Genisys, BostonCoach, Carey Automate Limos

<B> Genisys, BostonCoach, Carey Automate Limos</B>

By Lynn Woods

Genisys Reservation Systems, the automated booking product that piggybacks on CRSs for faster, more reliable automated reservations, seems to have become the provider of choice for corporations seeking to automate the limo- and sedan-booking process. As of late October, it had signed 70 industry service providers and nearly 100 top Fortune 500 companies, according to Genisys director Mark Kenney.

One of those providers is BostonCoach, which is employing the system at its approximately 150 U.S. locations. "Our clients have asked for it," said Linda Stewart, BostonCoach's senior vice president of sales and customer service. She said the company would absorb the Genisys fees--which, according to Kenney, currently are $2.50 per transaction--rather than pass them onto their customers.

Genisys also has forged an agreement with Carlson Wagonlit and is in discussion with other travel agency networks. "We've told them we can private-label this process as part of a service package," said Kenney. "We can fine-tune it to the agency culture."

Even as Genisys becomes widely known and accepted, however, ground transportation companies are developing their own automated booking systems. BostonCoach is the first large network to have such a service up and running. Called Auto-Rez, the system consists of a real-time link through Sabre that is integrated into BostonCoach's inventory. Clients who participate in the system, which is free of charge, receive a disk with instructions.

Stewart said that 60 percent of BostonCoach's reservations are coming through Auto-Rez and 25 percent through conventional automated CRS bookings. The firm is working on developing similar links with Apollo and Worldspan to give customers all the options, she said.

With Auto-Rez, users book BostonCoach by going into the OTH section in Sabre. They receive a confirmation within 90 seconds. That compares with a two- or three-hour response on conventional CRS bookings, said Stewart. Because the confirmation is almost instantaneous and the link real time, users find out almost immediately whether a car is available--an advantage over Genisys, which entails a risk "because it's a separate system," she noted.

One convert to the Auto-Rez system is Roseann Guerrera, corporate supervisor at Boston-based Fugazy Executive Travel. "Changes to the reservation are much more efficient in Auto-Rez," Guerrera said, adding that before, canceling a booking was an imperfect process; sometimes the ground transportation company wouldn't receive the cancellation message. But Auto-Rez lets her cancel transactions with a click.

Another advantage of Auto-Rez is better capture of data. Guerrera said that in the past, agents calling BostonCoach sometimes forgot to identify the agency or provide the IATA number. "Before there were lots of errors, and we lost a lot of commissions," she said. That doesn't happen with an automated system.

Carey International also plans to roll out its own automated booking system, although it will use the Internet rather than the CRS. Called Enterprise, the $10 million system is due to be launched in the beginning of February.

"Using the Internet will make it a lot easier for us to transmit accounting and other information to our accounts," said Don Dailey, Carey president. However, Carey customers who choose to book through the CRS also will benefit from the new system; reservations will be transmitted directly into Enterprise and a confirmation number will be attached to the transaction instantly.