The common perception is that small travel agencies can’t thrive in competition with travel giants like Expedia, trip.com, and Airbnb.
That’s not really true. A small business can always grow, as long as work is done efficiently and customers are made to feel valued.
You might ask, “But how?”
Travel agency CRM software is how.
This software can be a vital component of any travel agency’s operations. It helps you manage your business and planning, making it easy for you to monitor client bookings and revenues.
Also, CRM systems enable travel agencies to keep track of their employees’ work schedules, important work documents such as travel agency invoice and traveler identification, and Terms & Conditions that travelers must sign.
In this post, we’ll discuss why CRM software is the missing piece of the ‘success’ puzzle, how the largest companies use CRM tools to manage thousands of customers, and also the best travel agency CRM options for your business:
Table of Contents
What Is a Travel Agency CRM Software?
A travel agency CRM (customer relationship management) software is a specialized tool designed to help travel agencies streamline operations, manage client information, and enhance customer interactions — all from a single platform.
Why is a CRM software important for travel agencies? For them, managing client bookings, payment transactions, and customer preferences can become overwhelming without the right tools. A CRM designed for travel agencies centralizes these tasks, reducing the need for multiple tools and improving operational efficiency.
By offering features like automated follow-ups, real-time itinerary updates, and personalized communication, a travel agency CRM software allows businesses to deliver exceptional customer service.
Key Features to Look for in a Travel Agency CRM Software
A travel agency CRM software can simplify operations, improve customer satisfaction, and drive business growth.
However, not all CRMs are created equal. Let’s take a look at the essential features to look for in a travel agency CRM software to ensure that it meets your business needs.
Lead generation
- Lets you capture leads automatically from websites, social media, forms, and ads.
- Organizes and prioritizes leads based on actions, engagement, and interest.
- Tracks source of leads to identify high-performing channels.
Email marketing and email templates
- Offers pre-designed email templates tailored for travel agencies
- Lets you send personalized email campaigns to nurture leads and clients.
- Measures key metrics like open rates, click-throughs, and engagement metrics
Multichannel marketing
- Lets you engage with customers across multiple channels, including email, SMS, and social media.
- Centralizes and lets you manage all your campaigns from a single dashboard.
- Tracks customer interactions across all channels for effective communication.
Appointment booking and calendar management
- Lets you schedule and manage appointments effortlessly using built-in calendars.
- Allows clients and customers to book consultations and appointments directly via your website.
- Lets you automate reminders to minimize no-shows.
Marketing and sales automation
- Automated repetitive tasks, including follow-ups and reminders.
- Offers triggers that execute workflows based on customer actions.
Deal tracking
- Lets you visualize your sales funnel to monitor deal progress.
- Tracks the status of client bookings and payments.
Mobile application
- Has a mobile application to manage customer relationships on the go.
- Lets you stay connected with your business and your clients even while traveling.
Customization
- Offers options or services to tailor the CRM to fit your agency’s specific requirements.
- Lets you create custom workflows, fields, dashboards, and reports.
The 10 Best CRM Software for Travel Agencies
Let’s take a look at the top travel agency CRM software. Here’s a quick comparison table with all the key details.
| Travel agency CRM software | Starting price | Unique feature | G2 rating |
| EngageBay
|
$14.99/month | All-in-one affordable CRM software with omnichannel marketing | 4.6/5 |
| Rezdy
|
$49/month + booking fees | Dedicated travel agency CRM software | 3.9/5 |
| WeTravel
|
$79/month | Dedicated travel agency CRM software | 4.8/5 |
| HubSpot
|
$18/month | Best CRM software for larger businesses and enterprises | 4.4/5 |
| Freshworks
|
$9/month | ‘Freshsales’ CRM offers good value for mid-sized businesses | 4.5/5 |
| Pipedrive
|
$12/month | Sales-focused CRM with advanced pipelines | 4.2/5 |
| ActiveCampaign
|
$15/month | Leader in customer experience automation | 4.6/5 |
| Zoho CRM
|
$14/month | Good integration with Zoho suite of tools | 4/5 |
| Insightly
|
$29/month | Offers all-in-one CRM | 4.2/5 |
| Agile CRM
|
$8.99/month | Affordable, good for SMBs | 4/5 |
1. EngageBay
EngageBay’s all-in-one travel agency software, with its highly affordable pricing, is the smartest option for small and medium-sized travel companies, agencies, and startups.
Features
- Omnichannel marketing: EngageBay helps you reach your audience through phone, email, SMS, live chat, and more, helping you stay connected.
