<B>New Tech Takes Floor</B>
By Jay Campbell
<I>Atlanta - </I>The economic downturn has trimmed both people and companies working in travel technology, but there will be no shortage of new bells and whistles from vendors at this year's National Business Travel Association convention.
In store for buyers gathered here this week are announcements and demonstrations of new booking, expense reporting, data management, point-of-sale and other tools from agencies, third parties and global distribution systems.
Topping the bill is TRX Inc., which makes its home in Atlanta, site of the convention. TRX is set to announce and/or demo a slew of planned enhancements to various products, from version 2.0 of mid-office quality control tool EnCoRRe--to be made available in September--and the beta version of a new traveler itinerary interface, called ViewMyTrip, to a new GDS-agnostic point-of-sale tool for mega agencies, called Project Trinity, and a new auditing service that TRX said could be the Holy Grail for which the industry's data debate has been searching.
In addition, TRX was blessed with the conversion to its ResAssist booking product of a high-profile account in Thomson Multimedia. Cindy Heston, manager of worldwide corporate travel at Indianapolis-based Thomson, was named Business Travel News' Travel Manager of the Year at last year's NBTA convention largely due to her diligence in implementing an online booking system provided by Worldspan.
TRX also is announcing that TQ3 Maritz is its newest agency distributor of the ResAssist product--yet another in a series of business deals landed with competitors of TRX's former parent company WorldTravel BTI. "The phone's been ringing off the wall," said CTO Steve Reynolds of TRX's momentum.
Among the enhancements planned for the September release of EnCoRRe, users will be able to schedule routines at specific times and e-mail itineraries or invoices in PDF format.
ViewMyTrip is similar to the GDSs' Web-based itineraries, such as Sabre's Virtually There, except that it allows EnCoRRe users to control advertising and to provide such itineraries without the higher cost of the GDSs' mainframe systems. TRX, however, has yet to build up the content that its GDS competitors offer. In limited release now, the "super robust" version of Project Trinity will be available in the fourth quarter. It will provide supplier-direct bookings and GDS-connected customer relationship management.
In another news announcement set to go out today, TRX will unveil new supplier auditing functionality--already in use by Lockheed Martin and Vivendi Universal--that allows corporate travel managers to request specific data feeds from their air, hotel, car and credit card suppliers and measure usage against contracted agreements.
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Both Galileo and Worldspan aim to preview new graphical user interfaces to their respective updated corporate booking tools, Trip Manager and Corporate Travelpoint 2.0. Galileo earlier this month gave BTN a peek at its long-promised 2.0, which offers a number of unique features, including a highly customizable GUI, a weighting system that gives travelers a percentage-based match on a given itinerary between their own preferences and corporate policy (corporate policy is heavier) and a faster overall booking process that drives the complete PNR to a single screen.
Later this year, Galileo will begin implementing clients on what it now is calling Project Data Store, a central repository for profiles, preferences and policies that is accessible from any point of sale. Use of that system, however, requires a "considerable system upgrade" in Galileo-provided technology by travel management companies, but Galileo said the feedback on that has been positive.
According to Sue Powers, Worldspan senior vice president and general manager of worldwide e-commerce, the new Trip Manager is "more than a new look and feel. We've revamped the product from beginning to end, and while the new user interface is most visible--it reduces the clicks required to make a booking--we also looked at the entire system to make it faster and more efficient, including more efficient use of the host system using larger structured data inputs."
Aiming for bookings under four minutes, Worldspan in March enhanced the product to better balance system traffic and connect users to the least busy server. Response time has improved 22 percent. Worldspan also is offering a new reporting package, backed by Atlanta-based Hi-Mark Software, that costs $100 per month for the first two licenses and $5 for each additional. The product enhancements will be available in general release Aug. 1.
Like some of its competitors in online booking, Worldspan also is offering new consulting services to help with implementation and adoption. Trip Manager Client Relations Consultants will provide client training, adoption programs and implementation support, while Business Development Consultants will analyze a corporation's travel patterns and expenses to determine how Trip Manager can strengthen present travel management processes.
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American Express is implementing a new global voice and data network that was custom built for the mega agency by AT&T. The fluid network, dubbed TravelBahn, will provide increased bandwidth to ensure faster and more reliable connectivity.
Installation already is underway and will be completed by year-end, linking all onsite offices as well as large business travel centers in the United States. American Express by the end of next year will expand implementation for complete worldwide coverage.
The network, which will allow American Express to replace GDS hardware and unbundle GDS contracts, is designed to support its new Customer Information Gateway, an intelligent Web portal that will allow a travel counselor to access other reservation inventory in addition to the GDS (BTN, July 16).
Also, American Express said it will demo DealPower at NBTA, a new suite of airline contracting tools that will enable travel managers to modify booking patterns midstream using a module called Rapid Preference Manager. Residing behind the point of sale and tracking the number of segments a corporate client books on its preferred carriers, RPM allows travel managers in real time to monitor overlapping airline deals and measure performance against thresholds.
