Internet technologies in promoting operator’s tourism products. Coursework: Possibilities of Internet technologies in the development, formation and promotion of tourism products. Information search and market research

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These features are used for:

· searching and systematizing the required information;
· marketing research;
· effective advertising of tourist services;
· searching for partners;
· booking and reservation of tourist services;
· sales of tourism products;
· analysis of the effectiveness of the adopted advertising strategy, etc.

Information search and market research

A targeted search for the required information and marketing research are carried out using many different electronic catalogs and directories, structured according to various criteria. Many of them are powerful systems databases.

The Alta Vista search engine from Digital Equipment has the greatest information power. Using it, searching for the necessary information according to specified criteria takes only a few seconds.

The popular search engine Yahoo offers multilingual search support. Unfortunately, it lacks support for the Russian language. However, quite a lot of search engines already exist in the Russian version. In addition, there are specialized tourist guides and catalogs. If searching the sea of Internet information seems tedious, you can order marketing research from specialized agencies on the same Internet, regardless of where they are located. Research results can be obtained either by e-mail or from a personal bulletin board assigned to the user by the agency.

Marketing research in the dynamically developing information space of the network is a complex and labor-intensive process, but very effective. Therefore, in the case of large-scale studies, it is recommended to contact specialized agencies.

Promotion of a tourism product in the tourism services market is carried out on the basis of marketing research using electronic advertising.

people using the Internet and its capabilities.

Internet advertising campaign is very effective both in Russia and abroad. The computer in our country has already become firmly established in the offices of entrepreneurs and government agencies. Many companies use e-mail services and searching for information on the Internet. Placing data about the company, including advertising of the company, first of all raises the image of the advertiser and arouses interest among highly organized entrepreneurs, potential partner companies, and most importantly, intermediaries who specialize in careful constant study of the computer space, advertisements and offers of cooperation and direct selling goods in your local market. This is a great way to promote your product to the world market.

It can definitely be said that the Internet provides users with unprecedented opportunities to provide and promote their tourism product to the world community. At the same time, even a small company with a competent advertising campaign can achieve significant results.

How to interest millions of potential customers with your Internet advertising?

The Internet values efficiency and freshness of information. Modern technologies allow you to update information daily.

The next step in promoting advertising is choosing where to place it. Internet advertising has no territorial reference. It is equally accessible to consumers both from a given city and from anywhere on the planet. It is best to place information on a specialized tourist WWW server. In this case, you can count on quality service from specialists in this (tourist) field of activity. Online materials require Maintenance, support and development. Therefore, they need to be located where the quality of this service is higher, even if the carrier is located in another city or country.

If a client entrusts the support and promotion of his services to a specialized agency, then links to these materials can be professionally placed in several dozen electronic directories and catalogs around the world, which will ensure high traffic. You can place an advertisement on another WWW server if it suits the advertiser’s profile. It is relatively inexpensive and allows you to attract additional customers.

Russia already has an information network and a group of specialized agencies for promoting tourism products on the Internet.

Electronic publishing house "Star Light" offers a full range of services for advertising and promotion of tourism services on the Internet. With their help, a tourist organization can go from posting a personal page to creating a representative office and even a virtual office in cyberspace.

The pages of the specialized online service INTURION (http://www.hro.ru/intour) provide advertising and information service tourist organizations, as well as all organizations involved in providing tourism activities. The INTURIION system contains the following sections:

· tourist organizations - electronic online directory;
· tourist offers - announcements about tourist programs and tours;
· searching for partners - announcements about searching for partners;
· provision of tourism activities - an online directory of organizations involved in providing tourism;
· virtual travel - electronic excursions to countries and cities presented on the Internet.

Electronic online directory assumes round the clock open access to information nodes from anywhere in the world, quick publication of newly received materials, prompt changes within 1 - 2 days, grouping of data by country, city and type of service, quick search information, design of links to personal pages and servers.

The directory consists of two parts with mirrored information: Russian-language - for Russia, CIS countries and neighboring countries, and English-language - for the entire global Internet audience.

By connecting to the Internet in On-line mode, the user has

unlimited (within the paid time) possibilities of using a huge hypertext directory, each page of which contains cross-references to other similar ones. The system provides quick search of information throughout the network. Using keywords, the user can easily find any information he is interested in, and if there are no restrictions on copying it, then copy the information to his computer and then print it or use it in another way.

