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Travellers today want flexibility, and they’re willing to pay for it. The travel industry needs to adapt as soon as possible and offer dynamic leisure packages.

Custom package holidays on the rise

The travellers of today want freedom of choice, and they’re willing to pay for it too. The result? Package tours are rapidly losing popularity. According to Peter Boneschansker, however, there is a way back in.

For many, package tours are still an attractive product. Yet the travel industry needs to recognize the need for increased flexibility. Amadeus has acquired Pyton in September 2015. Peter Boneschansker, General Manager of Pyton, discusses dynamic leisure packages.

Adapt to survive

Every day travel agents are bombarded with requests for small alterations: a different flight, another departure date or specific accommodation needs. Remarkably, it’s the independent travel agents who are best equipped to deal with this phenomenon. Why? Because they can simply enter Amadeus’ dynamic leisure packages-mode and pick out the desired components from different suppliers.

Rigid ICT infrastructure

So why do the bigger online tour operators fail to offer this functionality?

Because they lack the ICT flexibility. Big tour operators are forced to offer fixed rates, components, and suppliers. Therefore, if they want to offer flexible packages, they have to enter and update each component individually. And that’s a considerable amount of work.

The way back in

Whether travellers are helped by a travel agent or not, they are looking to compose their own package holiday. And those of us who won’t adjust are bound to suffer the consequences.

Thankfully, we constructed an IT environment where you can easily create dynamic leisure packages. My prediction for the following year? The demand for flexibility will claim a large part of the ICT budgets in the travel industry. But, in general, I wish everyone a lot of wisdom.

Peter Boneschansker – General Manager Pyton

Vilvoorde, Belgium, 22 September 2016 – With its surprise trips, srprs.me is launching a completely new concept onto the market. The tour operator is extremely popular in the Netherlands, and is also rapidly becoming well known in Belgium, but was looking for new ways to continue to meet the rising demand. srprs.me has been able to implement a customised solution working together with technology partners Amadeus and Pyton. The automated and newly created advanced cache of airline products represents huge gains in efficiency for srprs.me.

Technology partners Amadeus and Pyton have developed a customised solution for srprs.me, a Dutch tour operator specialising in surprise trips. The innovative concept of surprise travel is currently enjoying a rapid upward trend. The solution provided by Amadeus and Pyton supports this growth through the automation of administrative tasks and the provision of absolute added value for a tour operator catering for spontaneity. For example, sprs.me is now able to put together packages even more efficiently, with the correct availability and prices of both the regular and low cost airlines.

srprs.me: spontaneity, excitement and adventure

What could a traveller expect from a surprise trip? That’s hard to say, because surprise is precisely what this innovative concept is all about. Travellers make a reservationd and pick a topic: City Tripping, Broke, Multi City, Sunsation, Adventure, Solo Together, Honeymoon or Road Tripping. They only find out what their destination is once they arrive in the departure hall of the airport. Next is an amazing experience packed with excitement. Tim Beglinger, co-founder of srprs.me: “With srprs.me, we want to bring back the spontaneity of travel. Our customers are looking for a unique experience, an unforgettable adventure, and we are happy to give them exactly that, because, for us, the travellers take central stage, and we spare no effort to make them happy.”

A unique solution for a unique concept

Thanks to the tailor-made solution by Amadeus and Pyton, srprs.me now has a much larger and more up-to-date offer of scheduled flights and low cost airlines for their surprise trips. For example, the tour operator now has a considerably larger range of departure days, times, and fares. The new cache also makes it easier for srprs.me to keep an eye on the money by keeping track of any additional costs for payments with a credit card.

Luc Pannecoeck, General Manager of Amadeus Benelux: “We are following the innovative approach and growth of srprs.me with a lot of admiration. As technology specialists, we are quite happy to think along with them in terms of the optimisation of sales and operational processes. A generic approach is not suitable for an innovative player like srprs.me. Therefore, we absolutely opted for providing a tailor-made solution for the unique concept they’ve put on the market.”

Tim Beglinger, co-founder of srprs.me: “Thanks to the solutions from Amadeus and Pyton, we’ve been able to automate a large part of the administrative operations. This saves us a lot of time, which we can use now to make our travellers happy.”

Also introducing spontaneity in Belgium

“srprs.me is preparing for further growth. In just two years, we booked more than 30,000 travellers on surprise trips. That’s good news for the return of spontaneity in travel.” The concept was launched in the Netherlands, but meanwhile, srprs.me is also addressing the Belgian market, where the concept has also received quite a lot of enthousiastic attention.

6 april 2016 – NextPax signed a partnership with Pyton, developer of custom-made software for the travel and leisure industry. The partnership will leverage the strengths between both companies and boost their customers’ range of choice with over 300,000 properties.

NextPax founder Erik Engel: ‘NextPax and Pyton are a natural fit. Where NextPax delivers seamless real-time connectivity between channel partners and property managers together with all tools needed to manage properties, reservations and channels for both sides of the supply chain, Pyton develops tailor-made Internet Booking Engine (IBE)- and API solutions to online travel agents (OTAs), tour operators and travel product suppliers. They start where we leave off, designing their clients’ software to tie in with our system.’

Account manager Pyton Netherlands Silvia Vereijken: ‘With this deal, Pyton customers such as TravelClub, all Veluwegroep members, VakantieXperts, Prijsvrij and TUI Travel Agencies will (among others) also get access to over 300,000 leisure properties, such as rental homes and 300 holiday parks, currently managed through NextPax’ rental platform’.