The travel industry often struggles with long processing times at check-in and security, causing congestion. Manual verification of IDs and travel documents is time-consuming.
Immigration officers have difficulty quickly validating identities and spotting fraudulent documents when manually reviewing visas and passports. Airlines endure tedious data entry work extracting information from paper tickets and forms, increasing operational costs. Travel companies cannot digitize paper records, transitioning fully to paperless systems.
Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software provides an automated solution to these challenges through AI-powered data extraction and document digitization. It identifies and recognizes text within scanned travel documents, photos, or images.
Let’s explore the key benefits of OCR for travel companies and the top software choices in 2024.
Streamline travel operations with Nanonets’ AI-powered OCR software. Instantly capture passenger data from boarding passes, passports, and other documents, and automate your workflows. Accelerate processing times and eliminate tedious manual data entry.
What is OCR, and what does OCR software do in the travel industry?
OCR is a technology that can identify and extract text from scanned documents, photos, and images. In the travel sector, OCR software is leveraged to grab data from PDFs or images of key travel papers, including boarding passes, passports, visas, and other IDs. It converts these visual elements into editable, machine-readable text formats.
Rather than relying on slow and error-prone manual data entry, OCR enables the automated capture of information from traveler documents. This streamlines processes like passenger check-in and identity verification at airports.
Critical advantages of implementing OCR for travel companies include:
- Accelerating passenger processing times and reducing congestion
- Eliminating tedious manual data extraction to lower costs
- Minimizing human errors inherent in manual work
- Enabling the transition from paper to digital systems
- Making documents searchable for better analysis
The best OCR Software for your travel business
As passenger volumes rebound, OCR automation is critical for travel companies to process high document volumes efficiently. Advanced solutions can accurately extract travel data from low-quality scans and further structure it for seamless integration.
Here are some of the best travel OCR software available:
1. Nanonets
Nanonets is an AI-powered OCR solution tailored to the travel industry’s document processing needs. It leverages advanced OCR technology and machine learning to extract travel-related data from unstructured documents like itineraries, invoices, and ID cards accurately.
It helps travel companies digitize high volumes of documents and automate data capture, overcoming challenges like extracting handwritten text from forms. The intuitive interface makes travel data extraction easy for non-technical users.
Nanonets also enable the creation of custom OCR models trained on specific travel documents. It provides extensive customization to fit diverse travel industry requirements. The software integrates extracted travel data with downstream systems and handles multilingual documents.
Nanonets Intro
How does Nanonets stand apart as an OCR software?
Benefits:
- Scales to process high volumes of travel documents
- Modern and user-friendly interface for travel agents
- Handles international travel documents in any language
- Powerful OCR API for travel system developers
- Ensure hassle-free data flow with integrations with other travel software
- Adaptable for unique travel industry needs
- Integrates with travel management systems
- Cost-effective compared to other solutions
- Automates data capture with minimal supervision
- Recognizes handwriting and damaged documents
- No need for travel software developers to customize
- Models continuously improve with travel documents
- Simplifies data extraction from complex travel documents
- Detailed documentation for travel use cases
Limitations:
- Table extraction needs improvement for some documents
Get started with Nanonets’ pre-trained OCR extractors or build your own custom OCR models. You can also schedule a demo to learn more about our OCR use cases!
2. ABBYY Flexicapture
FlexiCapture is a reliable and scalable software for document imaging and data extraction. It can automatically convert documents of any structure, language, or content into easily accessible and usable business data.
ABBYY FlexiCapture for Invoices – Demo Video
Benefits:
- Recognizes low-quality scanned images of travel documents very well
- Easy to store hard copy results of travel documents like passport scans in the system
- Integrates well with travel ERP systems to enable automated workflows
- Automates data extraction from travel documents (to an extent)
Limitations:
- Initial setup can be difficult and complex for travel companies
- Out-of-the-box automation of travel documents like boarding passes not available
- No ready-made templates for common travel documents
- Difficult to customize for travel industry data without resources
- Could have better integration with RPA solutions used by travel firms
- Accuracy issues with low-resolution scans of crumpled documents
- Batch processing gets blocked even if there’s an error in just one travel document
- Error messages pop up even for optional data fields in travel forms
- Lack of RESTful API limits integration scope
3. DocHub
DocHub is a powerful document management and PDF editing tool that provides a range of features to streamline your travel document workflows.