The rapid development of the Internet is gradually changing the attitude of travel companies to advertising. For example, some European travel agencies began to reduce the volume of published newspaper advertising, giving preference to posting their information on the Internet. Instead of large advertisements in newspapers, you can now often find small blocks indicating the address of an information page on the Internet.

At the same time, many European travel companies see the widespread use of the Internet as a threat to their business. The opening of booking systems for hotels, air tickets and other tour components on the Internet allows clients to independently organize their vacation without resorting to the services of agencies. Austrian agencies were among the first to sound the alarm on this matter, declaring a boycott of the country's national tourism administration's plans to open the InfoAustria information and booking system on the Internet.

Today we can say with confidence that any business plan for tourism activities can be partially or completely transformed into the Internet.

Many tourist centers and companies post large amounts of information on the Internet with texts, color photographs and even films that allow the user to familiarize themselves with tourist resources in detail, find out information about tours, schedules and conditions of transportation, traffic, hotels and excursions, major restaurants and menus, travel insurance conditions, weather, current events and entertainment, send a request or directly book tourist services and even pay for them with a credit card.

For example, about Florida as a tourist center of global importance, you can get truly bottomless tourist information: descriptions of all resorts, programs, addresses of travel companies and associations, as well as watch fragments of cruise tours from seven of the largest companies in the Caribbean.

Search for partners

The search for partners on the Internet is carried out within the framework of the developed strategy for promoting and selling a tourism product.

Today, every company strives to be represented on the Internet. Email addresses and WWW addresses are certainly indicated on advertising brochures of organizations and on the business cards of their employees. Several million organizations have their own personal pages and servers on the network.

Using search engines, the user can compile a list of addresses in the required field of activity, for example, in tourism. By traveling through this list on the Internet, you can get acquainted with organizations and choose partners, contact them at the specified coordinates and enter into electronic negotiations.

Another, no less effective way is to place advertisements for finding partners in specialized services. In this case, you set your own conditions, and interested partners will find you themselves. In order to ensure the reliability of a potential partner, you need to meet him in person. It is quite possible to conduct preliminary negotiations with the partner you have found via the Internet. The advantage of the Internet when searching for tourism partners is the speed of obtaining materials about a potential partner.

The most effective way to form, promote and sell your tourism product is to open your personal page or representative office on the Internet. In this case, possible partners will contact you directly, having previously familiarized themselves with the presented materials.

Behind Lately A number of the largest Russian tour operators have placed their pages on the Internet, using the existing servers of a variety of companies. Its own tourist server was opened at the end of 1996 by the Academservice company (http://www.acase.ru.).

It is built according to a bilingual scheme: the English-language part of the server describes services for receiving foreign tourists in Russia, the Russian-language part contains information about away tours offered by Academservice.

On the English-language part of the server you can easily get a detailed description of hotels in the territory of the former USSR, a description of the cities in which they are located, tips for traveling around Russia, general information about the countries of the former USSR, view the interactive map. Distinctive feature server is the ability to generate and send an application to the desired hotel using special form reservation, describing in detail all the parameters of the order (accommodation, transfer, visa support). Within a few seconds, the responsible manager of the company receives the order, no matter where in the world it is sent.

The Russian-language part contains a detailed and well-illustrated description of Academservice tours to several countries around the world. The “Current Offers” section contains information about new tour operator programs that are not included in printed catalogs.

The "Last minute tours" section allows you to get information and purchase tours at a significant discount. You can leave your order for any tourist product presented on the server.

Each retail visitor to the server is given the opportunity to choose an acceptable travel agency throughout Russia. For travel agencies, Academservice has developed and is actively implementing an entire program to attract tourists via the Internet. For example, for each tourist sent via the Internet, the travel agency receives an additional $5 to the agent's commission. Work is nearing completion to create a system for reserving tourist services via the Internet for agents and retail clients, which should increase user interest in the Academservice server.

Agents and partners of Academservice are actively advertised on the server. The "Partners" section, for example, provides information about automated systems companies "Intoursoft", which are actively used both by the operator itself and by many Russian travel companies.

Creating your own Web page or specialized server is the most effective way of electronic advertising.

The information posted on this page becomes available to everyone who uses the Internet. The costs of developing and maintaining it significantly depend on the amount of information and the method of its provision (text only, text and color photos, films, voice-overs, etc.). Creating a page requires certain qualifications of workers. She's getting ready for HTML language, in which files available on the Internet are written.

