Expedia Affiliate Network introduces agent booking module

Expedia Affiliate Network introduces agent booking module

An agent booking module is being introduced by Expedia Affiliate Network for its Affiliate Voyager platform. It aims to equip agents with complete visibility to make bookings directly on the customer’s behalf as well as manage customer enquiries. Affiliate Voyager … Continue reading

An agent booking module is being introduced by Expedia Affiliate Network for its Affiliate Voyager platform.

It aims to equip agents with complete visibility to make bookings directly on the customer’s behalf as well as manage customer enquiries.

Affiliate Voyager is another way partners can access EAN hotel rates and availabilities in addition to its API and ‘Hotels.com for Partners’ template solution.

The portal is already used by more than 2,500 of Expedia’s own agents worldwide, designed to drive incremental revenue.

With search, comparison and payment options on more than 290,000 properties, Affiliate Voyager allows agents to deal with customer enquiries and make and manage bookings directly rather than asking their hotel supplier to do it.

In addition to sending, reconfirming and cancelling itineraries, Affiliate Voyager allows agents to make changes to the traveller’s personal information, travel dates, property, room type and bed configuration.

Agents can specify and change travellers’ special requests, view cancellation policies, and search booking and payment histories.

Agents can also create multiple itineraries in one shopping cart, view localised content with multi-language and multi-currency display options.

AN senior vice president and general manager, Ariane Gorin, said: “We estimate that Affiliate Voyager will result in more efficient sales and customer service experiences for agencies, with a 15%-plus increase in customer requests that the agent can handle without escalation and a 5%-plus reduction in total handle time for affiliate agents.

“The net effect for travel agencies is improved customer satisfaction and loyalty.

“Affiliate Voyager has been built specifically for agents. Based on feedback from our partners, we took an agent tool used by Expedia and enhanced it to give partners’ agents ownership of their customers and also instill those customers with the confidence that the right person is looking after them.

“Through an efficient and seamless booking experience, Affiliate Voyager empowers agents to deliver exceptional customer satisfaction and now they can even close the booking.”

The tool is maintained and optimised by EAN and comes with face-to-face and online training to drive agent adoption, alongside reporting and support.