E-Itineraries Are Gaining Ground

In times like these, few things are more critical than communication. While travelers have myriad ways of connecting, dialing and tuning in for travel information, one increasingly popular method is the Internet-based itinerary.

Outside the purview of managed travel, for the most part, Web itineraries typically are free and include a variety of personalized content that travelers can link to from an e-mail sent by their travel agency or online system. They also could log in using a static ID and password or name and record locator. Some global distribution system vendors now are looking at ways to better involve managed travel in these communication conduits, as well as to enhance the security-related information they offer. Meanwhile, other technology companies are developing similar services to be GDS-independent.

Sabre, whose VirtuallyThere product celebrates its second birthday this week, recently offered the service on Blackberry devices and gave all users the option of receiving voice messages or pager text messages for real-time flight information. Sabre also added a section to the VirtuallyThere site that contains critical travel advisories and warnings. Sabre is working to more deeply integrate VirtuallyThere with the GetThere Inc. corporate self-booking subsidiary and also is planning to "push" destination-specific security information to travelers.

Worldspan, which plans by the end of this month to integrate its Web itinerary service, MyTrip and More, with its Trip Manager corporate self-booking tool, also is leveraging a partnership with Annapolis, Md.-based travel security firm I-Jet to provide travelers with destination-specific alerts. Worldspan by year-end expects to offer printable e-ticket receipts, now ordained as one of four main documents travelers can use to traverse airport security. Sabre called its similar service "a huge success," and Galileo International added the same functionality late last month to its ViewTrip product.

Some buyers might balk at the business model the GDS sites offer—free to travelers but paid for with advertising—since there is little flexibility in controlling the advertising to which travelers are exposed. Sabre said travel management companies can filter such marketing, but it promised more customization capabilities on the horizon. To address concerns about control, GDS usage costs and GDS dependence, travel agency automation vendors Aqua, Datalex, TRX Inc. and others are developing Web itinerary solutions that are not tied to a single GDS.