Travel Leaders Network on Wednesday began the rollout of the new Internova SNAP booking tool to its thousands of advisor members. Internova SNAP is a custom version of Sabre Red Launchpad, a new consumer-grade graphic interface used to book air, hotel and car rentals. In beta testing since December, the tool is now available to all of Travel Leaders’ advisors.
Travel Agent spoke with executives from Travel Leaders last week and received a sneak peek at Internova SNAP. Seth Burton, vice president of travel distribution and advisor workflow at Internova Travel Group, told us that the network made tweaks to “every aspect” of Sabre Red to create the tool.
“This is a really exciting day for us,” added John Lovell, president of Travel Leaders Group. Advisors within Travel Leaders now have access, through their membership, to the “superior air agreements, hotel program and car rental program” of its parent company, Internova, “which is going to drive money to their bottom line,” he said.
When you first open Internova SNAP, the landing page is for air, but tabs along the top bring you to hotel and car bookings, while on the righthand side of the screen is your “trip summary.” You can navigate between the three tabs at any time and once you’ve confirmed all your selections and click “book,” those details move under the trip summary, so everything can be seen at a quick glance.
Our initial thoughts? Without any prior experience or knowledge of commands used in Sabre, we felt confident we could easily book our own transportation with the tool. With only a few clicks, advisors can view multiple air/hotel/car options (prices and other benefits included). SNAP supports NDC offers, low-cost carrier content and traditional fare data for the airline industry, as well as hotel content, including Internova’s Select Hotels & Resorts, Worldwide Hotels & Resorts and Curated Hotels & Resorts programs. It also offers access to the luxury property inventory of Bonotel Exclusive Travel, another Internova Travel Group company.
We particularly thought the hotel tab was nifty thanks to its integration with Google Maps. So, just as you would search for a hotel near, say, the Hollywood sign in Los Angeles while on Google, you can do just the same within Internova SNAP. You can, similarly, search for hotels by any city, landmark or address. You can even use “Streetview” to see if the surrounding area fits what the client is looking for. Advisors will also be able to see property details, amenities, the cancelation policy, nightly rates and more.
When booking air, advisors can view multiple price options, compare vendors and add a client’s loyalty account number. They can book one-way, round-trip or multi-city flights for multiple passengers, in addition to adding special requests and seat assignments. Advisors can also filter by cabin class and number of stops. Should an airline offer commissions, those will be indicated, as will upsell options—like better seating. Additionally, once you have selected your air travel, those dates will automatically be pulled into the hotel and car rental tabs, so you won't need to plug those in individually each time, Burton said.
On the booking preview page, once everything is “final,” advisors will have the option to share the summary with their clients. Here, advisors will have the chance to input a service fee in a pop-up, should they charge one. If not, they can simply close out of the window and continue with the booking. There is also a separate dashboard that will show an advisor all of their bookings and which "stage" they are in—as in, "purchased," "in progress," etc.
The tool is intended to reduce training time for new-to-industry advisors and provide a more accessible option for independent contractors who do not currently use an aggregator or GDS for travel supplier content. Advisors do not need to learn a single command to utilize SNAP. It is also accessed via a single sign-on linked to Travel Leaders’ Agent Universe intranet.
“One of the biggest challenges that we face as a sector is recruiting new talent,” said Roger Block, president of Travel Leaders Network. “We need modern retailing tools that will help those new to the industry become successful without having to learn a complicated language.”
One change that will be coming to Internova SNAP is the integration of client profiles. Currently, advisors will need to plug in all of their information with each new booking but, next month, all of that info will be saved and adding their details will become all the more simple.
Internova SNAP’s debut follows on the heels of launching Cruise Complete, Travel Leaders Network’s proprietary tool allowing advisors to compare and book a wide selection of cruise vacations through one web-based system. It was introduced in 2023 and is now available to members in the United States and Canada.
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