Technology
Corporations around the globe are attempting to control the impacts of industry dynamics and improve control over their travel program's overall performance. Automated systems and sophisticated software are the bedrock of operations in today's travel environment. Balboa has developed Armada, a comprehensive and integrated solution to facilitate these tasks. Armada is a state-of-the-art fleet of technologies designed and built to help ensure program strategy goals are achieved through content sourcing, process engineering, compliance management and performance measurement. The suite includes Voyager, our point-of-sale agent desk top, Pilot, our mid-office quality assurance module, and Escort, our web-based reporting tool.
Voyager
Recognizing that the availability of supplier content and inventory will be the greatest future challenge for corporate travel agencies, we created Voyager, a multi-source, point-of-sale platform that puts the industry's leading distribution sources at the fingertips of our agents. Combining both traditional GDS content and non-traditional content from emerging sources, Voyager ensures our ability to keep pace in today's every changing travel distribution landscape and to provide our customers with unparalleled access to air, car and hotel suppliers. At the point of sale, Voyager presents travel counselors with VIP status, special meal requests, frequent flyer numbers, travel policy and other information useful to the counselor such as telephone numbers, cost center codes, reference data specific to your preferred suppliers, applicable non-refundable tickets and air contracts for city pairs or by airline code. In addition, our travel counselors can offer an Internet fare search to your travelers at the time of booking to identify Web-only fares. The travel counselor searches multiple Internet sites, as well as non-GDS carriers, in a single request and (if found) books the lower-fare reservation with the traveler's approval. The system records all reservation information (including air, car and hotel) into the GDS and invoices it into our back-office system for accurate travel reporting and traveler location. While savings from Internet fares may not ultimately provide financial benefit, travelers and arrangers save time with Balboa Travel searching the Internet for them. After the counselor confirms a reservation, our system automatically inserts form of payment, frequent flyer numbers, special meal requests, car rental, VIP/express and cost center or accounting codes into the reservation from a traveler's personal profile.
Pilot
To support our relentless focus on customer service, Balboa created Pilot, which automates all quality control and file finishing processes from incoming online and offline reservations, so that we can quickly make changes to your travel program in-house. Pilot is a powerful, routine-based application that automates repetitive tasks and allows our agents to focus on our most important asset -- you our customer. Once a reservation has been completed, either traditionally or via an online booking tool, Pilot performs a series of customized, automated routines to ensure the reservation is error-free, policy-compliant, matches traveler preferences and leverages negotiated rates and fares.
Escort
Today's travel programs are complicated and demand informed decision making. Balboa's Escort reporting suite puts actionable intelligence at your fingertips 24/7. Escort employs powerful analytical tools to help you shape your travel spending and includes a vast library of reports to satisfy every aspect of travel program analysis. Our goal is to empower you to effect change and save money. Escort helps you manage supplier agreements to garner the most economic benefit, track travelers to mitigate safety risks and decipher travel trends that affect compliance. We help you make decisions that avoid costs before they happen. Escort provides your travel managers, procurement staff and security personnel the ability to interact with travel program data in real time. Unique to the travel industry, our platform provides functionality beyond canned reports, enabling you to interact with and use your data to achieve savings and provide better service to your travelers. The end result of this data access is a more complete picture of the status of your travel program that allows you to quickly take knowledgeable action. Our management information specialists can provide consultative expertise to ensure that you use this data to the best advantage for your travel program.