Currently testing with one large client, RPM can be programmed to automatically update the Enhanced Supplier Preferencing tool, which currently is available. In that way, ESP can notify travel counselors when they should be booking segments on certain carriers to fulfill multiple contract goals or even move travelers to low-fare alternatives when appropriate. RPM also can be applied to the lodging segment.
A third piece, AutoPilot, is a CD-based air program analyzer available to travel managers. It is the desktop version of what has been offered by the American Express Consulting Services Group and details actual versus potential analysis by creating a series of what-if scenarios.
Filling out DealPower is negotiating support from either the American Express Consulting Services Group or the supplier relations group.
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Solon, Ohio-based Travel Analytics will be showing off its own performance measuring tool. Dubbed Bravo, the service will allow Travel Analytics to report to corporations areas at risk of missing contract goals by drilling down to the city-pair level. Bravo will use monthly data provided directly from corporate clients but will not need detailed individual transactional information. Travel managers will view the reports in a standard Excel workbook format. Travel Analytics in August expects to begin beta tests with two large clients ahead of a targeted Sept. 1 launch date.
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Online booking vendors E-Travel, I:FAO, KDS and Yatra Corp. also should have some show and tell. Minneapolis-based Yatra signed a distributor agreement with Phoenix-based travel agency El Sol, which books $40 million in annual air volume from corporate clients.
While Yatra's initial business plan was to focus on the midmarket (BTN, May 15), the company is responding to interest from conglomerates that are "nothing more than a number of midsize companies," said Frank Hicks, vice president of client services. Hicks said the midsize market remains Yatra's main focus--and some such clients now are moving out of beta testing--but Yatra last week said it won the Siemens Canada account.
Frankfurt-based I:FAO, vendor of the Cytric system and new owner of XOL's PowerTrip (BTN, July 16), is set to introduce its new $22 million Reality interface that, like Galileo's Corporate Travelpoint 2.0, weighs preferences and policies to produce the optimum itinerary. Its technology comes from I:FAO's acquisition earlier this year of Swiss-based Iconomic Systems, which will be renamed I:FAO Switzerland. Reality is expected to be made part of Cytric during 3Q at no extra charge.
For France's KDS, new U.S.-based senior vice president of sales and marketing Michael Steiner will be discussing KDS LiveAgent, a solution to help with online customer service by allowing agents to help users by chatting and pushing their browsers in the right direction. KDS also is rebranding its suite of products, formerly known as Wave, to KDS Corporate, KDS Portal for agencies or suppliers and KDS LiveAgent.
E-Travel also said it will preview what it called "state-of-the-art hotel booking capabilities," including the ability to determine availability across multiple hotel properties with a single click.
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Gelco is poised to announce a relationship with Rosenbluth International in pursuit of the elusive end-to-end (booking-expense-reporting) system. Minneapolis-based Gelco in recent weeks has announced a number of agency partnerships, with Navigant, SatoTravel and others, as part of its ExpenseAlliance program. "From a product delivery perspective, we're virtually there," said Jon Fredrickson, Gelco vice president of business development. "With Rosenbluth, there are some key strategic things that will take a short amount of time to button up on the level of systems integration."
Gelco also will be demonstrating a new voice recognition interface to its expense reporting system.
Kirkland, Wash.-based Captura and Redmond, Wash.-based Concur Technologies both will debut new versions of their expense management products. For Concur, the 3.0 version of its application service provider offering adds new private-labeling capabilities for Concur's distributors.
Captura, meanwhile, is focused on making its product a global one through the addition of seven languages, all currencies as well as tax and regulatory accommodation.
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Carlson Wagonlit Travel, based in Minneapolis, last week announced and this week will demo at NBTA the MyWorkLink Travel Module, a Web-based solution that recognizes and rewards employee behavior. A new component of Carlson Marketing Group's MyWorkLink, the module offers individual traveler home pages--based on individual flight patterns--that allow travelers to determine how many points or sweepstakes chances they will earn through certain booking behaviors. By entering the origin and destination airports, the traveler is presented with various point opportunities for such options as flying a certain carrier, booking seven or 14 days in advance or using the online booking tool.
After reviewing the point options, travelers can launch the online booking tool and make reservations or e-mail their corporate travel arranger.
In a related offering, St. Louis-based TQ3 Maritz Travel Solutions is attempting to facilitate incentives for travelers who use online booking through a new Web-based incentive tool called Quick Points, developed by partner company E-Maritz.
The program allows clients to buy, then issue, points into traveler accounts for redemption through the 2,000-item Maritz AwardHQ catalog. Point administration, transaction summaries and redemptions are managed through a central database that always is accessible. There are no implementation or start-up fees.
<I>~Megan Hjermstad and David Jonas contributed to this article.