Booking process

Orchestra has upgraded to version 2.1 of the Costa API as version 1.9 has been decommissioned.

In B2B, it is now possible to select and combine several criteria such as themes in “AND” mode, thus offering the ability to refine product searches with greater precision.

As part of the quick quote functionality, and to speed up quote creation, filling in the emergency contact information by agents is now optional.

To compensate for the unavailability of a package, Orchestra has implemented a feature offering three relevant alternatives, filtered by channel, for B2B distributors. This development ensures continuity of service and supports sales opportunities.

Ty-Win platform groups specialized French receptive operators. Orchestra now integrates this new service source. Online packages and Meteor/Go benefit from this connectivity.

Until now, the alert email for agencies that have almost reached their threshold was sent at fixed intervals as long as the threshold was exceeded. Here, it is now possible to send this email only once, the first time the threshold is crossed.

In the B2B booking module, image slideshows have been added to product and activity search pages.

Clicking on the image opens a pop-up slideshow, just like in the product page.

As product images in the B2B module’s engine feedback are not always contextual, this new feature will enable travel agents to easily visualize whether the product includes services, such as a swimming pool, without having to open the product sheet.

The algorithm for displaying hotel pictures has been reworked to reduce the number of products without images in B2B. From now on, when a hotel’s editorial contains only the slideshow, the first image will also be displayed as the main image. Conversely, for hotels with only a main image, this will also be displayed in the slideshow.

The solutions from Travel Compositor, subsidiary of the Travelsoft group, are now available on Orchestra.

In particular, Travel Compositor’s multidestinations module is now accessible from the B2B, enabling travel agencies to create step-by-step bookings, bookings based on travel ideas or based on artificial intelligence search.

It is now possible to synchronize users between the two platforms, as well as registered travel agencies.

In the B2B, for tour operators Soléa and Beachcomber, it is now possible to send information to benefit from honeymoon advantages and pre-select flight classes or airlines.

It is now possible to book activity-only products through the B2B. The search of these products can be performed in the new “Activities” tab, accessible via the main menu.

The search is available with several criteria: name, internal code, external, start date, supplier, budget, etc.

As for packages, it is possible to perform several actions on the activities search result page. For instance: add activities in the comparator, or add activities in a wishlist.

The activity page is displayed with a description and a table with available dates.

It is now possible to create a customer account from B2B2 via the “Create Account” button on the main screen.

Clicking on the “Create account” button opens a pop-up window with a field for entering an email and a button for sending the email.

After successful account creation, a confirmation email is sent to the user.

Favorite product feature:

The “Favorite product” functionality is then available if enabled: If the user clicks on the add to favorites button, the add to favorites button disappears and the favorite product message appears.

If a product is a favorite of the selected account, the application shows the favorite product message on the product page.

If the user logs out or deletes the account, the product page refreshes and does not show the add to favorites button or the favorite product message.

If there is no account selected and the user selects an account, the product page should refresh and show either the add to favorites button or the favorite product message, depending on whether the product is a favorite for that account or not.

In line with the Omnibus directive, which will reduce the volume of “brochure” prices, “Promos” prices will be highlighted in red in the reservation module for Professionals (B2B)

The following are affected: in the results lists, the call prices of the product cartridges, and the availability prices of the product sheet calendar.

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Viewed and favorite products are now displayed in a predetermined order in B2B. Products, whether available or not, are displayed in chronological order, from the most recent to the oldest:

• Last seen products are sorted by their date of last consultation (most recent first)
• Favourite products: Sorted by the date they were bookmarked (most recent first)

Various improvements have been made to enhance the look and feel of the B2B Products and Booking tool, including

• Adding a default logo when the tour operator logo is missing (in the comparator, engine return, product sheet and quick search).
• Increased margins between columns in search forms.
• In selectboxes with criteria, removal of the 1st level bold.
• For all calendars, the calendar icon has been moved to the left and slightly larger for datePickers and the logic of blocking a return date that is less than the outgoing date. For datePickers other than PACKAGE, fill in the return date with departure date + 7 days.
• For the fields allowing the entry of a child’s date of birth :
  • Move from one box to another using the directional arrows
  • You can only fill in numbers
  • You can only fill in the correct number of characters
  • A value greater than 31 for days or 12 for months will be automatically replaced by the maximum value

Several improvements of the B2B have been made, here is a list:

• The width of the screen is now 1280px in order to adapt to screen sizes standards and increase user comfort.

