All over the world, one of the most popular business industries that is usually undermined is travel and hospitality. On the other hand, corporations, small businesses, and individuals rake in billions of dollars year in and year out in the industry. Whether you are booking flights, hotels, holidays and so on, effective communication can never be undermined in the industry, and that is why we focus our attention on effectively serving and proffering solutions directly to this industry.
This industry thrives on precision, organization, and exceptional customer service experiences. In today’s digital age, travel agencies increasingly turn to integrated platforms like Zoho Workplace to streamline operations and gain a competitive edge.
Our company has been privileged to work with a few in Lagos, and we are pleased to share this knowledge with you on how Zoho Workplace has been a heavy lifter of sluggishness in workplaces to improve operations and productivity.
Zoho Workplace: The Ultimate Travel Agency Toolkit
In the fast-paced world of travel, efficiency and seamless communication are paramount. They are the backbone of every successful travel agency. Travel agencies juggle countless bookings, itineraries, customer queries, and supplier relationships. To thrive, you need a digital workspace that keeps everything organized and accessible. That’s where Zoho Workplace steps in, offering a suite of powerful tools tailored to the unique needs of travel agencies.
In our experience, 7 out of 10 travel agencies use cPanel webmail and 2 out of these 10 likely use @gmail.com. The remaining 1% either uses Google Workplace, Microsoft Teams, or 365. The downside is that they are either too expensive or have fewer features for basic sending and receiving emails.
We will examine in detail a few important features of Zoho Workplace that make it suitable for a travel business of any size.
How Zoho Workplace Fits Into Travel Agencies Of Any Size
Whether you are a starter business of 1-5 staff, a small business, a multi-location business or a multinational, Zoho Workplace fits perfectly into improving your operations and turnaround time. There are a couple of features that can be further customized to fit exactly into how you envisioned your operations to look. Below are a few of the features as we dissect them and how they differentiate from cPanel Webmail, Google Workspace, and Microsoft 365.
1. Integrated Email Services
This section will tell you the difference between Zoho Mail and other mails like Google and Outlook. Zoho-integrated email is seamlessly integrated with Zoho CRM, Zoho Clicks, Zoho Writer, and Zoho Workdive, among others. This means that your sales team can stay in the same email dashboard and still interact with their team members via calls that look like normal phone calls, chats, or comments.
They can easily transfer a process into the Zoho CRM for qualifying, too. When communicating with a client via email, you can also see their CRM data right inside so as not to be confused with your communication decision.
Right inside your Zoho mail tab, you can also keep notes using the Zoho Notes feature, which sticks to your screen and can be easily retrieved for notetaking purposes.
2. Integrated Project Management
Within the Zoho mail tab, you can create project tasks and assign them to your team for easy collaboration. You can also assign expected start and due dates to send reminders appropriately for easy tracking.
Our clients in the travel business usually use the tasks features to keep track of all visa application processes and ensure no application is forgotten. The calendar view is also integrated directly within the Mail tab so your employees can stay on their toes with streamlined schedules.
3. Integrated Zoho Meeting
One of the interesting features of Zoho Workplace is the Zoho Meeting. One of the most advanced virtual meeting applications out there after Zoom. This means a travel agency can use it to host instant meetings with team members, clients and prospects. You can also use it to host instant webinars to educate prospects on new locations, universities, etc.
Aside from the instant feature, you can schedule meetings for future purposes and set automated reminders as many as you want so that no attendee misses them. That busy MD of a company you’ve been chasing could be tied down with the Zoho meeting schedule.
The intuitive integration with Zoho Mail makes it easy to schedule meetings faster in any window and improves meeting attendance by ensuring attendees confirm their RSVP. What more could be better than this?
For all your meetings with clients or group meetings, you can easily record everything, host them on the cloud and resend them as a broadcast to your attendees to rewatch them in a secured window on any device.
Aside from the storage space you get on your emails, drive, and so on, Zoho Meetings gives you over 10GB and more to store your meetings for as long as you want. You can allow your attendees to download the meeting videos to their computers or restrict them.
If there is one thing you can trust Zoho for, it’s security and privacy. They are very particular about these.
4. Cloud Storage with Zoho Workdrive
Zoho Workdrive gives me a different feeling whenever I use it. Our clients in the travel industry always use MyCloud for their cloud storage. This is so good but expensive. Sharing a document is not as simple as using Zoho Workdrive. To crown it all, you are not paying for Zoho Workdrive separately.
Zoho Workdrive is a cloud storage branch of Zoho Corporation that helps you store, share, and collaborate on files on the cloud. You can use Zoho Workdrive as a Drive on your computer to automatically sync all your Travel documents into it. Create as many folders as possible, team and departmental folders, and only give access to those who need it.
What I like most is that it doesn’t function like Google Drive, which floods you with unnecessary documents and files just because you opted to view them. With team files, you can control clients’ files, documents, and bank statements and securely share them within the team.
It makes handing over applications to the next person seamless, and the handover process will be smooth when a staff member replaces another staff member.
5. Word Processor By Zoho Writer
No travel agency has processes that do not require a Word Processor like Microsoft Word. But that can be replaced with an intuitive all-inclusive word processor called Zoho Writer.
Zoho Writer will help you create, format, share, and collaborate on documents in real-time, improving and making your workplace more memorable.
Our clients have used this to write letters of introduction and proposal letters, among other documents. For this article, let’s clarify that it also has a spreadsheet editor, which can be used to edit Excel documents, analyze data, and make informed decisions. Also, within the Zoho Workplace is a presentation and slideshow tool called Zoho Show, which will help you with all your presentations.
6. Zoho Cliq and Connect (Intranet)
If you wish to operate a secure organization with less data leakage, then this feature of Zoho Workplace helps you do that. Connect is a company intranet where you can communicate, post announcements, share updates, and do many other things.
You can use Connect as the company’s social media as against traditional WhatsApp group chats. This is more secure and continuous than WhatsApp groups.
On the other hand, Zoho Cliq offers a wide range of communication features seamlessly integrated with all the Zoho apps.
With Cliq, you can chat and call each other on audio or video calls securely and internally without any third-party tracking of your conversations.
Conclusion
With all these features, we have noticed that our clients in the travel industry have improved productivity by over 159% and increased revenue and sales simultaneously. We invite you to work with us in using Zoho Workplace to set processes for your organization. We are an authorized licensed resellers who can give discounts for working with us directly. Our implementation service is fast, smooth and seamless.
We believe strongly, not by assumption but by verifiable evidence, that Zoho Workplace is going to help your organization be more professional and productive and increase your revenue. Please speak with us today. Prefer to start a free trial? Click Here.