It is noteworthy that, unlike newspapers or other advertising media, the Internet provides the opportunity to obtain information about those who viewed it.

It is possible to track from which country, at what time, certain data is of interest on advertising page, and make changes based on this. Information can be provided in any language in Latin or Cyrillic and will be available at any time of the day or night to any user from any country. At the same time, the costs are significantly lower than the costs of other types of advertising.

After creating such a page, it must be placed so that it is found by the largest number of Internet users. After all, if this page is not registered in search servers, where network users usually look for it, no one will find it. It's like printing flyers, putting them on the table and waiting for someone to come pick them up. It is most rational to order the creation of pages and registration in search engines from one of the companies involved in the production and preparation of HTML files.

A direct advertising campaign on the Internet is a serious, expensive and very promising undertaking that requires planning, appropriate professional training and adequate financial support. Such an advertising campaign is strongly recommended for companies that are going to actively promote their tourism product on the service market, as well as for newly created tourism companies.

As a rule, the Web page itself is designed, redesigned or adjusted many times, taking into account the wishes of the customer and the possibility of its promotion on the Internet. It is important to choose an advertising company that is competent in this area of business. For example, the direct-mail method with the ability to send information to a selected database gives good results at the initial stage of working with the network.

Another effective option may be to place information about the company in an electronic catalog, which significantly expands the capabilities of the company and its advertising or other announcement immediately becomes visible to Internet users, and results can be expected in a relatively short time. Information is grouped into thematic collections and a powerful information base is formed, aimed at promoting homogeneous products.

In relation to the tourism sector, such tourist information databases are formed for large tourist centers.

This is, for example, the database of information on tourist services in St. Petersburg (Russia) "Nota Bene" (server "All Tourist St. Petersburg").

Participation in international exhibitions and fairs on the Internet

All the most famous tourism exhibitions have already opened their information pages on the Internet, which provide statistics, conditions for participation, accreditation and visiting exhibitions.

Below are the email addresses of the most important ones:

Section of the Madrid exhibition FITUR

http://www.fitur.sei.es

Section of the Milan BIT exhibition

http://www.hcs.il.viadggi

Section of the Berlin ITB exhibition

http://www/messe-berlin.de/ilb

Section of the Russian MITT exhibition

http://www/mitt.ru

The company Expo-Web provides advertising opportunities for tourism products at international exhibitions on the Internet. Using the system offered by Expo-Web allows you to exhibit your tourism product online, contact directly with industry partners, take part in conferences, presentations, press clubs, access directories and catalogs, etc.

The possibility of direct and reverse audio-visual communication via the Internet allows you to:

· significantly reduce the costs of promoting a tourism product in the tourism services market;
· eliminate in some cases the costs of participating in expensive tourism exhibitions and fairs;
· save on transportation costs, business trips, costs of renting and installing stands, etc.

Potential clients and visitors who did not attend the exhibition will be able to obtain detailed information in their office or home about the exhibits, the location of stands, the list of participants, and descriptions of the types of activities of companies.

In addition, it provides the opportunity to receive any operational request regarding MITT, as well as booking tourist services.

Fast, reliable communications in the global network make it possible in the future to promote the tourism product with greater efficiency.

Electronic system for booking and reserving tourist services on the Internet

Worldwide computer network There are sections for booking basic tourist services on the Internet. The most popular of them are TravelWeb, developed by leading hotel chains, and Travelocity, open computer system Saber reservations.

Statistics show that the popularity of self-service computer booking via the Internet is growing rapidly. Only hotel rooms through TravelWeb are booked monthly in the amount of $850 thousand. The reservation system currently offers information on 9,000 hotels and flights from 300 airlines. Considering this, it cannot but be considered as a serious competitor to travel agencies. To understand how great the danger really is for agencies, experts tried to compare the usual booking by catalogs and fax for tour operators working with individual tourists with booking tourist services via the Internet.

Booking via TravelWeb on the Internet:

· valid 24 hours a day;
· works in real time;
· allows instant booking and confirmation;
· all information is in front of your eyes.

· searching for the necessary information in the absence of experience can take a long time;
· only “rack rates” are available, so prices are often inflated;
· a computer and a modem are required;
· visa support is not provided;
· Reservation payment is required credit card;
· Reception of information is often slow.

