The apparent success of Southwest Airlines' Swabiz, the availability of other airline-direct sites and the upcoming expiration of global distribution system regulations
(see story) raise the question of whether corporate travel buyers should be more aggressive about building comprehensive booking portals.
The precedent of Swabiz
(see story) used alongside other booking channels by arrangers, agents and travelers suggests buyers can take greater control of the booking channel, partly to prepare for such unexpected decisions as Air Canada's recent move to make some content available only on its Web site
(BTN, March 15), which one veteran travel buyer called "pulling a fast one."
Other benefits to booking directly can include free transactions, additional discounts and no part in global distribution system booking reports seen by other airlines. Some envision a world in which the corporation, perhaps with the help of a travel management company or other third party and certainly using data consolidation, takes on the role of aggregator.
A likely portal is the corporate intranet travel page, but while some corporate travel buyers use it to point travelers to a major supplier or two, few see it as the ideal aggregator.
"I haven't encountered it that often," said Matthew Jones, product director with BTI TravelNet, which builds travel intranet pages for clients of WorldTravel and other agencies. "When larger travel departments decide to open multiple options, like Swabiz, they're doing it to access rates they can't otherwise. We've done it twice with Swabiz, and a few clients have asked whether we would launch to another booking option off the travel site. We said, 'It's yours, sure.' "
"Is it coming?" asked Jones. "I don't know. At some point, it's entirely unmanageable. The fewer channels the better. You cannot complicate the online experience to the point where it becomes a hurdle, and customers really think about what will disturb the flow."
"The missing link is central PNR management," said Salt Lake City-based Christopherson Travel president Mike Cameron, noting that complexity in business travel helps keep TMCs in business. "If you have travelers booking on three different Web sites, someone has to be able to untangle all of those reservations. A lot of admins are booking for all travelers on all kinds of Web sites. Travelers, travel planners and travel agents are all becoming one."
Technology solutions to access content from multiple places while constructing a serviceable passenger name record are "working on a limited basis right now, but I've heard many instances where it has been promised but not fulfilled," said Travel Tech Consulting president Norm Rose.
Such solutions are provided by a number of firms, including GDSs, TMCs and the likes of AgentWare, Aqua Software, FareChase and TRX.
In terms of reporting, direct sites often provide the basics. Buyers tend to enlist the help of a third party to consolidate data from multiple sources, and such providers as the aforementioned and Cornerstone Information Systems, Hi-Mark and Trondent Development Corp. regularly blend data from a variety of traditional agencies. There's no reason direct sites and online-originating agencies cannot be included.
"I'm not as keen as I once was on having one agency for the world, as long as I can get MIS reports," noted Parsons Brinckerhoff vice president and director of corporate services Suzanne Puccino at the recent Corporate Travel World/Travel Technology World conference in New York.
While scenarios including direct bookings may be worth exploring, particularly with suppliers that already get a lot of a client's business, many corporate buyers simply want one place to book and get reports.
"I'd like to urge anyone who gets involved in figuring that out to work toward a level of simplification, because it's not the business of a corporate traveler to understand this in order to make good business decisions," said Estée Lauder director of travel services Cynthia Shumate. "And for us to explain it to travelers—we shouldn't even have to go there."
"As a buyer, you need to keep your eye on this," Rose said. "I don't think anyone really has an answer. GDSs are the aggregators we've had since the late 1960s or early '70s, with the TMC acting as the main contact to the traveler or administrator, but things are shifting. Inventory aggregation is shifting away from the GDS to the TMC, although GDSs are not going away."
Some are creating their own travel management companies, all of which are angling to be the aggregator and still prefer to access as much content as possible from the GDSs.
"If GDSs don't solve the problem, somebody else will, and we think it will be easier with GDS deregulation to bring in low-cost carriers," said John Stow, senior vice president at Sabre, which last year negotiated three years of comprehensiveness on content from airlines that take a majority of its GDS bookings
(BTN, Aug. 11, 2003).Asked whether corporate travelers still have to search the Web for fares since GDS companies have set up content agreements with most major airlines, WorldTravel BTI CEO Mike Buckman said, "It almost doesn't make any difference whether they have to, because they want to. The cost benefit from going to outside services has been low, but it's human nature, and so rather than fight them, you join them. Access to Web fares has helped, but in the end you're never going to put this to bed unless you have an alternative that says, 'We can solve it for you.' We've incorporated the Web search robots into our technology, so it's now part of the offering."
American Express also is offering to "help you through it, to make sure your TMC has a strategy and, in many ways, to let us take the risk, to navigate through and help you out," said Pam Arway, American Express executive vice president and general manager of North America corporate travel. "These are things we think about daily and plan for." Arway advocates inclusion in the GDS and said she worries about the expiration of Web-fare deals between the GDS companies and major airlines starting in 2005. "I hope that in that two-and-a-half years we can solve this issue, because if we don't, I believe the airlines will use leverage on content again. It could be a very messy time in a couple of years," she said.
Added Sabre's Stow: "We're already talking to the airlines."