Bookassist reservations can now be transferred to TripIt

The Bookassist reservations system is now compatible with travel 2.0 service TripIt and is on the official Supported Vendors List. This new development means that hotel bookers can transfer their reservation details seamlessly to TripIt for the added convenience of being able to share their travel details.



TripIt is a fast growing Travel 2.0 / Web 2.0 service that organises your travel plans in a master travel itinerary online that's very easy to share with your family, friends and/or colleagues. If you are traveling for work, or traveling with friends, it is an ideal single access area to allow people to coordinate their travel plans.

Bookassist reservation confirmations from any of our hotels can be simply emailed to the TripIt system which will now automatically interpret them and load them to your travel profile, showing full booking details, hotel location details, arrival and departure dates, local weather and more.

The information is also iPhone compatible, meaning you can bring your travel itinerary with you no matter where you go, and be automatically warned of travel delays or alterations to your schedule.

Almost 90% rate Bookassist booking engine at 8/10 or higher

Almost 90% of customers rate the Bookassist booking engine experience at 8/10 or higher, with almost 60% giving it 10/10

A staggering 89.4% of online users who have used the Bookassist booking engine rate the system at 8/10 or higher, with a significant majority of users, almost 60%, giving it a full thumbs up with the highest 10/10 rating, according to statistics gathered from tens of thousands of users and released on the bookassist.org corporate website.

Bookassist has been collecting reviews from customers and have amassed tens of thousands of customer comments on the system. After having stayed at a hotel, customers receive a follow up email to comment on their experience, which forms the backbone of Bookassist's popular customer reviews for hotels. Hotels can feature these reviews on their own website as part of the Bookassist Travel 2.0 booking engine.

However, Bookassist also asks customers about the booking engine experience so that this information can be used to continually improve the customer experience. With thousands of bookings made a week using embedded Bookassist technology on hotel websites and affiliate channels, this is critical and valuable information. Coupled with analysis of the way customers use the booking process, this information has led to substantial advances in the booking engine design, advances which, while technically accomplished, lead to a simplicity for the online user instead of more complication. Bookassist advocates the multi-screen approach to the booking process for many reasons, rather than the single page approach that some vendors promote. Independent research has shown this approach to be vindicated for user friendliness and clarity of the process and it is industry best practice.

Having a customer centric approach, rather than a technology centric approach has been a cornerstone of how Bookassist has operated over the last 8 years in the online reservations arena and has been the open secret of Bookassist's success to date.

Cara Hotels deploys Bookassist Groupwide Travel 2.0 Services

The Cara Hotel Group in Ireland is the first in Ireland to take advantage of the new Bookassist groupwide Travel 2.0 services which builds directly on the Travel 2.0 Booking Engine services launched recently, another industry first.

The advanced services allow Hotel Groups to offer all hotels for booking in one site, as well as take advantage of Google mapping services, integrated with booking, customer reviews, electronic vouchers and more, all directly integrated into the group site.

•  Mapping Services for groups allow all member hotels to have their availability graphically displayed on a single map for customer convenience,
•  Groupwide Booking allows customers to look at dynamic live pricing and availability across all the group member hotels in one simple convenient page in multiple languages,
•  Individual hotel pages then allow customers to choose from Booking as well as Travel 2.0 services like Reviews, eVoucher and Location tabs to get detailed information on each property, with the entire booking process available as usual in multiple languages.

"The Groupwide Booking Services are another industry first and our feedback from groups shows that this is going to be a real winner", according to Roshan McPartland, Operations Manager for Ireland at Bookassist. "Group brands are a valuable marketing tool and group sites need to be as enabled and Web 2.0 aware as individual hotels. So we've worked hard to make sure the service levels are as good if not better for groups. The back-end administration system allows for detailed monitoring and yield management also group-wide, so there are major advantages behind the scenes as well."

There are no additional charges for Hotel Groups for the use of these industry leading features.

Travel 2.0 crucial to Hospitality Industry

The importance of Travel 2.0 to the Irish hospitality industry was outlined by John Hearne of the Irish Examiner today in conversation with Des O'Mahony of Bookassist.

See Examiner 20080415.pdf
© Irish Examiner

Major Product Rollout from Bookassist embeds Travel2.0 functionality directly in client hotel websites

The nature of the internet is rapidly changing. The online accommodation business is moving away from the large channel operators and directly to the hotel's own website. But the modern or second generation internet user wants real information and service online, with trustworthy customer generated media and interactivity as well as security in booking. The popularity of sites such as TripAdvisor and others is testament to the power of social media in the travel arena, but reviews on such sites can be generated by anyone whether they have knowledge of the service or not. Gathering reviews from genuine customers ensures a proper balance of views for the online reader.

Bookassist has been at the forefront of research into modern internet technologies and Web2.0/Travel2.0 developments in particular and now brings these key technologies into a new product offering for client hotel websites.

Hotels can now avail of not just the most advanced direct booking engine technology in the marketplace, with live secure banking transacting, multiple languages and multiple currencies, multiple room booking capability, add-ons and much more, but they can also now embed directly in their website functionality for the sale of online electronic vouchers redeemable online in the booking process; show customer generated reviews, automatically requested by the Bookassist system of customers who have actually booked with and stayed in the hotel; display their location on their website using Google maps as a background with citywide information nearby for their customers' benefit, information which is continually added to by Bookassist. Additionally, hotel groups can enable group and individual website with these features to tie the group functionality together and increase business transfer between members of a group.

The current suite of functions - Maps, Reviews, Vouchers, Booking - are just the first of a series of planned functions and can be combined in a tabbed format on a single page or can be embedded as separate elements or pages throughout the website. The information is dynamic and streams directly from the Bookassist database ensuring it is constantly up to date.

Dublin's Mercer Hotel has been the first to go live with this enhanced functionality from Bookassist which is now available to all Bookassist clients. "We are delighted with Bookassist's latest integration of maps, genuine customer reviews and e-vouchers within the booking engine software suite. We hope that this first step towards integrating Travel2.0 within booking engine software will benefit our customers and will enhance their booking experience greatly", said Michelle Doherty, Group Sales & Marketing Manager at the Great Southern Hotel/Mercer Accommodation Group.

"What you are beginning to see here is the enabling of a hotel to compete directly with the big Travel2.0 players, channels which have built their market share on providing detailed mapping and reviews for example.", said Dr Des O'Mahony, Co-founder and Managing Director at Bookassist. "If a hotel is providing rich online services, there is no need for the customer to go to these TripAdvisor style sites to get the additional information they might want, so there is less chance for the hotel of losing the customer.

"No other supplier is focused so strongly on the hotel's website, partnering with the hotel to bring more and more direct business to them, and we believe that with this major upgrade we are years ahead of what is on offer in the Irish marketplace and indeed further afield", said O'Mahony.