• The “Advanced search” button in the search form on the homepage is more visible.

• The checkbox “Without transport” and the field “Departure place” are now grouped in a grey block.

• For the tabs “Hotel” and “Transport + Hotels”, addition of a grayed block for the fields “Arrival date” and “Departure date” for more readability.

• To the right of the “Child” label, add the maximum age when clicking on a pictogram (i) “information”.
  • For the tabs “Transport” and “Transport + Hotels”, the maximum age is 12 years,
  • For the “Hotels” tab, it is 18 years old.

• In the tab “Transport”, a grey block has been added for the checkbox “Round trip” and the fields “Departure date” and “Return date”. If the checkbox is not checked, the “Return date” field is grayed out.

• Added a space between paragraphs in the “Includes / Does not include” section when there is only one column.

• Improvement and correction of various graphic points, in particular the height of certain fields of the search form.

Now, when refining a B2B search, the browser automatically scrolls the page to the top of the results list.

In the B2B Products & Reservations module, we have improved the responsiveness of loading and displaying the autocomplete destinations of the Hotels search engine.

The new format for the tours now allows for a richer display, with the categories: Offer, Stages, Accommodation and To Know.

Many minor enhancements have been made to the B2B Products and Reservation module to improve the user experience:

• Improvement of the display of city names in autocompletion
• Visual code “required fields” in red removed for Hotel and Dynamic Package search engines
• Home page content widgets are now dynamic in height
• The drop-down menu of automatic connection links to producers’ B2Bs can now be closed by default and the typography of the wordings of these links has been standardized.
• The value of the “Duration in nights” field of the search engine can now be set to a default value (such as the starting city) for each user profile.
• Display of the availability on which is calculated the call price in the cartridge of the engine return product

• Ability to edit photos on the login page
• Standardization of pension wording :
  • Special breakfasts are now mapped on “Breakfast”
  • Exotic pensions are now mapped to “Other”

Following developments 17.5 on the enrichment of connectivity and product flows, the new features provided by these enriched flows have been added to the professional sales tool for travel agents.

Five new blocks are now displayed for these enriched flow Camping and Leasing products:

• Offer
• On site
• Hosting
• Catering
• To know

In the case of a quote edition, some information must be present so that this quote contains the necessary information for the end customer to make his/her choice.

It is also necessary that information are there so that the signature of this quotation is legally possible. This improvement allows to add these information. The signature of this quotation therefore allows the customer to be comitted, et is so a considerable time saving for travel agencies during sale period.

In the professional sales module Product & B2B Reservation, new features have been added to meet the growing needs to better know and support customers in travel agencies and in call centers.

In the case of a favorite product list feature is implemented on a merchant site, or if your client is recognized during his/her visit. His/her favorite products and the latest ones he/her displayed can be saved and made available to the travel agent in a section of the left column of the search pages result.

Formely in the professional sales tool Product & B2B Reservation, the customer will have been selected by the travel agent via the search form, or will be recognized automatically if a phone-computer coupling has been set up.

Customer information is pre-loaded into the sales tool and customer care is improved and accelerated.

For each client can also be associated a favorite agency. This agency can be added or modified by the travel agent, or in full autonomy by the Internet user from his/her customer account.

In the slide show of photos for the Products and Booking B2B module, it is now possible to scroll through the photos using the direction arrows on the keyboard.

