| As you suggest ideas to your clients, you
can enter them into the system as you go, thus building up a
provisional itinerary. Tour operator prices, cruise fares, air
fares, hotel rates (rack or net) can be entered at the same time (if
they are not already in the system as favourites). At the end, you
can display the quotation on the screen and print it out for your
client, with an expiry date. On the date the quotation expires, it
pops up in a list of 'things to do today' so that you can contact
the client, and either take a deposit, change the arrangements and
try again, extend it by a day, or allow it to lapse. Statistics of
lapsed quotations are available in management displays of
statistics.
Osprey has gained Amadeus certification for flight availability,
low fare search, bulk entry of group names from the names in the
system, flight booking, sailing availability, ports of call for
sailings, cruise cabin categories and fares by promo code, actual
cabins available, cabin booking, and detailed costing from the
cruise line. Thus flights and cruise sectors can built into the
itinerary as you discuss the arrangements with your client. These
sectors will be held for 15 minutes with the airlines and cruise
lines. If your clients are able to make up their minds and give you
a credit card, then a single click sends the relevant transactions
through to Amadeus.
Payments can be taken with real-time credit card authorisation,
which pops up the result on your booking screen. The invoice to the
client is printed out in the shop with the latest itinerary in
chronological sequence, and it can also be emailed. Upon receipt of
the deposit, you can email confirmations of the provisionally booked
segments to your suppliers. When all these are in (individual
segments stay in red until you receive confirmation from the
supplier) you can send a confirmation/invoice to your client which
sets out the final itinerary, total price and receipts so far.
If you do escorted groups, there are special control lists for
tour leaders showing APIS details of each client, together with a
detailed itinerary showing who has booked what, individual lists for
each excursion, rooming lists, and an airport summary.
Accounting entries are made automatically from customer sales,
receipts, supplier invoices and payments to suppliers, which gives
you monthly financial statements (balance sheet and profit/loss)
without any additional effort. Screen displays show when cruise (or
rail) tickets are expected from the supplier and when they were sent
on to the client. Suppliers cannot be paid until there are
sufficient funds from the client, unless a special supervisor
password is entered. There is a detailed profitability summary of
each booking, together with a line-per-booking management summary of
the departures for any chosen time period. |
A special display for
tickets expected from cruise (and rail) operators, so that you can
track and chase up these before your clients become anxious 
Day by day itinerary
for your client with information about all activities and
excursions, as well as flights, cruises, and accommodation
You can build up standard or 'template' tours for popular
favourites advertised in your window. If you have net rates with
activity and excursion suppliers these are marked up and converted
into whichever selling currency you prefer. Images and text for
hotels and excursions to be used in an illustrated itinerary
(quotation) for your customer are pasted into your central database.
The images and text blocks against each hotel, guest house, tour,
event and and cruise can also be used for the content on your Web
site, without involving the expense of an outside designer each time
you want to make changes to the Website.
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