- Email marketing: With EngageBay, you can create and send newsletters, drip campaigns, and welcome emails using a simple drag-and-drop builder.
- Activity timeline: You can track all your customer interactions with a detailed activity timeline to understand their journey better.
- Sales automation: EngageBay offers tools to help you manage your deals, funnels, appointments, and more.
- Helpdesk and live chat: With EngageBay, you can support your customer through live chat, ticket management, and helpdesk, and resolve issues quickly.
Pros
- Responsive customer support
- A wide range of pre-designed email templates
- Enables personalization of emails with ease
Cons
- No search marketing
Pricing
- Free: Free for up to 500 contacts
- Basic: $14.99/month for 1,000 contacts
- Growth: $64.99/month for 10,000 contacts
- Pro: $119.99/month for unlimited contacts
This pricing, combined with amazing features, makes EngageBay one of the best travel agency CRM software.
2. Rezdy
Rezdy is a dedicated online booking system for tour and activity businesses. It helps operators and resellers worldwide streamline their customer management and operations.
Rezdy offers inventory management, sales activities, guest information, booking calendars, and more. Rezdy also lets you add booking buttons and CTAs for lead generation.
Plus, you can automate repetitive, mundane tasks, including guest communications, reporting, and billing. With integrations, you can offer a seamless booking experience for your customers.
Finally, Rezdy, as a travel management software, has a powerful and safe payment gateway for smoother transactions.
Features
- Booking management: Rezdy helps you efficiently manage reservations, availability, and booking statuses in real-time to streamline operations.
- Inventory management: You can track and manage your inventory seamlessly, ensuring accurate availability for tours and activities.
- Guest information: Store and organize guest details to personalize experiences and improve customer satisfaction.
- Booking calendars: Use intuitive booking calendars to visualize and manage schedules for your tours and activities.
- Automation: Rezdy allows you to automate repetitive tasks like guest communications, reporting, and billing, thus saving time and reducing manual effort.
Pros
- User-friendly interface
- Comprehensive feature set
- Good integration capabilities
- Reliable performance
Cons
- Limited reporting features
- Limited customer support
Pricing
Rezdy offers three paid plans. Unlike traditional CRM systems, Rezdy charges a commission for each booking through their platform.
- Foundation: This plan costs $49/month plus 2% fees for each online booking / $1 for each agent or offline booking. The plan offers free onboarding, booking buttons, mobile bookings, TripAdvisor Review Express, sales reporting, and more.
- Accelerate: This plan costs $99/month plus 1.9% fees for each online booking / $0.85 per offline or agent booking. You also get automated customer notifications, Xero integration, gift cards, and waitlists.
- Expansion: This plan costs $249/month plus 1.75% fees for each online booking / $0.70 per offline or agent booking. With this plan, you get advanced reporting, webhooks, up to 20 assisted products, developer API, and more.
3. WeTravel
WeTravel is another dedicated travel agency CRM software with many niche-specific features.
You can have stunning booking pages that convert visitors into paying customers. WeTravel also offers smart payment processing features for smoother transactions and user experience.
Features
- Booking management: WeTravel lets you efficiently handle reservations, track availability, and manage booking statuses in real-time, ensuring a seamless experience for clients and staff.
- Payment processing: With WeTravel, you can collect payments instantly through deposits, installment plans, and more for a low processing fee.
- Page builder: WeTravel also lets you create visually appealing, bookable trip pages and homepages within minutes, enhancing the booking experience and increasing conversion rates.
- Automation: You can set up personalized emails, SMS campaigns, and more to keep your clients engaged throughout their journey.
- Reporting and analytics: The platform lets you gain insights into business performance with detailed reports on bookings, revenue, and customer demographics to inform strategic decisions.
Pros
- Versatile payment processing
- Low processing fees
- Intuitive interface
Cons
- Limited reporting features
Pricing
WeTravel offers three plans: Free, Pro, and Enterprise.
- Free: This plan is completely free and is designed for agencies to get started. You get bank transfers, mobile-optimized checkouts, payment plans, customizable deposits, and more.
- Pro: This plan costs $79/month for companies and teams and offers a suite of features, including disputed payment support, seasonal pricing adjustments, branded email communications, abandoned cart, and more.
- Enterprise: This plan is custom-priced and offers advanced travel agency CRM features, including customized reporting dashboards, customized public API integrations, SSO, and more.
4. HubSpot
HubSpot is another one of our favorite travel CRM software.
