16 1 月 RIVERSOFT — Efficiency and Precision Wins The Race for Travel Industry

Feel like going to Tokyo next Friday? In the blink of an eye, you will receive more than ten notifications on your cell phone about all Friday flights from Taipei to Tokyo. With more specific preferences, such as price range, accommodation, or local activities, you’ll get even more accurate recommendations. This is the future of travel services. Wondering how you provide such efficient and precise services? RIVERSOFT has the answer.

Established in 2008 by Managing Director Matt Jiang, RIVERSOFT foresaw the trend toward e-commercialization and has been supporting the digital transformation of traditional travel businesses since its foundation. With expertise in the technology field, it hopes to facilitate the development of travel systems — from Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) to automated e-commerce imports. In 2019, RIVERSOFT partnered with Peakwork, a German leading travel technology company, to optimize its services and to offer better AI automated solutions. It specializes in high-speed hotel+flight dynamic packaging, allowing it to offer clients worldwide flight options, real time hotel searches, travel packages and reservation services.

RIVERSOFT Matt Jiang(Managing Director) & Alex Kuo (Chairman)

Optimize to Serve

RIVERSOFT is a platform that brings together domestic and foreign travel products, ERP, OTA and social media marketing, assisting its clients with the digital transformation process. The future of travel, according to Jiang, should be OTA2 — TA plus OTA. RIVERSOFT provides three core modules in its OTA2 plan: CliCugo+, Travelbot, and Book on X.

CliCugo+, available in different languages, is a travel resource management and planning platform that supports real-time payment methods. Over the past decade, RIVERSOFT has served fifty clients in Taiwan. It provides a convenient, easy-to-use, fully functional Cloud ERP system that enables clients to manage businesses at ease. Its services include online reservation on a RWD website with multiple functions, such as dynamic packaging for hotel+flight packages, online payment, financial statements, etc.

Travelbot is a sales robot equipped with Natural Language Processing (NLP) functions. In the past, when information was not easily accessible, travel agencies mainly focused on serving tour groups. Options were limited and groups were few, so management wasn’t a big problem. However, travel agencies now have to offer a lot more choices, including group tours, travel packages, car rentals, vouchers, and experiences. When travelers each have their own itineraries, it would be too overwhelming and too complicated for sales representatives to manage. Future agencies are bound to offer more diversified alternatives, so they need Travelbot to take care of the trivial, low gross margin, repetitious and time-consuming affairs, allowing sales representatives to focus on the more profitable areas of the business to increase production value.

Book on X allows travelers to place orders on instant messaging apps without transferring between platforms. Combined with Peakwork’s dynamic packaging technology as well as bots and semantic analyzing tools, Book on X helps clients to maintain customer loyalty. The “X” can be anything, such as websites, Line, Facebook, Telegram or other platforms, meaning that websites can be transformed into a one-stop shop for travelers.

Management is history. Sales is the future.

The pandemic has devastated global tourism, forcing travel companies to make tactical changes. Jiang pointed out that travel agencies need to realize the importance of digitization and make timely adjustments. RIVERSOFT Chairman Alex Kuo further explained that the future tourism market would fall on the two ends of the smiling curve. On the left end is the “customization” that takes place before travel. With the AI technology in Travelbot, agencies can achieve mass customization while being less reliant on staff members. On the right end is the “experience” that is gained at the destination. Agencies can leverage OTA2 solutions to build their brands and market to the world.

As we are approaching the post-Covid era, travel agencies need to increase product transparency, social media infiltration and conversion rate. RIVERSOFT aspires to assist in the digital transformation of travel businesses and to boost the digital competency of tourism practitioners. To adjust to any upcoming changes, their mindsets and sales techniques need to keep up with the times. Efficiency and precision will be the keys to victory for future travel agencies.

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