What is a Travel Agency Back Office, Front Office, and Mid Office Software?
Whether you fly solo or manage an agency with a zillion independent contractors (ICs) and/or employees, you likely have travel agency back office, front office, and mid office systems in place. Now, what in the world does travel agency back office, front office, and mid office mean? That's what we'll get into today!
Travel agency operations can be broken down into three categories; front office, mid office, and back office.
What are Travel Agency Back Office, Front Office, and Mid Office Systems?
Before we break down each of these and give you some examples, let's give you the 30,000 foot view.
While most travel agencies are home-based these days, imagine walking into a storefront travel agency. As you walk in you'll typically be greeted with an open layout that has multiple desks for agents to meet with their clients. You may already know the term for this from the restaurant or performing arts industry; it's called the front of house.
A travel agency's front office is typically the costumer-facing area of the office. And when we're talking about travel agency front office systems, we're referring to software that the front of house people use. Travel agency front office systems include the software travel agents use to interact with clients, make bookings, etc.
Now, if we walk further back into the agency, we start to enter the back of house, where the bookkeeper and admin staff work. The travel agency back office systems are used by bookkeepers/accountants/administration/support staff to help the agency run smoothly in the backend.
As for mid-office systems, they aren't quite as easy to pigeonhole but the general idea is that travel agency mid-office systems are software that is used by both the front of house and back of house staff.
Bottom line? Travel agency back office, front office, and mid office systems are software that help travel agencies run more efficiently. They're typically classified based on who the end user is but to be honest, there is no set rules on this. :)
What is Travel Agency Front Office Software?
In general, the travel agency front office software that a consumer-facing advisor uses to do their job. It includes any traveler-facing responsibility from initial inquiry to trip post-trip follow up.
This can involves client contact including (but not limited to)
- General support
- Qualifying your travelers
- Responding to emails/calls for inquiries
- Client communications between booking and travel
- Support during travel
- Maintaining client relationships
What are some examples of travel agency Front office software?
So what resources and technology can help your travel agency front office run smoothly? Here’s just a few:
Appointment-scheduling software
Help Desk Software (larger agencies)
Video Conferencing
Social Media Management Tools
Lead programs (more on travel agent lead programs)
E-Marketing
Travel Support
- 24/7 client support during travel
- Agent 24
- Chat or apps to communicate with clients during travel
Itinerary Builder
What is Travel Agency Mid Office Software?
Yes, your front office will present your clients with stunning proposals, allow you to do video conferencing and make scheduling appointments a breeze. So what does the mid office do? It helps automate complex tasks, eliminating errors and improving accuracy.
The mid-office is typically the software that links the front office tools to the back office tools. If you're more of a visual person, think of front office tools as the city of San Francisco, CA and back office tools as Oakland, CA. People (information) wants to get from San Francisco to Oakland but there's the darn San Francisco Bay in the way! That's where our mid office technology comes in, the Bay Bridge.
Mid office solutions are often used by agencies that utilize the GDS or that have a corporate focus. It may be custom built to meet the specific needs of the agency or it may be a standalone software available to all agencies.
An example of a mid office software would be a technology that seamlessly brings the GDS data into the travel agency back office accounting system. It could also be a QA (quality assurance) software that ensures tickets that are booked in the GDS are following airfare rules to avoid debit memos, as well as scans for any possibly fraudulent tickets.
What is a Travel Agency Back Office Software?
A back office supports the less glamorous side of a business — the bookkeeping, the payroll, the reports/reconciliation. Not sexy, but travel agency back office systems are integral to every agency.
Despite travel agency back office software being the last topic we cover, it is in no way the least important! Sales are great, but if you don't have a system that can track the commissions that come in, you're going to have a hot mess of an agency. If you're not paying your employees or forgetting to transfer the payroll taxes to the government, you likely won't have an agency much longer.
Travel agency back office software is the underappreciated technology that helps things keep purring like a kitten. Travel agency back office software is the tech that a consumer will never come in contact with or think about but it helps core internal areas of the business like accounting and HR.
EXAmplES OF Travel agency back office software
Accounting
Commission Tracking
Payroll
- Gusto (Use our Gusto link and get a $200 Visa gift card when you run your first payroll.)
- Wave
- Quickbooks Payroll
- Deluxe Business Services
- Patriot Software
SUmmary
And that's it, folks! You've hopefully now got a feel for what tech might fall under the travel agency back office category, as well as front office and mid office. :)
When it comes to travel agency front, mid and back office, it’s a wild CYOA (choose your own adventure). Not every agency needs every tool. If your a solo advisor who wears all the hats, it will look a lot different then an agency owner who has a front line call center and in-house accounting.
The hope is you have a grasp of what these different categories do for a travel agency with ideas on tech tools that help make those processes go more smoothly.
Have ideas? Drop a comment below. Curious to learn more about everything you need to run your travel agency? We’ve go a smorgasbord!
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