Booking through a travel agency:

· communication with a living person, there is feedback;
· use of professional knowledge of a travel agent;
· the travel agent's time is wasted to a greater extent, not the client's.

· waiting for booking confirmation up to 2 days;
· there may be a lack of information on the required hotels and flights;
· limited choice of offer.

As can be seen from the analysis, booking via the Internet compared to traditional service at an agency (at least in Russia) has a number of significant disadvantages, primarily in terms of payment and visa support. Although it is not difficult to suggest ways to eliminate these problems. For example, use the agency’s corporate credit card for payment. The basis for issuing a visa can be a booking confirmation automatically received by the agency by email.

So agencies shouldn't discount the Internet. The network and its services are developing rapidly. In any case, today TravelWeb and similar sections are excellent information directories of addresses of agencies, tour operators, flight schedules, hotels, attractions and many information that are so necessary in the work of travel companies.

Abroad, booking and reserving tourist services via the Internet has become an integral part of the technology for promoting and selling a tourism product and real competition for tourism organizations. In Russia, the threat of competition is less, but over time this form of work will become familiar to domestic travel companies.

Currently, along with the developing system for reserving carrier services, a system for reserving accommodation in hotels, motels, campsites, tourist centers, etc. via the Internet is becoming widespread in Russia.

It is safe to assume that it is precisely those companies that have already begun to move in this direction that will determine the strategy for the development of the Russian travel business on the Internet for the next few years.

With all the variety of forms of presenting hotels on the Internet, the scheme for booking a room remains more or less general: searching for the desired hotel according to a number of criteria (for example, price and distance to the airport); a detailed study of the rules of working with the selected hotel (commissions to agents, deadlines for canceling a reservation, etc.); filling out the reservation form (length of stay, names of clients, etc.) and receiving either confirmation of acceptance of the reservation for processing, or confirmation of the reservation itself.

Bookings made on three types of servers are fundamentally different: on the server of a hotel or hotel chain, on the server of a tour operator and on the server of a reservation center.

Most hotel servers or hotel chains are focused on accepting reservations from individuals, and not from travel agents and tour operators, who already have a well-functioning technology for interacting with the hotel. The prices offered on these servers are slightly lower than the base rate and do not include agency fees. The work of a travel agent with such servers is seriously hampered by two circumstances: very few Russian hotels have such an idea; To compare living conditions in different hotels, a travel agent will have to work simultaneously with several servers.

Among Russian hotels, this method of advertising oneself is typical only for large hotels or hotels belonging to large hotel chains (servers of the National Hotel - http://www.national.ru, the Intcr-Contincntal hotel chain - http://www.interconti.com and etc.). There are significantly more hotels represented on the reservation center servers. Depending on the marketing policy of the reservation center, it can unite both hotels in a particular region and hotels around the world. In addition, a hotel often works with several reservation centers, which allows it to expand its circle of potential clients. The agent commission payment policy is determined individually by each hotel loaded into the reservation center.

The range of prices presented is unusually wide - from Rack Rate to discounts. However, prices for the same hotel can vary significantly on the servers of different reservation centers.

The global tourism market has recently been constantly and dynamically developing, mastering new and more advanced technologies for interacting with consumers of tourism services. One of these technologies is online sales in the tourism industry, the popularity of which is growing from year to year among the world community, and, according to experts from an American marketing company Allied Market Research, the global online travel market will be valued at more than $1 billion by 2022 (about 60% of US residents and 40% of European residents use online booking as their main method of travel; in the Russian Federation this value is about 1.5 %). In Russian tourism business practice, the results of online sales of tourism products are not yet so impressive (63% of Russians have never used online stores), but they also have a positive trend. So, according to analytical data Data Insight And PayPal, in 2016, the Russian market for online sales of tourism products ( e-Travel) grew by about 30% to 700 billion rubles against 550 billion rubles in 2015 (430 billion rubles in 2014), which is largely due to the increase in the number of people buying travel services online. At the same time, air tickets account for more than half of sales of tourism products via the Internet, but their share in the structure e-Travel is declining due to the growth of smaller segments - tours and “new segments” (apartment rental, ridesharing and bus tickets) (Table 4.1).

