Having access to a powerful travel booking platform can make your life much easier.
A travel agent booking platform that’s truly beneficial, will allow you to create enjoyable and seamless travel experiences for travellers no matter where they’re headed, what they’re doing, or their availabilities and budget.
A great travel booking platform will allow you to curate bespoke experiences that meet and exceed every need of your customers, making you their go-to provider for comprehensive solutions.
So, what does that mean, exactly? What features should you look out for when choosing a booking platform for travel agents, to ensure that it meets your own needs as well as your customers?
Keep reading to discover the 5 key features that all great travel booking platforms should have, and how they're designed to streamline and simplify your life.
1. Filters to easily refine your searches
Every customer has their own particular needs and requests when booking a hotel or an in-destination experience, and even mobility solutions such as transfers.
Quickly understanding and providing solutions to those needs is sometimes vital.
That’s why, with over 20 filters available, our Bedsonline travel booking platform makes things easier for you and your clients. Allowing you to curate bespoke travel experiences at the touch of just a few buttons.
You can refine your search by board, category, area, point of interest, customer review (TripAdvisor) and many more.
With the ability to quickly narrow down your searches at the time of booking to opportunities that exactly meet the needs of your customers, you’ll be able to better meet their needs and expectations, craft an experience that suits their budget and availabilities, and increase the likelihood that, for first-time customers, they’ll return to you for a fantastic booking experience.
This ability to offer travel plans on an individual basis, together with an expansive global portfolio of high-quality travel products, will become your best friend when looking for hotels for your customers. You will be able to quickly provide a wide offer that is tailored to your customer’s specific needs.
All the extensive filters available in List view can also be used in Map view for ease. You also get a snapshot of the hotel’s info and can book the hotel directly from the map. Easy, fast, accurate.
Search for your customers' needs with Bedsonline
Want quick access to a list of certified sustainable accommodation options? Use the ‘Sustainable Hotels’ filter to offer third-party accredited eco-friendly stays.
Are your customers travelling with their dog? Narrow down the searches with the 'Pet-Friendly Hotel' filter. Do they want to stay next to the Eiffel Tower? Search by 'Point of Interest'. Organising a honeymoon? Filter by 'Adults Only', or specific facilities on a hotel-by-hotel basis, such as 'Hotels with Spa'.
Plus, we’re adding multiple new filters in 2025 so there are even MORE ways that you can accommodate specific customer needs at the time of booking, to secure even more customers and ensure you’re remaining relevant and agile for the customers you have.
2. Integrated cross-selling functionality for boosted revenue
Of course one of the best things that you can offer to your customers is seamless but comprehensive travel options. Many of today’s travellers (45%) are seeking ‘all in one solutions’, preferring to book their entire trip from a single travel booker rather than a fragmented booking journey. Today's customer, in general, is all about convenience - why would a traveller be any different?
Considering that many travellers can book end-to-end travel experiences themselves, it pays to offer everything they need when they’re travelling, no matter where they’re headed.
This is where an integrated cross-selling feature becomes so vital.
When you’re booking your travellers’ ideal hotel, you also need to be able to offer in-destination experiences that suit their interests, a customisable transfer to or from the hotel or airport, or car hire to make sure they’re making the most of the destination of their choice.
With Bedsonline’s cross-selling tool, fully integrated into the Booking Engine, you can easily add activities, tours, tickets, or shared and private transfers during the booking process, saving you time and helping you earn more.
What’s more, when you book with Bedsonline you’ll also get proactive recommendations for popular in-destination activities, influenced by market-specific trends and past booking data. This means that you can offer in-demand activities and experiences to enrich every customer’s trip and increase your basket value at the time of booking.
3. An easy-to-use hotel comparison tool
Making smart decisions doesn’t just apply to you as a business, it’s also important that travellers make the best hotel choice for their availability, budget or personal constraints, and specific requirements.
To truly meet the needs of your customers, sometimes just providing a great deal on their destination of choice isn’t enough: you need to help them ensure they’re making the right choice for their needs at that time, and any future considerations that are important to them.
So, instead of having to navigate through multiple tabs and windows to show your customers the different hotels you’ve narrowed down (using those extensive filters and your own expertise), an easy comparison tool makes your life so much easier.
The Bedsonline comparison tool allows you to painlessly compare all the features of up to 4 hotels, side by side in the same window and then print, create a PDF or send by email to your customer.
Our hotel comparison tool is easy to use, with a clean, attractive design and a professional look that will make you shine in front of your customers, and being able to quickly share this comparison in a way that suits your customers best reduces any hassle on their side. To facilitate easy, strategic decisions for you and your customers.
4. Personalised recommendations to capture growth opportunities
Features like filters, integrated up-selling and cross-selling functionalities, and even customisable marketing material tools can be ‘expected’, but what can make a travel booking platform truly notable amongst the offerings is the integration of personalised recommendations for hotels and experiences.
Having market-specific recommendations available at your fingertips can make the difference between securing a customer, and losing out to your competitors.
This is exactly what you get when using Insights, a marketing and recommendation tool integrated seamlessly with our Bedsonline Booking Engine!
Insights is designed to help you make smarter, strategic decisions that boost your revenue opportunities as well as ensuring you meet the needs of a diverse customer base.
Keep relevant, stay agile and competitive with market-specific recommendations influenced by:
- What your competitors are booking.
- Growth opportunities for your specific business.
- Your specific customisations – by saving, anchoring or discarding recommendations as they are offered.
From seeing the top destinations which represent the most relevant growth opportunities for your specific business, to options to save, anchor and discard any of your recommendations to improve the options you receive from our intelligence system in the future. Insights is here to ensure that you never miss out on a valuable opportunity or miss out on aligning with customer needs again.
Learn more abouts our personalised recommendation and marketing tool here, to discover how this tool can take your customers from lukewarm to ready to book!
5. Booking management tools to have everything under control
Sometimes problems arise, and you need to provide a quick answer to your customers. That’s why you need to have all the tools to make any changes at the tip of your fingers.
Having responsive, well-organised and easy-to-use booking management tools is certainly a feature that your travel booking platform should have, to ensure you’re able to have full control over your bookings.
With Bedsonline’s booking management tools you can forget about phone calls or e-mails to other travel providers.
Whether you need to modify a booking, change a room board, make a special request on your clients’ behalf, amend a guest on a reservation, or even cancel a booking should the occasion arise, you’ll be able to do so 100% online with the Bedsonline suite of self-service tools.
How? Well, all registered Bedsonline partners can simply access the 'Bookings' panel from within our Bedsonline Booking Engine, enter the required booking identification number, and you can modify and manage your booking without needing to wait for support from our teams.
Of course, if you do require expert assistance, our travel booking platform offers quick, priority access to our Help Desk for all tickets processed from the 'Bookings' panel. This means that when you log a request through our Booking Engine, you're guaranteed to receive assistance in a timely manner.
So when it comes to choosing a travel booking platform, make sure you’re selecting a platform that is powerful, intuitive and designed to make your life easier, while helping you sell more and boost your revenue!
Combine those features with our comprehensive portfolio of travel products designed to ensure you stay relevant to your target customers, and there you have it: a powerful booking platform that positions you competitively in the industry.
Download our comprehensive guide to our Bedsonline travel booking platform here!