Regional Agencies Deploy Tech For Reporting, Non-GDS Content Access

Several U.S. regional travel management companies are developing and deploying technology tools to enhance integrated reporting capabilities that support the tracking of travelers and the presentation of management information in concise dashboard presentations. The companies also are seeking to provide non-global distribution system content.

Ways of providing non-GDS solutions vary, but some travel management companies are starting to seek alternatives to the most widely used online booking tools.

One such technological effort by regional travel management companies is a two-year-old undertaking called SwiftTrip, a self-booking tool jointly owned by The Travel Authority, Passageways Travel and Morris Murdock Travel. Milford, Mass.-based Atlas Travel Management uses SwiftTrip to complement its portfolio of online booking tools, according to chief technology officer Rock Blanco.

"The biggest detriment to the big three—Cliqbook, ResX and GetThere—is that there are monthly minimums," Blanco said. "The company that licenses products needs to have a certain minimum. People hate that."

Later this month, SwiftTrip will add airline direct and multi-GDS connections via content aggregator Farelogix. "There is just so much overhead with GDSs," said Brian Cloud, chief technical architect for SwiftTrip. "If you can work with middleware solutions, such as Farelogix, it takes a lot of the guesswork out of the equation."

Separately, Atlas is working to transform its agent-user platform with a Google interface to complement the GDS content with general Internet fares through Google's search capabilities. By mid-June, Blanco said information from FlightStats and Google Maps would augment the content. This is one of several applications Atlas is working on to provide travelers and travel managers with further itinerary integration without exclusively relying on the GDS. "This perspective gives us the flexibility to virtually require nothing more than simple Internet access," Blanco said. "It marries Google content with the GDS."

"We aren't really set on any one solution," said Lehi Mills, executive vice president of Woburn, Mass.-based travel management company Travizon, which is beta-testing a Sabre product that searches and aggregates non-GDS online fares. "It changes so frequently that to lock yourself in now would be like the online booking tools of eight years ago. There needs to be integration between GDS and non-GDS providers. At some point, you are going to see these two roads merge together. We are still a couple of years away, though."

Meanwhile, Travizon also has been working on providing dashboards for travel managers. In December 2006, the company released its first dashboard and will enhance the features in the coming months, Mills said. "A lot of the regionals, if they have the development staff they can create valuable, important technology solutions," he said. "Our next generation of dashboards is going to be more customizable to the company and travel manager either with global security or an executive summary suite."

Casto Travel, which recently added Cliqbook to accompany Travelport's and Rearden Commerce's online booking portfolio, also is developing its own customizable travel management portals with integrated dashboard and reporting features, scheduled for deployment later this year.

"They provide an easy way to catch in a snapshot how your travel program is doing and it reduces the numbers crunching, said Marc Casto, president and COO of Santa Clara, Calif.-based Casto Travel. "Travel managers no longer have to combine the suite of reports."

Tower Travel Management distributes ResX, Cliqbook, GetThere and Rearden Commerce online booking tools under the private label Compass, which it has used for 10 years, according to president John Smith. To complement the company's licensed technology tools, Tower plans to launch a proprietary online tracking and security solution, which will go into development with a third-party developer in India within the next two weeks and commercially deploy in the summer. Smith plans to license the product and distribute it to corporate customers and other travel management companies. "There's a tremendous need for the tools in terms of comfort," he said. "When you need it, you are sure happy to have it."

Regional travel management companies must leverage their tech investment, said Mark Walton, principal of Consulting Strategies. "It's taken a lot of time and money to get to today's levels of sophistication," he said, "It's time to bring what you built to the next level of efficiency, which has not been done at the levels that will be seen."