OREANDA-NEWS. The booking of travel groups is now much easier with a new online tool for travel agents and tour operators. Using "Book a Group”, travel agents can directly and independently arrange all steps of their group bookings in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Japan for the first time. This new portal allows the registered IATA agency to find suitable flights, request availability and prices, book with instant confirmation, and what’s more, to change and manage existing bookings.

The travel agent remains the contact person for the travel group’s customers who have booked with them, because the agent can independently manage all of the processes. The travel agency can also make enquiries in real time to check on flight connections with the Lufthansa flight number, to be able to offer interested customers what they want without delay. The online features are intuitive and easy to use. In addition to all regular rates, special rates will also be available. The new portal will be up and running in all retail markets for over 12,000 travel agencies by the end of the year.

Until now travel agents have used an online form or sent an email to Lufthansa to enquire about offers for groups. Therefore, the offer could only be created after a time delay and usually included only one travel option and one rate. On the new portal, travel agents can independently manage each process up to departure and can immediately comply with all customer requirements with different options available on the portal. "Book a group", which can be used in 14 languages, provides time-saving features like increasing or deceasing the number of passengers in a group and a practical upload of the passenger names directly from an Excel list.  A tour group must consist of at least ten persons that take at least one journey together, either outbound or inbound. As the participants of a group booking are usually not yet definite, it is possible to change the group members and their names, even after booking.