Table 4.1

Dynamics of e-travel market structure in money

The largest tour operators are gradually increasing their sales via the Internet, for example, the share of online sales from Pegasus Tourists is 10% (in 2015 - 8%), TUI- 7% (in 2015 - 6%). Heads of tour operators believe that strong growth in Internet sales is not expected in the near future, but the segment of online sales of tours will continue to grow (tour operator TUI plans to increase the share of online sales by 1.5 times).

In many ways, the limiting factors of online sales in tourism today are a number of problems in this area, including:

relatively low level of awareness of potential consumers about online shopping opportunities;
lack of online shopping culture and fear of online shopping (users do not trust tourism offers sold via the Internet, they are afraid of fraud or technical failure);
not all travel agencies are ready and prepared to work online. The process of transitioning to online sales requires certain costs, both material and intellectual, and takes a long time.

The main consumers of tourism services via the Internet in the Russian Federation are: people aged 35-54 years (with the majority of users of such web services being women) with online experience of more than ten years and with online payment experience of more than five years.

The main consumers of travel products from online travel agencies are usually the following consumer groups:

1) consumers living outside the city limits who find it difficult to get to the office of a travel agency and do not want to waste time in traffic jams;
2) consumers who have no one to leave their child with in order to come to the office of a travel agency (for example, mothers with children);
3) business people who are very busy with work and do not have the opportunity to leave their workplace during the working day (for example, managers, etc.);
4) active users information technologies and advanced users of the Internet space who buy everything via the Internet;
5) lazy consumers who are simply too lazy to leave the house.

Today, there are two ways to sell tours online: the tour operator sells it directly to the client through its own website or sells it through a partner’s website - aggregated sites. Let's take a closer look at these two technologies.

The technology for independently selling a tour through a travel agency’s website is quite simple and includes the following main steps:

1. Registration of the consumer on the site in order to create personal account.

To make a purchase of a tourist product, as well as to track the status of your orders and print tour documents, etc. the consumer needs to go to the website of travel agencies, register or log in to the system (when he has previously purchased tours online) using the existing account. The registration procedure in tourism is standard: the consumer needs to enter his data and indicate his e-mail, to which a letter will be sent containing a unique link, as well as a login and password to enter the “personal account” (sometimes the login and password are created by the consumer himself, who approved by the travel agency system in the event of no matches in previously approved logins). To complete registration, the consumer just needs to click on it. At any time, the client can change information (except e-mail) by going to the “personal account” and clicking on the appropriate section, which is often called “Profile” or “Consumer Information”. In the window that opens, you need to enter your existing username and password.

2. Selection of a tourism product on the website in the tab usually called “Tour selection”. To select additional tour parameters, you can usually use the “Advanced tour selection” tab.
3. The process of booking a tourist product.

After selecting a tour, the consumer must click on the specified tour price and proceed directly to booking it. This stage usually differentiated into four stages:

1) checking information about the tourism product, where the consumer can view and check all the parameters of the selected tour, and also verify the final price of the tour, taking into account all services;
2) filling out information about tourists who will go on a tourist trip. At this stage, the consumer fills out all the listed fields in the “Information about tourist/tourists” tab in strict accordance with the data specified in the foreign passport. The system will not allow you to enter the validity period of a passport that does not meet the entry requirements for the selected country. At the same time, when purchasing tours online, the tourist must have a valid visa, or they can open one on their own if it is required by the laws of the country chosen for vacation;
3) introduction of a promotional code for the purchase of a tourist product (if the consumer has one).

A promotional code is a set of numbers and/or letters, transmitted in closed or open form to the client of a travel agency, by email or other means that can be used by individuals and legal entities, residents and non-residents of Russia, making an online purchase of a tourism product.

Promotional codes are distributed by the tour operator or its partners in the formation of the tourism product (accommodation facilities, carriers, etc.) as part of marketing campaigns and give the right to receive a discount when purchasing tours online on the travel agency’s website. In order to use a promotional code, the client must enter its value in the appropriate field of the application (the discount on the promotional code is valid only if the client entered the promotional code on the website before paying for the purchase of the travel product).

Each promotional code has a limited validity period, which is set by the travel agency and which is indicated in promotional materials and (or) in the rules of the promotion and (or) in the letter sent to the participant of the promotion by the travel agency. A promotional code can be used up to and including the date indicated on it, and promotional codes not used before the specified date (inclusive) become invalid and cannot be used after the specified date.

