Wholesale tour operator Avanti Destinations has rolled out its new website with advanced functionality that, among other new features, allows travel advisors to create, save, price and share customized FIT vacations 24/7 in less than five minutes. Avanti sells custom-crafted independent travel throughout Asia, Central and South America, North Africa, Europe and the Middle East exclusively through travel advisors.
Paul Barry, Avanti’s CEO, said that the new site incorporates the accumulated destination and planning knowledge of its expert travel consultants and the massive amount of travel services the company offers in all its destinations. It then uses artificial intelligence to create custom inspirational itineraries or proposals tailored to the destinations, travel themes—such as history, family, history, nature, food or romance—and hotel star rating that an advisor selects. He added, “Advisors can share these suggested themed itineraries with clients to get their feedback and make modifications. Once dates are selected, the trip can be priced in under one minute. All of this automated functionality is available 24/7. It’s fun, fast, and interactive.”
Once submitted to Avanti, each itinerary created by the advisor is reviewed by the company’s reservation team in one business day to make suggestions and adjustments as needed, all by email. Besides, transportation such as air, car rental and rail will be added by the reservation team.
“By giving advisors easy-to-use tools to rapidly build and modify a custom vacation on their own, the new website frees up Avanti travel consultants to concentrate on consulting, quality control and putting the finishing touches on a complete, seamless itinerary,” said Barry.
In addition to the advanced planning function and a revamped appearance throughout, there are two other new features: a personalized dashboard; and an easy-to-search, enhanced hotels and tours function.
The new dashboard or advisor workspace displays a name, photo and contact information for the advisor’s dedicated Avanti travel consultant. Advisors can click to see that consultant’s biography, their favorite itineraries, tours, hotels and experiential options, which can all be loaded into the advisor’s own workspace. The dashboard also displays all current bookings, favorite hotels, saved proposals, tours and experiences, plus quick links to their own agency profile and branding information which can be used on proposed itineraries. At a glance, advisors can see which bookings are awaiting a deposit or final payment.
The new hotels and tours function includes expanded content and photos. Most importantly, it allows advisors to search through all the possibilities, save those they think their client might like, and send an email with multiple links to those saved choices for their client to review. Advisors can filter their search by star quality or style, selecting from boutique, traditional, contemporary, luxury, elegant and ultramodern categories.
The new site preserves all the functions of the previous site, with the addition of the dashboard, advanced planning function and enhanced, searchable hotels and tours functions. Advisors will still have access to the previous site until the transition has been completed.
Barry points out that the new site is intuitive and user-friendly. Tutorials are also available on the homepage and in each new area. For more information, visit book.avantidestinations.com.
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