Is the mobile trend slowing down? Not at all, says Dan Langevin, Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Softvoyage in this edition of Friday 5. More than 50% of the accesses of all of Softvoyage’s platforms are with some form of mobile device – and that percentage is on the rise.

1) As a travel technology company, what is your biggest challenge?

“Great question. The first challenge we have is trying to keep things simple. When you have a bunch of very smart people around a boardroom table, things can get complicated. In the end, the customers needs and requirements are the priority along with keeping things simple.

“The second challenge we have is keeping up with current technological trends. This means new tools for our developers, new more powerful and efficient hardware and developing technology required for today’s market. Technology is moving extremely fast these days!”

2) Is the mobile trend all it’s cracked up to be?

“Yes, most definitely. For example, at Softvoyage, over 50% of the accesses of all our platforms are with some form of mobile device. This number continues to increase on a monthly basis.”

3) What is Softvoyage’s biggest achievement in 2016 so far?

“Well, there are many that we are very proud of. One of them is that we have built a cruise booking engine that is now live in Sirev. Mainstream cruise lines companies are available for shopping and booking with great rich content, detailed itineraries, etc. This has been and continues to be a very important development for us at Softvoyage. It is something that we are very proud of.

“The second would have to be switching over Air Canada Vacations to our back office system, called TTS. This was a very big project for both companies and working along with the good folks at ACV, the integration went better than anticipated. They have been live since mid-May.”

4) Tell me more about your pre- and post-tools?

“Agents using Sirev can send an electronic brochure to their customers. The brochure can be accessed via any device. There is a feature that can be turned on so if the customer decides to book without calling the agent, they can do so and the agent gets full commission. Thousands of these brochures are being sent everyday by agents using Sirev. Many customers also execute the booking on their own.

“We also have Tripbook which is a post-booking tool that can be sent with detailed itinerary, invoice and other important details about their upcoming trip.”

5) So what’s coming up for Softvoyage over the next year?

“Well, we will continue developing travel technology to meet our customers needs. That will never end. We are also entering the U.S. market. We expect to make significant inroads with our tour operator system, our cruise booking engine and other new modules we are currently working on!”