Your online booking tool will have been designed to display all available travel options that meet your travel search criteria, and the tool will be configured specifically to reflect your company’s travel policy and preferred travel vendors. Sounds good, doesn’t it?

However, travellers often experience frustrations with corporate online booking tools that lag behind consumer booking tools in appearance and functionality, and are sometimes cumbersome, unattractive and unable to effectively use travellers’ preferences and previous activity.

The next generation of online booking tools shouldn’t simply be an advanced travel booking tool, but a true ‘management system’ that automates interaction with individual travellers before, during and after the trip; recognises their flight statuses and previous trips; captures supplier data; and manages travel policy compliance.

Bookers are looking for a dynamic or reconfigurable system that fulfills their needs but is also attractive and intuitive.

How will the next generation of online booking systems look? An uncluttered easy-to-use interface with streamlined, simple processes that allow booking with only a few clicks; single-sign-on functionality; expense integration; non-refundable ticket exchange capabilities; the ability to change an outbound flight without canceling the booking or change a sector without calling the TMC; hotel and air rate assurance; detailed itineraries including gate information and safety alerts; and they will deliver reports on service quality, savings, safety, compliance and exception, and unused tickets.

Future tools should be able to integrate meetings bookings – including booking block rooms – gamification techniques and provide targeted messaging. The booking tool should know travellers’ prior bookings, itineraries and activities and be able to recommend similar options, and finally, systems need to work on all platforms and devices.

The future isn’t online booking tools (OBT) – it’s ‘online traveller management systems’, or OTMS.