Benefits:
- Convert unsearchable scanned travel documents like passports and visas into searchable, editable formats using OCR technology
- Advanced OCR accurately captures text from low-quality scans of crumpled or damaged travel papers
- Enable text-to-speech for visual-impaired travelers by making scanned documents readable
- Online editor tools can process travel forms and documents seamlessly
- Safely share travel documents with verification teams and securely store them in the cloud
Limitations:
- May only partially support some languages on global travel papers.
- Complex font styles can cause character errors that need manual correction
- Initial setup can be difficult and complex for travel companies
- Premium OCR capabilities require paid plans, increasing costs
Need an OCR software for image to text extraction or PDF data extraction? Looking to convert PDF to Excel, or PDF to text? Check out Nanonets in action!
4. Kofax Omnipage
Omnipage is a powerful PDF OCR software that can handle automation for high-volume travel document processing tasks. This tool specializes in table extraction, line-item matching, and intelligent extraction.
Benefits:
- Minimizes downstream data flow errors with highly accurate text extraction and data from travel documents like itineraries and invoices
- Provides a wide range of built-in filters and tools to improve the quality of scanned or photographed travel documents before OCR.
Limitations:
- Setting up the AP automation workflows or the API integration involves intricate setups unsuitable for non-technical users.
- The interface has a steep learning curve and could be more intuitive, hampering travel agent adoption
Nanonets vs Kofax – The leading Kofax Alternative
Compare Nanonets vs Kofax. If you are looking for Kofax Alternatives, we have collated a comparison between Nanonets and Kofax to help make your decision.
5. IBM Datacap
IBM Datacap is an intelligent data capture solution that can help travel companies streamline document capture and recognition. It works with multiple channels, including mobile devices, and has a strong OCR engine for quickly extracting meaningful information.
Benefits:
- Configures automated workflows for travel data capture
- Features an intelligent data capture mechanism that can help travel companies simplify digitizing paper documents
- User-friendly interface enables travel staff adoption
Limitations:
- Minimal online support resources
- Complex setup that may not be ideal for non-technical teams
- Slow processing times could cause bottlenecks
- Limited customization options for travel workflows
- Batch processing can stall due to errors
Optimize your travel operations with Nanonets’ Automation solution. Schedule a demo to see how Nanonets can enhance your specific travel business processes.
6. Klippa
Klippa provides automated document management, processing, classification, and data extraction solutions to digitize paper documents in the travel industry. Its ID Parsing API can automatically scan, parse, and classify many document types, including passports and driving licenses.
Benefits:
- Offers AI-powered OCR passport scanner to automate passport processing and foolproof KYC and AML compliance
- Anonmyzes data to protect personal information
- Provides instant cross-checks to identify fraudulent documents and duplicates
- Offers excellent SDKs and documentation for building and connecting apps
- Provides an excellent collection of integrations
- The onboarding flow is easy and intuitive and offers great customer support
Limitations:
- Accuracy issues are encountered when extracting data from low-quality travel scans
- Cannot customize templates for travel documents
- VAT calculations may need clarification
- Stability issues leading to intermittent crashes
- Limited options to train machine learning models with custom travel data
- Wide range of product selection makes it overwhelming to select the right one
Using advanced machine learning and OCR, AWS Textract accurately identifies and extracts text and data from forms, tables, and more. For more detailed information, check out our comprehensive breakdown of AWS Textract.
Benefits:
- Pay-as-you-go billing is suitable for fluctuating travel volumes
- Quick and easy to implement for travel companies
Challenges:
- Cannot train custom models optimized for travel forms
- Accuracy varies based on document type and quality
- Not optimized for handwritten data like customs forms
8. Google Document AI
Google Cloud Document AI uses machine learning to classify, extract data, and generate insights from documents automatically. It is part of the Google Cloud AI suite.
Benefits:
- Handle large volumes of documents, making it suitable for organizations dealing with a high number of travel-related documents
- Allows users to create custom parsers for document types not covered by pre-existing parsers
- Easily integrates with other Google services
- Cloud-based for flexible access
Challenges:
- Lacks proper documentation, leading to complicated onboarding
- Not easy to customize existing modules and libraries
- Restricted coding language support
- Expensive costs may limit smaller travel firms
- On-premise and hybrid deployment may not possible
- Custom algorithms cannot be added for unique needs
9. Tesseract
Tesseract is an open-source OCR engine that can be helpful for travel companies looking to digitize documents like passports, visas, boarding passes, and ID cards.
Benefits:
- Completely free and open-source
- Decent accuracy on typed text
- Can handle travel documents in different languages by configuring the -l parameter
Limitations:
- Lower accuracy on handwritten text and poor-quality scans
- Not optimized for travel documents specifically, might require tweaking
- More challenging to set up validation workflows or integrations compared to commercial tools
10. Adobe Acrobat
Adobe Acrobat provides PDF editing and built-in OCR capabilities leveraged by millions of users worldwide.