It is important to remember that discounts on promotional codes usually offered by travel agencies cannot be combined with other discounts. Discounts using promotional codes, as a rule, are not provided when purchasing tours in installments and do not apply to air tickets on regular flights, non-flight insurance, or fuel surcharge. If the tour is not confirmed or if payment by card according to the application is not made within the allotted time (20 minutes), the application is canceled and the promo code becomes valid again and can be used again. In some cases, the tour operator reserves the right to change the discount amount for a promotional code (applies only to promotional codes with a percentage discount) downwards;

4) final data verification. The client must once again familiarize himself with the composition of the selected tour and check the correctness of the passport data he entered.
4. Registration of the tourist product.

At this step, to fill out the contract, the consumer of the travel product must fill out the tabs with his personal data if he purchases a tour without registering on the travel agency’s website. Customer information is filled in automatically if the customer logs in as an authorized user, since. Previously, he did this during registration when creating a personal account. Here the client can familiarize himself with the terms of the contract and read the rules for paying for the tour. After studying the proposed documents, the consumer agrees with the terms of the agreement by checking the appropriate “checkbox” and clicking on the “Payment” button, and is redirected to the page with the choice of payment system.

It is worth noting that the client can sometimes pre-discuss the details of the selected tour with the travel agency manager before payment. This can be done in two ways:

the first way is to call the office on the specified phone number during the travel agency’s business hours;
The second way is to leave a request on the website. To do this, the client needs to select a tour and click on the “Order a manager call” button. In this case, the application will be sent to the tourist office and the sales manager will contact the client.
5. Payment for the tourist product and confirmation of the services of the tourist product.

In modern tourism practice, many travel agencies

offer consumers a variety of options and payment methods for travel products purchased online. Among the most common are the following:

payment using bank card. In this case, the consumer must enter the attributes of his bank card on the payment page and click on the “Pay” button. The payment system usually uses 3D Secure technology to protect against fraudulent activities with bank cards. The cardholder is required to confirm the payment by entering either a permanent or temporary password, which is issued to him by the bank (as a rule, such passwords are sent to the cardholder via SMS). If the payment is successful, the order is registered in the system and the specified amount is “frozen” on the consumer’s card (this means that money is reserved for payment, but is not debited from the client’s account). The consumer will not be able to use this amount until the results of confirmation of services for the tourism product are received. From this moment, the travel agency accepts the order for processing, of which the client is informed by receiving a notification by email. After confirming all services in the booked application, the money is “unfrozen” (the reserve is removed) and the payment is made (money is debited from the account), which is also notified by email to the client. If any of the services is not confirmed (this means it is impossible to book the selected tourist product), the money is “unfrozen” and returned back to the card automatically;
payment through payment terminals (for example, all major terminal networks, including QIWI, Eleksnet, Pinpay Express);
payment in Euroset and Svyaznoy communication shops;
payment through certain ATMs (for example, Master Bank, Petrocommerce Bank, etc.);
payment within means electronic money(VISA QIWI WALLET, Yandex.Money, Webmoney);
payment using CONTACT money transfer systems;
payment from balance mobile phone(for example, Beeline, MTS, Megafon);
payment via Internet banking (for example, Faktura.ru and Alfa-Click);
payment via travel agency courier. This service is usually paid (usually the cost of a courier is 300 rubles) and is provided in work time courier (for example, from 10:00 to 18:00 from Monday to Friday). If the client needs a courier to leave at another time, he can contact a specialist at the tourist office and clarify this opportunity and cost of services. The client must check the workload of the courier service in advance.

Payment by all other methods other than a bank card is usually made only when the travel agency confirms the possibility of selling the selected tour to the consumer, of which he is notified either by email or by phone number specified when registering on the site. In this case, after accepting the order, the tour operator waits for confirmation of all services in the application. Confirmation time depends on a number of factors and can take from a few minutes to several days. At this time, nothing is required from the client - the confirmation procedure takes place in automatic mode. If confirmation is received, the status changes to “Confirmed” and the client receives certain time(usually no more than three days), during which he must make payment in any way convenient for him. After the travel agency receives funds to pay for the travel product, it also notifies the consumer about this via email.

It is worth noting that at the time of booking a tourist product, the client can only make an advance payment, which is 50% of the cost of the selected tour; he pays the full cost within three days after confirmation (exceptions are usually: last-minute tours, tours with an immediate departure date, New Year's tours ( period from December 25 to January 10), as well as tours with special conditions booking and payment).