It lets you quickly build multichannel marketing campaigns and track them, all from one place.
Features
- Landing page builder: You can create unique and responsive landing pages for your travel agency company, complete with CTAs, forms, and more.
- Content creation: HubSpot lets you develop marketing materials, including blog articles and knowledge bases. HubSpot also offers real-time optimization tips to improve SEO and content quality.
- Ticketing system: HubSpot lets you manage, assign, and prioritize tickets. Solve customer issues quickly to improve satisfaction and response times.
- Sales and marketing automation: You can automate repetitive tasks like email follow-ups, lead nurturing, and workflow triggers to save time and focus on growth.
Pros
- All-in-one platform
- Comprehensive set of free tools
Cons
- Expensive
- Feature limitations in lower-tier plans
Pricing
These remarkable features come at a hefty price. Let’s check out the prices for HubSpot’s bundled CRM suites:
- Starter: This plan starts at $18/month a month and includes 1,000 marketing contacts, ad management, list segmentation, email templates, deal pipeline, and conversations inbox.
- Professional: This plan starts at $800 a month for 2,000 contacts, ad reporting, URL mappings, canned snippets, dals, custom field mapping, multiple currencies, and more.
- Enterprise: Pricing starts at a whopping $3,200 a month for 10,000 marketing contacts and includes advanced features like A/B testing, teams, single sign-on, webhooks, social media, call transcripts, predictive lead scoring, and field-level permissions.
Looking for the perfect HubSpot competitors? Our in-depth guide covers the top alternatives.
5. Freshworks
Another great travel CRM system on our list is Freshworks.
With this solution, you can connect to other products, too, like FreshCaller and FreshDesk, which enhances its value. Their sales counterpart is called Freshsales CRM.
For example, FreshCaller lets you contact your customers, other intermediaries, agents, tour guides, transport companies, and suppliers right from the CRM.
Features
- Lead management: Freshworks lets you capture and organize leads efficiently, ensuring timely follow-ups and increased conversion rates.
- Deal management: Freshworks also lets you track deals through customizable pipelines, providing clear visibility into sales progress.
- AI-powered insights: You can utilize Freshwork’s AI to gain actionable insights, prioritize hot leads, and predict sales outcomes.
- Email campaigns: You can design and execute targeted email campaigns to engage prospects and nurture leads.
Pros
- Multichannel support
- Affordable pricing
- Powerful sales force automation
Cons
- Limited advanced features in lower-tier plans
- Steeper learning curve
Pricing
Freshworks’ CRM is marketed as ‘Freshsales Suite.’ Let’s take a look at the pricing plans:
- Growth plan: This plan costs $9 per month and gives you access to custom reporting, a visual sales pipeline, sales sequences, one custom domain, Freshdesk integration, live chat, 20 workflows, and predictive lead scoring. You also get 1,000 marketing contacts.
- Pro plan: This plan costs $39 a month and adds 3,000 marketing contacts, smart matches, offline events, products catalog, sales goals, offline mode for mobile apps, and behavioral segmentation.
- Enterprise plan: This plan costs $59 a month for 5,000 marketing contacts, auto-profile enrichment, sales forecasting, deal teams, holiday routing, 100 workflows, audit logs, a dedicated account manager, and advanced metrics.
Looking for a more flexible solution to Freshworks? Our article on the best Freshworks alternatives will help you find the perfect fit.
6. Pipedrive
Pipedrive is another helpful travel marketing and sales automation software with cool features like the AI sales assistant.
The sales assistant tool helps you improve automation by offering reports, graphs, performance ideas, and notifications.
Features
- Sales pipeline management: You can visualize and manage your sales pipelines with customizable stages, allowing for easy tracking of deals and activities.
- Contact management: Pipedrive offers easy contact management, allowing you to maintain detailed records of your contacts.
- Automation: Pipedrive lets you automate repetitive tasks such as follow-ups and data entry, allowing your team to focus on high-priority activities.
- Integrations: Pipedrive offers a plethora of integrations, including Google Workspace, Quickbooks, Asana, Slack, and more.
Pros
- Customizable pipelines
- Robust collection of integrations
Cons
- Steeper learning curve for advanced features
- Limited advanced features
Pricing
Pipedrive has a myriad of pricing plans, whether you want to spend a little bit per month or a lot.
-
- Essential: $12 per user per month
- Advanced: $24 per user per month
- Professional: $59 per user per month
- Enterprise: $79 per user per month
7. ActiveCampaign
Another great travel agency CRM software on our list is ActiveCampaign.
This travel CRM software offers a plethora of tools, ranging from customer services and sales to marketing and integrations.
Features
- Email marketing: ActiveCampaign enables you to design automated and personalized email campaigns using its intuitive drag-and-drop email builder.
- Sales pipelines: ActiveCampaign provides sales pipelines, automatic deal updates, and tools to help you focus on fostering meaningful customer relationships.
- Landing pages: Use customizable templates from ActiveCampaign to design high-converting landing pages and capture leads effectively.
- Customer experience automation: Integrate email, live chat, SMS, and other channels to deliver a seamless and personalized customer experience based on individual interactions.
Pros
- Powerful automation
- High deliverability rates
- Comprehensive set of integrations
Cons
- Complex pricing structure
- Steep learning curve
Pricing
- Lite: Starts at $15/month for 1,000 contacts and marketing automation, site tracking, social media tools, and newsletters.
- Plus: Starts at $49/month for 1,000 contacts and database syncing custom email designs, conditional content, sales automation, advanced subscription forms, and more.
- Pro: Starts at $79/month for 1,000 contacts and split automation, predictive sending, customer attribution, and training sessions.
- Enterprise: Starts at $145/month for 1,000 contacts and uptime SLA, custom CSS and HTML, and premium phone support.
8. Zoho CRM
Zoho CRM is an excellent all-in-one software with multiple integrations and dozens of connected Zoho applications, making it great for enterprises.
Features
- Sales pipelines: Zoho’s pipeline tool provides deal tracking, lead management, accounts, contacts, and an all-in-one dashboard to monitor every aspect of your sales process.
- Teams: Zoho excels at team collaboration and management, offering features like admin controls, permissions, meeting schedulers, and a document library to streamline teamwork.
- Sales automation: By leveraging rules, triggers, and workflows, Zoho’s automation tools minimize time spent on repetitive tasks, allowing employees to focus on more strategic work.
- Field management: Zoho’s mobile CRM empowers field agents and sales reps to nurture customer relationships on the go, provided they have a reliable internet connection.
Pros
- Cost-effective
- Customizable
- User-friendly interface
Cons
- Complex software with multiple sister applications
- Performance issues reported for large data sets by many users
Zoho CRM Pricing
Zoho CRM offers four plans: Standard, Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate.
- Standard: The Standard plan costs $14/month and offers basic modules, advanced filters, sales forecasting, scoring rules, email insights, workflow rules, email templates, and more.
- Professional: The Professional plan costs $23/month and offers macros, webhooks, validation rules, custom reports and dashboards, email relay, and more.
- Enterprise: The Enterprise plan costs $40/month and offers email parsers, portals, custom functions, developer sandbox, custom modules, webform analytics, and more.
- Ultimate: The Ultimate plan costs $52/month for Zoho Analytics, data encryption, territory management, and other advanced features.
9. Insightly
Insightly is a versatile CRM platform designed to help businesses manage customer relationships, track sales, and improve customer loyalty. It’s particularly useful for SMBs looking for an all-in-one solution.
Features
- Contact management: Insightly helps you organize and manage your contacts, providing a full history of interactions and insights for personalized customer engagement.
- Project management: The platform offers built-in project management tools, allowing you to track milestones, tasks, and deliverables seamlessly.
- Email marketing: With Insightly, you can design and execute email campaigns to nurture leads and communicate with your audience.
- Sales pipelines: You can visualize your sales process with customizable pipelines and automate repetitive tasks like follow-ups and deal updates.
Pros
- Combines CRM with project management
- Highly customizable workflows
- Strong integrations with third-party tools
Cons
- Limited scalability for large enterprises
- Steeper learning curve for advanced features
Pricing
- Plus: $29 per user per month
- Professional: $49 per user per month
- Enterprise: $99 per user per month
10. Agile CRM
Agile CRM is an affordable, all-in-one travel agency CRM software that integrates sales, marketing, and customer service tools into a single platform. It’s ideal for small businesses looking for a feature-rich yet budget-friendly CRM.
Features
- Contact management: Agile CRM lets you store and manage customer data, including activity history and social profiles, for more personalized engagement.
- Marketing automation: You can automate email campaigns, social media posts, and web pop-ups to nurture leads and drive conversions.
- Sales pipelines: Agile CRM provides visual pipelines to track deals, automate sales workflows, and manage opportunities effectively.
- Helpdesk and ticketing: The travel agency CRM lets you handle customer queries with ease using ticketing tools that prioritize and track issues to resolution.
Pros
- Affordable pricing with free plan
- Comprehensive feature set
- Easy-to-use
Cons
- Clunky UI
- Not suitable for large businesses
Pricing
- Free: $0 per month for up to 10 users
- Starter: $8.99 per month
- Regular: $29.99 per month
- Enterprise: $47.99 per month
What Does a Travel CRM Software Do?
A travel agency CRM offers both generic features and travel agency-specific tools.
For example, your travel company, like any other business, may need lead management, sales reporting, an online reservation system, notifications for updates and reminders, workflow automation, and customer service tools.
With a travel agency CRM system, you get these in addition to modules like experience management, in-app appointments, discount vouchers, cancellation policies, and more.
Then there’s the all-in-one CRM travel software, which combines marketing, reservation, sales, expense, hotel bookings, and other business operations into one single platform.
Travel agency CRMs can be in-house or cloud-based. Larger enterprises often go for in-house travel agency CRM with their own infrastructure. On the other hand, a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) travel agency CRM is hosted on the cloud, and travel agents or companies can purchase its subscription.
For travel startups, agencies, tour guides, and even hotels, it’s better to choose a SaaS travel CRM for greater flexibility, a wide variety of tools, easy portability, and manageable costs.
The Advantages of Using a Travel CRM Software
Now that you know the difference between a generic and travel agency CRM software, let’s dig deeper.
When it comes to managing customer experiences, one size doesn’t fit all.
This is why CRM for travel agents, tour operators, and the travel industry in general offers features such as segmentation, lead management, omnichannel marketing, feedback systems, and more to fulfill each customer’s complex needs.
This, in turn, greatly boosts customer retention and, ultimately, revenue.
Time optimization
Time flies, and if you can’t manage your tasks efficiently, you’re in trouble. Fortunately, travel CRM software offer great tools to optimize work productivity.
For example, you don’t have to spend hours preparing reports manually. Instead, travel agency CRM systems generate insightful reports on missed bookings, sales performance, customer service tickets solved, and more — without human error and time wastage.
The great thing about SaaS travel CRM systems: you can take your work anywhere. This means you can manage your business on the go, as long as you have an internet connection.
Centralized database
Ever fumbled through disorganized folders, searched multiple spreadsheets, or made dozens of calls to get what you need?
If so, you need a travel agency CRM.
CRMs have a centralized database, meaning all your employees can access real-time customer data from a single platform. This greatly improves business processes and helps streamline customer management, thus unifying your entire business under one roof.
Marketing
Travel agencies such as yours need to market themselves to stay ahead of the competition.
This is precisely why you need travel CRM software.
The best travel CRM systems offer incredible tools, like multi-channel broadcasts, to let you reach a wider audience or segmentation to group your potential customers based on similarities.
What’s more, you can use autoresponders to send automated email messages in response to everyday activities, like welcome emails for new subscriptions, abandoned payments page reminders, greetings for anniversaries & birthdays, and so on.
Follow-ups
When leads go cold, you don’t just abandon them. Instead, you’ll have to target them with a different strategy. Similarly, you have to pursue hot leads and convert them into sales.
A travel CRM solution lets you intelligently follow up with your leads based on their activity, priority, and position in the sales funnel.
Lead management
What do you do if your leads are falling through the cracks? Or if you don’t know which ones to drop and which ones to pursue?
That’s why travel CRM systems are equipped with tools to capture leads, nurture them, prioritize them with tags and scores, and collect vital information across various touchpoints.
Customer relationships
Customers should be able to contact you from any channel: phone, SMS, email, webforms, or social media.
Similarly, ticketing systems, knowledge bases, and other service tools quickly solve any customer queries or complaints.
If you are a travel agent, these CRM features will help you enhance your customer relations substantially.
Wrapping Up
If you are a budding travel business, you know you don’t have the resources to buy expensive CRM software.
Travel agencies don’t need to worry, though; finding a good CRM is possible even with a tight budget.
EngageBay can help travel agencies manage customer accounts, preferences, and advanced bookings easily.
It can help you save hours every day.
You also get live chat, SMS marketing, and an in-app calendar for quick and effective engagement with thousands of customers.
With EngageBay’s mobile app, all of this can be done on the move as well.
If you’re not sure yet, check out EngageBay’s free plan for yourself — we promise you won’t be disappointed!
Need to learn more about how EngageBay can help you offer the best travel services?