Benefits:
- Reliable and stable editor proven with a large global user base
- Intuitive tools and interface enable easy adoption
- OCR can extract text from scans and images
- Can convert travel documents like PDF boarding passes and ID scans to Word, Excel, etc.
- Electronic signature features help digitize paper forms
Challenges:
- Not tailored out of the box for travel documents — would require customization and integration work to streamline workflows.
- Large file sizes of scanned travel documents may slow down processing and take up considerable storage space
- Integrating into back-end travel systems like reservation platforms may take work
- Advanced features like redaction require upgrading to higher tiers
Nanonets OCR API has many interesting use cases that could optimize your business performance, save costs, and boost growth. Find out how Nanonets’ use cases can apply to your product.
Other notable mentions include Veryfi, Readiris, Infrrd, Rossum, and Hypatos. Also, check out the leading alternatives to Nanonets.
Why is Nanonets the best OCR software for travel documents?
Nanonets’ AI adapts to your travel documents. It learns from your data, so accuracy improves over time. The software integrates easily into your systems, allowing you to customize fields and output formats.
It handles messy, handwritten text on crumpled forms. The multilingual AI extracts information from global documents without heavy rework. Unlike other OCR tools, Nanonets requires minimal verification. It captures what matters, not everything. The AI overcomes tilted, low-resolution, noisy inputs that trip up traditional software. No complex engineering team is required — Nanonets integrate seamlessly.
Here’s what makes it unique:
Smoother check-ins: By auto-capturing data from passport scans and boarding passes, Nanonets reduces long queues at counters and self check-in kiosks. Travelers breeze through instead of waiting impatiently.
Enhanced security: Nanonets enables real-time validation of customer data against different databases. This adds a vital layer of protection and reduces the need for manual lookups.
Lower operational costs: Automating data capture from piles of visa forms, landing cards, customs declarations, and expense sheets eliminates the need for armies of agents to re-key information manually. This significantly cuts overhead costs.
Deeper travel insights: Extract unstructured data captured from traveler documentation seamlessly, allowing for deeper analysis of tourist patterns, delays, and bottlenecks. Travel firms can optimize planning with data-driven decisions.
Contactless processing: Customers can onboard securely from their mobiles by submitting passport scans and ID photos instead of physical documents. This allows firms to serve customers remotely.
Regulatory compliance: Digitally extracting arrival/departure dates and passport numbers during immigration checks assists in compliance reporting under regulations.
Works with any data: Unlike rigid OCR tools, Nanonets allows you to train AI models on your custom documents, ensuring high accuracy on your unique and unstructured data types right from the start. Additionally, it offers seamless integration with other systems, thus ensuring uninterrupted data flow.
Continuous learning: The more documents Nanonets processes, the more accurate it becomes. The AI continuously self-learns from human-in-the-loop feedback. So, as new document formats emerge, you can retrain Nanonets by providing more samples. This keeps the AI accurate despite changing business needs.
Fully customizable: Nanonets captures data in any format you need—tables, line items, JSON, or custom schemas. Define validations to ensure accurate extraction always.
Handles imperfect documents: Blurred scans, tilted text, uneven lighting, multi-oriented pages—Nanonets can handle all kinds of documents with ease, unlike traditional OCR, which is limited by image quality needs.
Support for multiple languages: Train a single Nanonets model to extract text in English, Spanish, French, or any other language within the same document.
Code-free setup: You can streamline document processing workflows and integrate seamlessly with your existing systems, such as CRM, ERP, and RPA, without any coding.
With capabilities fine-tuned for real-world documents, Nanonets delivers the most straightforward yet most adaptable enterprise-grade OCR solution.
Are there any free OCR options for travel companies?
Apart from the advanced commercial OCR solutions discussed, free, open-source OCR engines like Tesseract offer basic capabilities for travel firms on a budget. These can convert scanned tickets, passport photos, and simple travel forms into editable text — but lack robust automation for high volumes.
Free web-based OCR tools or those bundled into document editors may work for occasional travel documents. However, they cannot handle messy handwritten customs forms, low-quality smartphone snaps of crumpled boarding passes, or tables with long flight or hotel details.
So, free OCR options can be adequate for travel companies only processing tiny volumes of typed documents in straightforward formats. However, advanced commercial solutions will likely be required for automated, accurate extraction from global travel documents.
Here are some free optical character recognition tools for your consideration:
