CASE STUDIES \ BLISS TRAVELS


BLISS TRAVELS An Online Accomodation Booking System
Bliss Travels, a UK based travel house realized the need for a system through which it would be able to expand its market peripheries and would also be able to provide the best hotel accommodation deals to a larger section of the market. They were in need of a solution which would help them in securing a better position in U.K's tourism industry. Icreon Communications analyzed their requirements and suggested a web enabled e-commerce solution which would make Bliss Travel's services available to website viewers 24x7, and provide a secure transaction platform for viewers to book the best available accommodations in the U.K.
Customer Profile
Bliss Travels is a UK based independent tour operating company offering quality and flexible holiday packages to popular destinations enjoyed by U.K based citizens. They provide holiday packages to over 35 destinations that include the Mediterranean resorts, Europe, America and the Far East.
Business Requirement
Bliss Travels required a web enabled robust, e-commerce solution to enable prospective clients in booking hotel accommodations online. They also wanted to provide an enhanced facility to their customers in receiving the best possible hotel reservation deal by integrating two third-party service providers in the solution, resulting in a prospective client benefiting from obtaining reservation services from three different service providers under a single platform. Bliss Travels required a dependable solution that would propel their ROI to new heights with an increased inflow of prospective customers.
Regional Accommodation Booking Solutions
BlissHotels.co.uk was developed with very specific functionalities which has given it an edge over its contemporary solutions. Some of its important features are:
Integration of two third-party service providers: This facility enables prospective customers to avail the best possible accommodation from different options. Through the 'comprehensive search' facility, customers receive a sorted list of available hotel accommodations from three different sources. One such source is natively owned by Bliss Travels; the other two are third party integrations to the system (Tourico and HotelBeds). The solution is driven by a robust custom built CMS, enabling the administrator to modify content whenever and wherever required. The solution is powered by a secure payment gateway to facilitate the online booking procedure.
Two basic modules have been deployed in this web based solution. They are:
User Module
This module has been incorporated to provide online search and booking facilities to the customer. Reservation forms developed in JavaScript, are generated and made available online for customers to reserve accommodations. A facility of keeping a track and a following up on reservations has also been incorporated.



Admin Module
The Admin Interface is a password protected module, which authorizes designated administrators to perform back-office tasks.



This module provides the following facilities to the administrators:
Manage Hotels- with the help of this functionality the administrator can add, edit and delete hotels from their database. Manage Booking- with the help of this functionality accommodations can be booked through XML from Tourico and Hotel Beds and from other locally contracted hotels. Manage Currency and Commissions - this interface has been deployed to enable the administrator in calculating the exact amount on the basis of one fixed base currency. Currency converters play an important role in such solutions as prospective clients can be from any country and need to know the exact monetary value of various packages in their local currency.



This flexible web based application is a cut above the rest, as it provides comprehensive information about hotel accommodations through three different service providers. It leads the website viewers through a handpicked list of hotels. The information from the other two service providers is made available through XML technology.
Technologies used in developing this web application are:



Summary
With the development of BlissHotels.co.uk Icreon Communications provided Bliss Travels with a valuable solution to enhance its business returns. It proved to be a boon for Bliss Travels as well as for its customers, who obtained a comprehensive platform providing reservation facilities from three different service providers. The web application developed by Icreon surpassed its expectations and has been of immense help to the sections it was addressing.