Booking Tools Automate Ticket Changes

Online booking tool providers during the next several months plan to add capabilities that automatically process air ticket voids and exchanges, which could reduce service fees and processing times and offer greater price accuracy and transparency at the point of sale. As a result, travel buyers who long have awaited more robust automation of online ticket changes could push online usage even higher and significantly reduce their corporations' unused ticket liability.

GetThere this month announced a development partnership with ITA Software for use of ITA's ReShop technology to replace its proprietary online ticket exchange platform released in 2004. The new exchange infrastructure enables GetThere to process exchanges, voids and refunds for both domestic and international points of sale, for partial itineraries and to integrate unused ticket banks into the shopping process, giving net price visibility prior to the completed booking. GetThere is the first self-booking tool to integrate with ITA's ReShop technology, according to GetThere vice president of product marketing and user experience Suzanne Neufang.

Amadeus E-Travel Management last month released a new unused ticket exchange application that claims it fully automates the process of managing unused U.S. e-tickets booked on more than 30 airlines via any GDS, and paper tickets on Amadeus. Airlines' Web sites have used similar Amadeus technology. Next year, it will offer the feature in Canada and will weave unused ticket availability into the initial shopping screen, according to Alexandra Arguelles, Amadeus North America director of product management.

"Beforehand, there would have to be several touches of the PNR to manage and process the exchange, increasing service fees and time, but now the rework is nearly fully automated save for the upload of the unused ticket data bank from the agencies," Arguelles said.

Rearden Commerce recently implemented similar unused ticket applications into its Personal Assistant tool. Its newest development is the application of a logics-based rules engine that automates the refund process for a ticket if it is within the 24-hour void period. The Personal Assistant also applies "change wizard" technology that alerts travelers to changes to an air reservation or others, like the length of a hotel stay. Rearden uses ITA Software's current QPX pricing and shopping software, said Rearden partner marketing manager Meghan Skinner.

Concur Cliqbook in March launched its own ticket change capabilities for Sabre and Travelport GDS bookings. Cliqbook uses Travelport's Rapid Reprice system.

This month, TRX's ResX enabled administrators to upload unused ticket inventory into the tool to notify travelers of unused tickets booked on Sabre that can be applied to their trip through an offline reservation. TRX will integrate Worldspan unused ticket data in November and plans to roll out online ticket exchange capabilities in the second quarter of 2009, said TRX executive vice president Shane Hammond.

Orbitz for Business has had unused ticket inventory integration with the online exchange process for the U.S. point of sale since last year.

Competitor Egencia this summer released a new unused ticket performance reporting platform and this quarter is tying the unused ticket capabilities for the online exchange process and integrating it into the booking path.

In August, Travelocity Business married its electronic unused ticket databases with its GetThere online booking platform and reworked the user interface for better messaging and notation of unused tickets, as have several other tools.

With a bevy of automated ticket change development in the online booking tool pipeline, travel buyers can expect to achieve significant savings and better visibility into their unused tickets. BCD Travel vice president of online technology solutions Ross Atkinson said buyers at minimum should expect a 15 percent reduction in ticket liability.

Generally, exchanges account for 10 percent to 15 percent of a company's air volume, according to Orbitz for Business COO Dean Sivley and "when it comes time to decide who you are going to go with as a provider, it gets modeled into the cost analysis."

Travelocity Business' 10 largest clients save 6 percent to 18 percent on average ticket price by processing exchanges online versus offline, and save 19 percent to 65 percent in transaction fees.

BAE Systems uses a ticket-tracking tool furnished by TMC American Express Business Travel and some online booking tool capabilities, but still experiences unused ticket leakage. The company, which had a $57 million U.S. booked air volume lost $200,000 in unused ticket expiration last year, according to manager of travel administration Melissa Grimes.

"It's less than one-tenth of one percent of the volume, but it's still an amount you shouldn't throw away," Grimes said. "If the technology is there, you are much more likely to use it."

Through Orbitz for Business, CareerBuilder.com rebooks more than 80 percent of canceled tickets within 30 days, and has about 100 unused tickets in the queue worth $30,000 at any given time, said vice president of global finance Bill Razzino.

"We have a better understanding of how we could monitor this and what we had available and when we need to follow up with employees to make sure they are utilizing unused tickets and there isn't any money left on the table," Razzino said.

Oracle is preparing to test GetThere's newest online exchange integration with Oracle's third-party ticket inventory provider. Oracle global data and technology manager Brian Tarble said the company has begun a savings analysis for the "visibility into it to see what is there" and so travelers "can make an informed decision as to which airline carrier they should utilize to save money for the company so those tickets don't go unused."

Recognizing the potential savings, CVS Caremark has been one of the companies involved with Egencia's unused ticket innovation. "Our business is very dynamic because we have such a huge employee base that changes," said director of strategic procurement Lori Perron. "We identified it as an opportunity because it is a little painful right now, as people have to call an agent to change the ticket with the airlines and they get put on hold. We try and reinforce that a little bit more with the administrative assistants and push them to use that unused ticket because obviously some funds come back to CVS."

While online booking tools are heading for a fully automated ticket exchange process, agents still need some manual intervention for quality control, policy enforcement and complex exchange processing. "On the back end, I am not seeing full automation," said Chad Schneider, product manager of online booking partners for Carlson Wagonlit Travel North America, which is implementing new repricing software to reduce manual intervention through its CWT Horizon tool. "There are some tools out there saying that they've got it, but what we're experiencing in a lot of cases is it's not quite there."

According to Concur executive vice president of technology Tom DePasquale, 70 percent of U.S. domestic ticket exchanges processed through Cliqbook via supporting GDSs are touchless for the first change. Overall, about 80 percent are fully automated, with the remainder offline due to international travel, fare restrictions and other restrictions sometimes occur because of the limitations of TMC technology.

Regardless of how full the automation is, the newest developments could push travel programs' online adoption rates to new heights. Travelocity Business vice president of global operations Joel Bailey said, "With customers already achieving 80 and 90 percent online adoption rates for new reservations, we are transitioning the discussion to start talking about producing online change adoption rate reports."