He can view detailed information about all tours booked and paid for by the consumer in his “personal account” by going to the “My Orders” tab, where their status is displayed.

6. Providing the consumer with documents related to the purchase of a tourism product. There can be several ways to transfer a tourist product purchased online to a tourist:
- by e-mail, when the travel agency sends a package of documents to the e-mail address specified by the tourists;
- transfer of documents through the consumer’s personal account on the travel agency’s website. In this case, the issuance of documents for applications booked online is carried out by tour buyers independently from the personal account of a private individual. Travel agencies usually provide an agreement on the sale of a tourism product (immediately after payment for the application), a voucher, an insurance policy (immediately after receiving confirmation from the hotel), and air tickets (two to four days before departure). As soon as the documents are ready for printing, the “Print documents” and “Receive documents” buttons in the “personal account” become active, and the consumer can generate a PDF file and then print it out or send the same file to any email address. When the print buttons remain inactive after the regulated period, or the consumer does not have the opportunity to print documents, he can contact a travel agency employee by phone or write to him at the appropriate email address. In such cases, the travel agency, as a rule, duplicates documents to the one specified by the consumer email address his mail;
- at the travel agency office;
- courier delivery (usually this service is paid);
- receiving documents at the airport at the travel agency counter from a representative of the tour operator three hours before departure (if the service is provided by the tour operator). It should be remembered that this method is applicable only if the client agrees that the entire package of documents for purchasing a tourist product will be provided to him less than 24 hours before the start of the tourist trip.
7. E-mail and SMS notifications.

Starting from the moment of payment for the application, the travel agency keeps the client up to date with all the information on his tourism product (for example, in the event of a change in departure time or transfer to another flight, the readiness of documents). The travel agency also reminds the client one day before the start of the tourist trip the current time and place of departure. Notifications will be sent to the email and mobile phone specified during registration.

8. Cancellation of a tourist product and refund.

In case of cancellation of a tourist product by the consumer, it is necessary to fill out applications that are filled out by the holder of the bank card with which the tour was paid for and the money will be refunded strictly to the same card. Examples of standard statements that need to be filled out may be different, depending on what the client wants:

cancel a booked and paid tour;
return the money overpaid for the tour;
transfer money from one application to another;
cancel only the air ticket. Ticket refunds are carried out strictly in accordance with airline regulations. It must be remembered that in the case of a separate refund of air tickets, the client’s request may be recalculated and the cost of other services may change.

Requests are processed by the travel agency quite quickly, usually within no more than one business day. In this case, all applications must be signed, scanned and sent to the travel agency’s email address. After this, a representative of the tour operator contacts the client via email and (or) telephone number specified during booking. Refunds are made subject to the deduction of penalties associated with cancellation of the trip specified in the contract for the sale of tourism products. The second way to organize online sales of travel products by a tour operator is to sell travel products through travel aggregators (for example, through OnlineTours, Travelata).

A travel aggregator is a company that collects all tour offers from tour operators connected to the system and makes it possible to search for tours from all tour operators in one place.

A travel aggregator can act as an intermediary, i.e. take a percentage from the client, exclusively free service(sells tours at the tour operator’s price, but the tour operator pays the tour aggregator a fee for attracting a client).

The interaction of a tour operator with tourist aggregators is based on the following technology.

