The Network of Entrepreneurs Selling Travel (NEST) has launched a proprietary NESTHotels booking engine for home-based travel agents. The web-based system conveniently places a hotel inventory of 76,000 properties at the agents’ fingertips, all of which are now bookable online without a GDS.
“We’re so excited to be the first to market with such a robust booking engine for the home-based sector,” said Kathryn Mazza-Burney, president of NEST. “NESTHotels gives NEST agents the immediate ability to book hotels around the world through our Agent Extranet. This is a strong competitive advantage because many home-based agents don’t have GDS access.”
Key features of NESTHotels include: easy-to-use booking engine with comprehensive property details; Geo Search, which allows agents to quickly select from a pre-configured listing of the most frequently requested destinations; an itinerary-builder shopping cart function, which allows multiple bookings in a single session with guest information only being entered once.
Other features include a pop-up calendar for agent to automatically complete date fields when the end-user selects a date from the calendar, real-time credit card validation, and confirmation emails when booking or canceling a reservation. Agents can easily switch between multiple languages without interrupting shopping flow and multiple foreign currency conversions available when viewing rates.
NESTHotels also features a powerful commissions processing and reporting function that automates the process of collecting hotel commissions worldwide. Commissions are conveniently tracked and collected on the agent’s behalf. All currencies are converted to U.S. funds. And, a single check is distributed to the agent monthly. For information: www.jointhenest.com