Behind every great travel product or service is a well-trained and dedicated team, writes Ritesh Gupta

When a travel company launches a new booking or payment initiative there are a number of things to consider. One of the most important things to get right is training, as teams must be equipped to handle queries so that any new initiative runs smoothly. This means taking into account the peculiarities of each market such as payment preferences.

So when Loews Hotels & Resorts recently made it possible to book on Twitter via #BookLoews, it had to establish a dedicated team to handle leads. Today a tweet results in a welcome message and link to a secure chat conversation. But to keep things simple, some things remain standard; for example, reservation details are shared via email, a typical procedure for all bookings, irrespective of the distribution channel. Piper Stevens, Director of Social Media, Loews Hotels & Resorts explained recently, it was essential to ensure a straightforward process and have roles clearly defined from the outset.

For India based online travel agency, Cleatrip.com, over the past two years its social media team has evolved from being a two-member band focused on handling Facebook to a fully-fledged team managing different aspects of service, content, advertising as well as technology. Subramanya Sharma, chief marketing officer at Cleartrip says today many employees are on Twitter handling traveller queries or issues long before the agency’s internal customer service team.

Not only is Cleartrip active on social, it is also improvising with payment mechanisms to meet the needs of the Indian customer, who are sometimes wary about paying online. When it launched ‘Pay@Hotel’ late last year, one of the most important things was for the technology behind the new payment option to run smoothly. 

 “A lot of effort has gone into automating confirmation and reconfirmation processes as well as to reduce the probability of no-shows for the hotel,” says Subramanya Sharma, chief marketing officer, Cleartrip. “In fact, we delayed the launch by almost a month to make sure that the automation is fully in place for this change”.

Before launching this new initiative, Cleartrip.com, like Loews, carefully prepared its team. Product training was conducted with the in-house team across all regions. The programme included:

·       Tutorials and explanations outlining the difference between ‘pre-paid bookings’ and ‘pay@hotel’. This included a detailed look at the merits and advantages of ‘pay@hotel’ for customer and suppliers.

·       The booking and fulfillment process revamped and training given to all team members. 

·       Contracts were revised to feature the applicable ‘terms & conditions’ required to participate in the ‘pay@hotel’ programme.

·      Senior in-house team members launched a Suppliers Education Programme to highlight the merits of ‘pay@hotel’ with select hotels.