1. The tour operator enters into a regular agency agreement with a travel aggregator and its tourism products, just like the travel products of other tour operators that have entered into an agreement with the travel aggregator appear on the aggregator’s website, i.e. the client gets access to the tour database of a significant number of tour operators (for example, the Onlinetours tour aggregator cooperates with 200 tour operators, the Travelata tour aggregator interacts with 120 tour operators, Your Globus cooperates with 150 tour operators). Batch uploading allows you to automate the process of posting information about travel offers from travel agencies on the travel aggregator website. Thanks to this automation, there is no need to add offers manually through your “personal account”. Several times a day, data will be automatically downloaded from the tour operator’s website and imported into the travel aggregator database linked to the travel agency. To connect this mechanism, it is necessary to write program code on the side of the travel agency website that generates an XML file, which must be accessible via a permanent URL from the Internet. Send a request to connect the XML import mechanism to the sales department of the travel aggregator and, after a positive response, go to the “My Contacts” section of your “personal account” on the travel aggregator’s website. In the “Import Settings” block, specify the url for placing the XML file on the travel agency’s website, as well as, if necessary, the login and password for accessing it from the Internet.
2. Using a travel aggregator, the client has the opportunity to choose the most suitable travel product according to his preferences. You can do this in two ways:
- on the travel aggregator website independently via search engine, where the client sets the parameters of the desired tourism product. The search for tours is carried out with all sorts of criteria: a separate search for last-minute tours, early booking, selection of the best tours for vacationers with children, sorting by rating (obtained based on tourist reviews) of hotels and tour operators, the ability to set a range of dates suitable for departure, flexible settings duration of rest, sorting by type of food, etc. In addition, it is possible to familiarize yourself with detailed description each hotel, find out its location on the resort map, look at photos, find out what type of beach (pebbles or sand) and how far it is from the hotel, whether the rooms have air conditioning and WiFi, etc.;
- on the travel aggregator website with the help of a sales manager. In this case, the client must leave a request for tour selection. As part of this application, the client indicates the following things: direction of vacation (country or type of tourism: beach, excursion, ski, etc.), dates of the tourist trip (exact departure date or departure date interval), duration of the tourist trip, number of tourists going on tour, star rating of the hotel. After entering this data, the travel aggregator issues the client a card indicating the aggregator’s offices; after selecting a particular one, the client sees a form with the request parameters he has selected and additionally enters his name, mobile phone number and email to contact him. At the same time sending this form to the sales manager, the client automatically agrees and accepts the terms of the user agreement regarding the processing of personal data of the service consumer. Having received the request, the travel aggregator manager contacts the client using electronic or telephone communication and provides information about the tourism products offered.
- Having received necessary information, the client makes a choice of services, after which the travel aggregator sends the client via electronic communication a link to the website page with the application form, where the client confirms the list of services and fills out the application.
3. Filling out the tour application form. Having decided on your own or with the help of a travel aggregator manager

with the purchased tourism product, the client fills out an application, which usually contains the following information:

- information about tourists who will go on a tourist trip, including their: full name (as indicated in the passport), gender, date of birth, citizenship, passport number;
- dates and route of the tourist trip;
- the name and class of the hotel or other selected accommodation facility along the route, the number of rooms being booked of the specifically selected category and the period of stay;
- type of catering;
- price offer number;
- Additional services(at the request of the tourist), including travel insurance;
- other conditions and data related to the tourism product.

The client must carefully fill out the form, including

reliable information and avoiding typos and various errors. This is very important, since subsequent changes to the data are permitted only upon a separate request to the tour operator, who may require additional payment for rebooking services, which may entail additional costs for the consumer.

If the client goes to a country where a visa is required, the travel aggregator will tell the client in detail: where, how and in what time frame it is necessary to obtain visa documents, and, if necessary, will also assist the tourist in obtaining a visa with or without his presence - in this case, the client will receive them in travel agent office. Many travel aggregators cooperate with the largest visa centers and their prices for visas are no higher than theirs.

4. Payment for the reservation application. After completing the application, the client is sent to his email address the text of the contract for the provision of services for booking and paying for a tourist product with attachments and a link, following which the client should enter the details of his bank payment card, after which an amount equal to the cost of the purchased tourist product (in some cases - part cost of the tourist product) is held (“frozen”) on the client’s card account. The entered payment card data of the travel aggregator is transmitted to the bank through a secure connection with payment system bank and are not stored in the future. After full payment of the contract price, the client’s application receives the paid status, and the contract is sent to the client in the form separate file with attachments (familiarization with the text of the contract and with all the information necessary for the client to fulfill the contract is carried out by the client before submitting an application).
5. The travel aggregator purchases tourism products at the client’s request from the tour operator. In the absence of a tourism product that meets the client’s requirements specified in the application, the travel aggregator has the right to offer the client an alternative tourism product or demand termination of the contract. An alternative tour product is offered, including by sending by email a link to the contract with amended terms with the attachment (if the price of the alternative tour exceeds the previously paid) link to the surcharge. By placing the appropriate icon on the option “I agree with the changes to the contract” and (or) additional payment, the client confirms his consent to the alternative travel product.
6. The tour aggregator receives from the tour operator the necessary package of documents for the tour and no later than 24 hours before the start of the tour transfers it to the client, either through its sales offices, or electronically, sending documents to the client’s address specified in the application.