Similarly, clicking outside the pop-in of the slide show will close the slides and quickly return to the sales process.

The schemes for login links for the producers’ different professional points of access was previously replicated in each distributor system.

This centralisation allows simplified and accelerated management in case of modification of a Tour Operator’s system while maintaining the flexibility of this type of link which means travel agents just need to know the Orchestra login and password instead of reproducing the login information for each system.

This system also handles the security for all of the systems.

To make SSO links more secure, a login method has been blocked so that only the most secure login technologies are authorised.

The B2B trade tool has been simplified and harmonised in numerous ways, including improved titles, options and check boxes. These small upgrades make it less clunky, and more user-friendly and coherent.

For example:

• In the list of departure cities, we display the country’s ISO code. The default ISO code “XX” has been removed from the alternatives “Without transportation” and “Departure from port”.

• The sale criterion used to be a dropdown “Select Box” even though there were only two possible options: search for products which did or did not have sale availability. This means one fewer click for travel agents during every search for on-sale products:

Before: 2 clicks

• The titles of the date fields in the Hotel and Flights + Hotels forms are now different to distinguish more clearly between the “arrival date” (at the hotel) and the “departure date” (of the flight).

Thanks to other refinements we have:

• made Tour Operators’ logos clearer.
• adjusted spaces between two search blocks to improve legibility.
• harmonised partners’ default titles.
• standardised the titles and order of meal options.
• made the default closure of the list of links to Tour Operators’ sites configurable.
• configured a default value in the “duration in nights” field in the user profile.

In order to improve search engines’ B2B response times, we have implemented a pregeneration system for these engines taking account of users’ differing travel policies. This pregeneration can significantly reduce reaction time when accessing the B2B.

For B2B, the “Minimum Price” blocks display minimum prices per destination and minimum prices per partner. They are now loaded asynchronously, in order to improve load times and responsiveness on the B2B page. Each block is initially minimised, with an animation indicating that the block is loading if it is set to open by default. As soon as queries are sent and received by the client browser, the block opens and the results are displayed.

If the block is configured to be closed by default, in order to improve performance, queries are sent and results are loaded by clicking to open the block. When the user requests to open the block, a query is sent to Orchestra and the loading animation is displayed until the client browser downloads and displays the response sent by the Orchestra servers.

Here is an example with the two open blocks:

Improvements to the deliverability of emails when sending product sheets via the ‘Send by email’ button.

Added configuration to reduce the minimum and maximum amount of passengers (adults, children, babies) on Transport, Hotel, Flight + Hotel search forms.

With B2B, distributors now have the option to create advanced filters to highlight certain products or categories of products in B2B search engine results.

The selection of products highlighted is decided via the combined addition of criteria and rankings on these products.

Distributors can now therefore guide their sales with a specific display (coloured in blue on the screenshot below) by highlighting certain products that match the travel agent’s search.

For example, you can highlight an exclusive offer with fantastic value for money for a given destination and ensure it appears within the first few search results, even if it has a higher base price than the other initial search results.

Improvements to display times for packages with lots of different availability.

Why? To extend date search options when looking for packages and thereby enable travel agents to better target their searches.

Where? On the B2B solution package search engines – on the homepage and advanced search.

How? As well as searching by “date + flexibility”, you can now search using a precise departure period. Using this new date search block, you can select :

• A departure period,
• A date and flexibility (as before).

This new search block is activated by default.

You can also activate a new search criterion where departures on specific days of the week can be chosen. For example, these tick boxes can be used to search for all departures available on Saturdays and Sundays within a given period.

Why ? To improve the ergonomics of search engines and therefore facilitate the work of travel agents who use the B2B solution on a daily basis.

Where ? Mainly in the B2B solution, as well as in similar search fields in the price management tool.

How ? The “selectboxes” making auto-complete and multiple choice suggestions have been completely reviewed to offer optimised ergonomics.

