Hospitality Technology International (HTI), South Africa’s leaders in hotel reservation and hotel management software, has worked closely with Tourplan, a company supplying its specialist software application to over 300 tour operators in 54 different countries around the globe. The agreement sees HTI interfacing its eRes  central reservation system (CRS) and distribution software to the market-leading Tourplan software solution.

By integrating Tourplan to eRes, more than 50 tour operators across Southern Africa and Eastern Africa are now given seamless access to eRes inventory, a CRS solution used by over 2 500 properties throughout South Africa and the rest of Africa.

Rory Montgomery, marketing executive at HTI,  said the agreement now allows 50 plus tour operators to link seamlessly with eRes inventory, giving them ‘live’ and instantaneous access to numerous properties – allowing them  to make multiple bookings in real-time on their Tourplan operating software.

Craig Gray, business development director of Tourplan,  said:  "The connectivity with eRes provides our South African clients with online access to hotel availability from both our Tourplan’s  back office system and online distribution tools. With real-time access to hotel inventory via eRes, a key benefit for our clients is the ability to search for and book confirmed rooms in a matter of seconds, improving in-house efficiencies and booking volumes through reducing the need for traditional phone, fax and email reservation requests."

Leigh Ingle, managing director for Tourplan Southern & East Africa,  said:  "There has been a keen interest among our Tour Operator clients, to upgrade to the new editions of Tourplan to take advantage of the new supplier connectivity modules with a number of clients having already done so."

HTI supplies its software to over 90 groups in Sub-Saharan Africa.  eRes interfaces seamlessly to most property management systems (PMS), travel agents, tour operators, marketing portals, OTA’s (such as Booking.com, In1Solutions, Expedia.com, Res247, SafariNow.com and Kulula.com), as well as GDS providers such as Galileo, Amadeus, Sabre and Worldspan.

This partnership is indicative of the trend in the industry. Tour operators and agents want to go direct and book on-line without having to engage with the industry via telephone and e-mail. The Tourplan platform offers their customers this opportunity by integrating with eRes and making bookings with their application software instantaneous, based on live availability and rates.