BCD Travel is working with Farelogix and other undisclosed vendors to create a travel content sourcing engine for BCD's travel management company clients, the companies announced last month. Consultants said the technology platform—planned for rollout in 2007—seems conceptually to follow the American Express TravelBahn and Carlson Wagonlit Travel Symphonie offerings.
"It's going to give them all of those capabilities and a whole lot more," claimed Farelogix CEO Jim Davidson. "It's our entire product line, including the FLX platform, our middle-office platform. It has all the links to the sources of content—GDS, Web, direct connect and the private fares engine—and they're integrating it with their selling or booking platform. We will be underneath that. The intent is to give them worldwide capabilities to manage all transactions to insulate them against any changes."
BCD said it is in discussions with airlines to explore direct deals. American Express and Carlson Wagonlit Travel some time ago anticipated the need for a GDS backup and made arrangements to ensure full content for clients. With its TravelBahn distribution system and long-term deals with GDS suppliers and American, Continental and United airlines, American Express is in a position to not charge clients who participate in TravelBahn (see story, page 1). The only other TMC with a direct channel to carriers already in place is Carlson Wagonlit Travel, with a G2 SwitchWorks direct-connection that can only be accessed by clients that use CWT's Symphonie booking tool.
Davidson said Farelogix and BCD began working on the platform roughly three months ago—as new distribution dynamics entered the corporate travel distribution marketplace
(BTN, Sept. 11).In addition to multichannel sourcing capabilities, which Davidson said would offset further travel content fragmentation, the platform offers a rules-based engine that can monitor travel-booking compliance and even manage contractual commitments in regard to booking volumes.
"For example, rules can be set to ensure the appropriate GDS bookings are met, or a minimum number of bookings per month are made via a particular source of content," Farelogix said.
According to Dee Runyan, BCD Travel executive vice president for products, technology and supplier relations, the goal is to insulate customers from the uncertainties surrounding access to travel inventory. "Farelogix is providing us a part of the technology that will enable us to address the complexities of processing travel transactions for our clients," she said, "while also driving efficiencies across our organization and ensuring we can execute on any inventory-access strategy that a customer might pursue."
Some travel managers are reacting with measures they believe would curb some of the new costs. A National Business Travel Association survey of 189 corporate travel buyers showed nearly 42 percent of respondents would push their TMC to implement direct connects and about 34 percent "plan to explore possible shared distribution savings via usage of GDS new entrants or direct connects."
Many buyers still are assimilating the changes to the distribution landscape, but some consultants reported clients are looking at new entrants as an alternative to GDSs, though consultants warned such technology is not without limitations.
"GDSs went and made themselves relevant again, to the airlines in particular, by doing the content-fee programs and reducing costs to the airlines," said Grant Caplan, principal at Consulting Strategies. "GDSs have significant reach that GNEs are not nearly prepared to handle. GNE technology can scale up very easily, but they don't have the salesforce. They're too new to support what GDSs can."
GNEs have an advantage over GDSs with such services as Tango Plus offered by Air Canada, Caplan said. "A GDS sells you a seat at a fare, but Tango Plus is not a fare. It is an add-on service and GDSs cannot add any services," he said. "The fare category is Tango, when you add on the service it becomes Tango Plus."
A global distribution system could match such a capability through additional technology, but such a change to a GDS's infrastructure would be monumental, Caplan said. "You have to change their core technology," he explained. "They basically have to become the same technology as GNEs and that's why you might see a GDS buy up GNE technology."
Other consultants are advising clients against relying solely on alternatives to solve GDS problems. "Direct connects may offer a little bit of help, but I don't see it as an answer to the GDS," said John Caldwell, president of Caldwell Associates. "You may be able to use it with your primary carriers where you have a lot of hits, but that's costly to integrate that with the GDS information. I don't think it's an answer."
Some clients will press agencies to run reservations through alternatives as well as GDSs, said Tom Wilkinson, president of TRW Travel Consulting. "After the initial upfront cost to an agency for its system automatically to check through more than just the GDS, each search is effectively free."