The main improvements on the previous version are :

• Highlighting of characters input in the search result,
• Optimised selection/deselection using the mouse and keyboard,
• More legible display of criteria trees,
• Values selected displayed without being truncated,
• Correction of display problems when browsing with the mouse wheel.

• Integration of the Ip-label RumBI performance analysis system, for measuring the home page, package search and package page display time.
• On the package page, on the booking form, it is possible to add “Preferred transport class” and “Preferred air company/ies” search criteria. This search field is compatible with providers using the Gestour system.

• Addition of new search criteria based on Easyvoyage scores. In addition to the main score, it is now possible to search for packages via their secondary scores (Accommodation, Activities, Beach, Decoration, Catering, Facilities, Spa, Location).
• Addition of a button on the product sheet allowing a travel agent to send a notification about an Easyvoyage review, in order to report errors, for example.
• Integration of the IP-Label “Rumbi” tracking solution in order to monitor the browsing performance of each agency, in particular for login, search and package information sheet display steps.

Increase in the length of the default session which is now 1 hour instead of 30 mins. This value can also be configured.

• There are now extended slide shows available from Easyvoyage hotels in order to benefit from the quality of the content.
• There is now an option to add headers and footers to printable versions of B2B solution product sheets. For example, it is now possible to display agency contact details and logos in the header and legal information in the footer.
• A ‘map’ tab has been added showing the geolocation of a hotel on Google Maps (if the geolocation is known).

The option to add an SSO link to the Bedsonline hotel source site has been added.

Context : Customer relationship management (CRM) is the set of tools and techniques used to capture, process and analyse information related to customers and prospects, with the overall goal of improving customer retention by offering or suggesting relevant services.

Why ? To complete the customer management tools available on the Orchestra platform. Integrating an external CRM tool allows users to connect their existing customer databases with the B2B solution and therefore centralise all their data. Pre‑filling contact details/passenger forms in the booking process when the customer is already known, and sending reserved files, can therefore become an automated process.

How ?

• By using a single sign-on system (SSO) available within your Microsoft Dynamics area, sending customer data directly to the Orchestra B2B solution.

• By using a search form in Orchestra’s B2B solution, which connects to Microsoft Dynamics to gather the necessary customer information.

Once entered in the booking process, this information will be used on the contact details page in order to pre-fill the form.

Note : some other specific developments have been planned to take into account some potential Microsoft Dynamics developments.

Why ?  To allow users to create various content and share it with travel agents who can then access their documents, sales help, special offers, etc.

Where ? Via tabs in B2B, just like for product sheets. They can be opened via links placed within text on the home page or within other content pages. Several tabs of the same type can be opened at once, and it’s possible to browse from content to content.

How ? In the administration tool, on the ‘editorial’ tab. Managing this content is done via a new dedicated editorial space, known as ‘editorial content for B2B’. It includes a unique wysiwyg zone (which stands for ‘what you see is what you get’), where it’s possible to incorporate:

• text
• images
• videos (via iframes),
• links to product sheets
• other content pages
• classic links

With this wysiwyg zone, text is not editable, but you can use the bold, italic, list and title functions.

The aim of this integration is to enrich provider package content using written content and expert reviews from Easyvoyage.

Richer content from Easyvoyage includes :

• An overall score
• A hotel description
• A standardised Easyvoyage certification level
• Richer content with detailed scores for services
• The list of hotel facilities available
• The geoposition of the hotel
• An HD photo slideshow

This information is shown in the hotel section of the package sheet in the B2B Solution and can also be displayed in the front office via the service catalogues.

There are many other additional functions available :

• Filters for the Easyvoyage score, the number of stars attributed to the hotel and the list of facilities available in the B2B Solution.

• Sorting by Easyvoyage score in the search engine results table
• Display Easyvoyage score in the search engine results

• Overview of Easyvoyage expert scores

This information allows you to pitch products using detailed content, improve your customer service and thereby target sales more effectively.

The login pages for the various modules can now be customised through the use of a specific parameter in the URL.

