

Issue flights from Amadeus-compliant files automatically generated from bookings.

9.

Provide automated notifications for the multiple details a tour operator needs to keep constant track of (hotel and flight release dates, low availability for critical services, on request reservations, delayed payments, etc.).

10.

Automatically generate detailed documentation and vouchers for travellers and guides, ensuring last-minute changes to passenger lists and schedules will not require complex manual management.

11.

Ensure pricing is always correct through automatic monitoring of hotel discounts and free room allocations as well as different rates for distinct markets and channels.

12.

Integrate all data with accounting systems ensuring it is possible to get realistic cost and profit data for each departure and accurately match invoices with payments.

Victor NavarroCEO, Different Roads
``TourKnife has completely revolutionised how we run our business. Thanks to the centralised management of all tour elements with automated update of pricing, availability and billing, we have dramatically increased productivity, enabling us to improve and add tours, dedicate more time to sales and reduce costly errors. We can also publish up-to-the-minute tour pricing and availability on line, which is having a big impact on sales. And TourKnife provides total visibility in real time of all elements of our business, enabling us to make smart and timely business decisions.``

The Solution

After carrying out an exhaustive analysis of the solutions on the market, TourKnife was the software capable of handling the complex management of their multi-day group tours.
TourKnife has been developed and rigorously tested to ensure that its cloud-based software offers the best possible solution to the needs of TWS, which currently uses TourKnife to:
• Manage all aspects of their tours and activities
• Control the prices and availability of their service providers
• Create campaigns that, temporarily, modify the price of the tours based on rules set by the commercial department
• Market online tours for both agencies and end customers
• Manage all aspects of reservations (cancellations, changes, etc.)
• Generate all documentation for travellers, guides, hotels, and airlines
• Integrate travel information effortlessly with their accounting programs, obtaining real cost and profit data per departure
• Cross billing and payment information

The Benefits

Thanks to TourKnife, Different Roads has been able to solve every issue they had with their previous software and have dramatically increased productivity and efficiency. They have also found new ways of working they didn't even know existed: they no longer need to invest time in repetitive manual tasks, errors have reduced significantly and data accuracy has increased exponentially. This is thanks to the centralisation and integration of all aspects of tour management: from the creation of tours right through the entire tour management process to invoicing and accounting.