Create Prime-Content "Cable" Channel To Which Buyers Can Subscribe

I have been involved with travel technologies dating back to the '70s, when the original systems used for issuing tickets were called carrier reservations systems, or CRSs. Over the years, the systems have improved and in the process they changed their generic name to global distribution systems, or GDSs, but the improvements have lagged behind all other technology enhancements that affect global consumers and businesses alike. The best example that I could give would be to assign a new name to a black and white TV. It may have a new name, but the function is not that much different than its predecessor.

Going back to my time at TWA, before there was an automation department, I was the interline manager, responsible for securing incremental business from our competitors. In many cases, after visiting the reservations offices of our airline competitors, I noticed that they purposely did not display competitive TWA segments in their CRS for use by their telephone sales agents. I pointed out to the El Al reservations manager that his CRS system was not showing our flights from LAX to JFK and Tel Aviv. He told me TWA is a competitor from JFK to Tel Aviv, so why should he let his agents see our schedule? I pointed out to him that his agents booked over $1,000,000 in TWA sales between JFK and LAX (on TWA), so that meant each time his agents had to put their passenger on hold, pick up an Official Airline Guide, find our flights and then call one of our agents to make the booking. It didn't take long for him to realize the productivity expense he wasted by not making the technology find the competitive flights available to his agents, and quickly fixed it because of the obvious time-savings and enhanced customer service.

Now in the 21st century, here we are looking at low-cost alternatives to global distribution systems, known as GDS new entrants. The primary benefit to the airlines is that GNEs cost the airlines less than the GDSs. What is lost in this analysis is that the corporate buyer (and consumer) loses out by not having robust content in a GDS. The Internet, which is free, offers more robust content than the GDSs. That lack of content equals loss of credibility.

Back to my TV analogy, many of us today have cable because we choose to pay a premium for access to additional channels and content. The travel industry should take heed that the corporate market would rather pay a fee for full content than share in the rebate, at $2 or less per segment, and not have full content, robust displays and enhanced productivity.

In my opinion, the first provider of travel technology services to recognize that the model going forward is to provide a premium full-content channel will be the market leader. We need unfiltered content for all airlines, hotels, car rental companies, ground transportation, etc. In exchange for this robust content—in XML format, please—the corporate buyer will gladly pay up to $2 per segment to keep the agents off the phone and eliminate screen-scraping and those redundant "bk" segments that are prone to errors and omissions.

When we go shopping, we tend to patronize the superstores and malls that offer us the most variety and access to goods and services. We as an industry need to shift the paradigm away from shuffling segment fees and limiting content, to providing an electronic ecosystem that truly represents all of the suppliers available in the marketplace in a graphical user interface that represents the current technologies. We need to retire the "green screen" and migrate to the rainbow of opportunities that can only be offered by a truly global content system, or GCS, which is focused on value-based content, for which any intelligent consumer or company would gladly pay a premium for the value received.

My hope is that we will soon have access to a fully integrated global content system that provides content, credibility and compliance systems at a level that eliminates the need to go outside the box.

Andrew W. Menkes, President, HRG Consulting North America.