The following parts can be modified :

• The text of the tab,
• The logo,
• The welcome message.

A new refinement block is available in the packages search engine results in the B2B solution.

This new block is situated at the same level as the other minimum price blocks and is called “Minimum geolocated price”. It refines packages according to destination via a world map using Google Maps.

The points on the map show the destinations for which products are available.

By using the mouse to hover over these points you can see the product names and the corresponding minimum price.

Clicking on the point displays the list of corresponding products.

The map offers a search box which uses the Google Maps search engine.

You can zoom on anywhere in the world and display the products available in that area.

The B2B solution now allows users to perform transport searches by specifying the class of travel.

Tripadvisor reviews can now be displayed in the package search of the B2B solution. The rating appears in the package text box in the form of a widget or an image upon which the user can click (based on the agreement with Tripadvisor). The package data sheet also includes a new section, “Tripadvisor reviews”, displaying the detailed list of these ratings.

The display of these Tripadvisor ratings on the packages can be configured, with the condition that the packages must be associated with hotels which have a Tripadvisor rating.

The B2B solution now allows operations in multiple currencies.

A new field is used to select the currency displayed in search engines for packages, hotels, transport and dynamic packages. The exchange rates are obtained automatically every day.

The choice of currency has also been added to the list of search criteria for package catalogue services.

A warning message has been added to highlight more clearly the fact that cancelling a booking in the back-office is definitive.

The list of favourite searches is now sorted alphabetically.

Various changes were made to the B2B Solution to improve usability.

Search engine tabs should now be more easily distinguishable by a background colour.

Depending on the user connected, the tabs can now be greyed out and deactivated if no matching product is visible for this profile.

A new type of selection box now allows you to exclude a list of values for Destination-type fields and Orchestra criteria. This list applies to the first level of the hierarchy.

Searching for products without transport is now made by ticking a dedicated box that deactivates the “Departure city” field.

Finally, it is now possible to configure a logo to be displayed in the upper right part of the main menu bar.

Rapid search now accepts searches using several searchwords. Names of products containing these words, in order of entry, will appear in the result.

The packages search engine now offers a search by ratings. When packages are matched to opinions, it becomes possible to search according to :

• The overall minimum rating,
• The minimum rating by travel agents (experts),
• The minimum rating by the general public.

These search fields take the form of sliders and can be activated or deactivated using checkboxes.

A new type of research field is now configurable. This select-box combines multiple selections with a values search using auto-completion.

Criteria such as destination Countries/Cities, Cities of origin, Partners and Orchestra criteria are compatible with this new method.

For an improved look and feel and better consistency, a number of adjustments have been made :

• It is now possible to create a favourites list directly using the “Add to a list” button.
• The list of action buttons at the top of the search results is replaced by a click button when only one menu action is possible (e.g. “Add to comparison”).
• Moving from the product record to the quote page no longer causes a temporary holding page to display.
• On the product record, the “Reserve” section of the side action bar has been renamed “Calendar”.  Also, the link to the “Reservations” section now looks the same as the other links on the side bar.

The reviews of experts, which travel agents enter in a B2B solution, can now be completed with a new text field corresponding to a comment reserved for the agent.

Unlike traditional comments, these “hidden” comments will not immediately be visible in the list of reviews for the package. In each review text box, a pictogram indicates whether or not this type of comment exists. Simply click on this pictogram to open the “hidden comment”. This for example allows an agent to print or show the product record to their clients without needing to show this additional information.

The review creation form now allows reviews to be assigned types with different values. To do this, multiple-choice select boxes can be added via a configuration. The content of these select boxes corresponds to distributor criteria (with no sub-levels) which must first be defined in the administration tool.

These review types can then be seen in the form of keywords in the text boxes for each review.

The amount of the commission in the order summary in the reservation process can now be hidden. Simply click on the quote total to hide it.

This is especially useful in the B2B solution so that the travel agent can show their screen to their customer without revealing this information.

