Travel technology company iZento reports the launch of a new ClientBase-iZento Connection for the iZento Trip Guide that streamlines work for travel agents. The new tool automatically turns their ClientBase ResCard data into comprehensive, interactive professional itineraries and travel documents – with no extra data input on the part of the agent.
“With the new ClientBase-iZento Connection, a travel agent simply follows their standard booking process in ClientBase, and voila. Within a few minutes an email arrives with a link to a completed trip guide that can be shared with the client, printed, or posted on Facebook. All with no extra work on the part of the agent,” said Judy Roberts, co-founder of iZento.
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“The app completely revolutionizes the process, making it a snap for travel agents to provide comprehensive travel itineraries -- including travel documents, robust city guides and maps, calendar, daily agenda, suggested tours and activities and much more," Roberts says. Instead of an agent manually keying in the different data elements of a trip into an itinerary building platform, the data from their ClientBase booking is sent to the iZento Trip Optimizer server via an XML packet that the technology uses to automatically create the itinerary. This conversion is possible by way of a very reliable and accurate process called point-to-point mapping, applying the same technology used to create hundreds of thousands of iZento itineraries.
Benefits for agents and agencies cited by iZento:
• Upselling - The ClientBase-iZento Connection Application for the iZento Trip Guide assists with upselling to increase revenue. Agents can add suggested excursions as reservations, marking those items as “Quotes” – that will be featured in the Trip Guide as “Agent Recommendations,” ideal for boosting trip revenue.
• Branding - iZento customers can customize Trip Guides with their own branding.
• Ad Revenue - Agencies can take advantage of a new revenue stream for their business via the platform’s advertising pages feature -- ideal for selling destination specific ads or insurance ads from the agency’s preferred vendors.
• Automatic Updates - If an agent makes changes to a booking, the itinerary is automatically updated as iZento’s links are persistent. Any changes made to that booking in future will be automatically updated and viewable by clicking the original link.
This new application is being developed with the aid of Ken Jonker, retired Sales Director of Sabre Travel Network Agency Solutions (developer and seller of ClientBase). GRASP Technologies, Inc. is providing the ClientBase-iZento Connector application that iZento will employ to convert the ClientBase data.
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“Agencies have been asking iZento to integrate ClientBase data into their platform and this application responds ten-fold,” said Jonker. ”The application further enhances the value of ClientBase for the front-line agent, taking itinerary creation to a new level – featuring customized calendars, maps, and city guides, plus ads, recommendations and the ability to share professional, agent-branded travel documents in multiple ways – all in an automated, effortless process. The potential of increasing trip yields by offering shore excursion recommendations as ClientBase quoted reservations is very exciting.”
The ClientBase-iZento Connection for the iZento Trip Guide is a software package that will easily install via an installation wizard on the agency’s back office server. Agencies can get a free trial of the application where they will be able to run real bookings through the Connection to preview results before they sign up for this offering, iZento says.
Visit www.iZento.com