When providers no longer have any double rooms available, they can then send prices that are not based on a double room. For compatible providers, we can now import these alternative availabilities and display the price’s exact nature on the product sheet. This feature is also available for catalogues with the appropriate integration.

On the B2B solution’s product sheet, when the price type is not standard, a icon will display the price’s exact nature (“Price per person based on a four-person room” or “Price per person based on a single-person room”, for example).

It is now possible to display a specific package’s editorial zones in the B2B solution’s product descriptions.

The way these specific sections are displayed can be configured and they are shown after the package description’s standard sections.

Default sorts are now contextual to what is being sorted. In this case, averages and number of reviews are sorted from highest to lowest by default (best score/highest number of reviews first), whereas sorting by price will always show results from lowest to highest.

Additionally, averages/number of scores shown in the product blocks are also contextual to the type of review used for the sort :

• Sorting by expert reviews will show averages/numbers of expert reviews in the blocks
• Sorting by user reviews will show averages/numbers of user reviews in the blocks

Reviews displayed on the product data sheets can now include the reviews of all the products linked to the same hotel. If the hotel itself has reviews, they too will be displayed.

A “Linked review” label has been added to the review blocks not pertaining directly to the product in question.

The various averages take these new reviews into account when this function is activated.

The format of credences is now displayed in the corresponding form, below every field.

A configuration now makes it possible to display averages rounded to the nearest tenth rather than to the nearest whole number.

The “Opinions” section of the “package” product data sheet now differentiates more explicitly between “general public” opinions (holidaymakers’ opinions) from “expert” opinions (agents’ opinions). The section is divided into two columns :

• The first column displays general public opinions,
• The second column displays expert opinions.

Each of these columns is preceded by the list of corresponding subaverages as well as the overall average of each type of opinion (expert and general public).

The average featured at the top of the product data sheet always corresponds with the overall average, all types of opinion combined.

In terms of package engine feedback, it is now possible to sort by :

• Number of expert opinions,
• Number of general public opinions,
• Expert average,
• General public average.

It is however possible to sort by total number of opinions and overall all types of opinion combined average,

The search engines for hotels, transport and dynamic packages now open in a dedicated tab, in the same way as the packages search tab. These tabs comprise a search engine at the top of the page and the search results below (all in the same tab).

However, unlike the packages search (and pre-packages search) which uses a cache system, the search engines for hotel processes, transport and dynamic packages process information in real time. A specific “wait” message has been added, to give the user an idea of the real search duration.

Lastly, the way search results are displayed has been adapted to optimise their appearance in the B2B solution.

The icons in the menu bar have been redesigned. Icons indicating the name of a tool (B2B, Back Office, Yield, etc.) and the page loading status bar can now be given longer titles in multiple languages.

The icon for the packages search list has been replaced with a new magnifying glass icon which allows you to select the search engine you want in a drop-down list. This list of search engines can be configured by channel, agency or agent. For example, you can configure “package sales only” for particular agencies, and configure “package sales + hotel sales” for other agencies.

You now have the possibility to place widgets adapted to the different sales processes on the home page.

In the same way as with packages, you can push a hotel search, flight search, dynamic packages search, particular hotel, etc.

One click on the new widgets opens up the search results in the corresponding tab.

The home page can now handle processes for all of the search engines simultaneously :

• Package and Pre-Package
• Hotels
• Hotels + Transport
• Transport

The search engines for different processes can be displayed in separate blocks, or combined in a single block with a tab system.

The home page can now be configured by the user or group of users thanks to the “channel/organisation/user” idea. For example, it is possible to set a specific home page for certain channels or certain agencies.

In addition, a new widget, “User editorials”, has been added so that specific messages can be displayed to certain users or a certain user group. The message that appears in the widget comprises :

• Content from the “Editorial” zone of the user profile
• Content from the “Editorial” zones for all of the “parents” in the user tree diagram