Emphasis On E-Tickets Expanding

<B> Emphasis On E-Tickets Expanding</B>

By Jay Campbell

Electronic tickets are being embraced by some corporate travel departments in a big way, despite continued, though fewer, limitations in both their availability and capability.

Travel managers not only are taking advantage of delivery cost savings from using e-tickets, they also are banking on a number of new services the electronic tickets could make available.

Teresa McVickers, director of global travel at Hartford-based Aetna Life and Casualty, has gone so far as to charge travelers' departments $50 if they choose a paper ticket when an e-ticket is available. "When I first arrived in August, I was appalled to find we weren't using e-tickets at all," she said. "Now we're up to 61 percent in markets where they are available."

McVickers estimated that Aetna already has saved $150,000 on prepaids, overnights, cancellations, reissues and general mail delivery. "You eliminate the prepaids and the duplicate tickets, and it improves your reconciliation of outstanding tickets. All of this translates into less paperwork."

At Tower Travel Management in Oakbrook Terrace, Ill., vice president John Smith said that e-ticket usage by corporate clients that do not have satellite ticket printers is over 70 percent. The agency discounts its fee for tickets issued electronically.

National Semiconductor's Mark Vilcsek said e-tickets are helping make it easier to issue tickets priced in one country for travel originating in another, to take advantage of currency fluctuations, where the carriers allow it.

And at St. Louis-based Monsanto Corp., travel manager Richard Wooten said the biggest benefit of e-tickets is that for those travelers using the Captura expense reporting system, receipts are not required, as the tickets are charged to the American Express corporate card, where receipts are stored electronically. The company plans to use Amex's ticket tracking product to account for unused e-tickets, which Wooten expects will make the refunding of e-tickets even easier than it is for paper.

But Wooten has yet to promote the use of e-ticketing because he is "still waiting for interlining," which is due to begin arriving next year (<I>BTN,</I> May 18).

This concern frustrates airlines because they feel the perception warps the reality. "The perception is that if you have a Northwest e-ticket and we cancel the flight, you have to go to the gate, get it printed and bring the ticket to the other airline," said Al Lenza, vice president of distribution planning for Northwest. "In reality, all you have to do is book on the new carrier--an e-ticket even--and refund your Northwest ticket whenever it's convenient."

Several hundred Northwest passengers got a peek at how interlining will work when the airline was on strike. After some development, Northwest gave TWA and United access to its reservation system so those carriers could retrieve e-tickets for reaccommodated passengers.

"It didn't have as much security as we would like, and the links were only one-way, but it worked like an automated interlining process," said Lenza, noting the system was only a backup for those passengers who could not receive the printed tickets Northwest mailed out. "From the customer standpoint, the experience was virtually identical to how it will be when we develop real e-ticket interlining."

While the number of e-tickets issued by Northwest dropped from 45 percent before the strike, the figure already is back up to 44 percent. At Continental, that number is up to 48 percent and is expected to reach 50 percent by year-end.

Lenza said Northwest is considering setting up e-ticket checkin machines that feature the names of major corporate customers cobranded alongside that of Northwest. "We're talking to some corporations that have a lot of volume. If they commit to a high number of e-tickets, we'll put their company's name on the machine," he said. Northwest has 100 such machines in 19 airports nationwide.

Although there has been limited success in this area, some companies appear to be on the verge of convincing airlines to provide an extra discount based on increased e-ticket usage. "Some of our clients are looking at that," said consultant Harold Seligman, CEO of Stamford, Conn.-based Management Alternatives Inc. "We haven't yet been successful, but we're hoping to conclude that shortly."

Part of the issue here is that, according to the airlines, their own savings will not be fully realized until e-ticket usage reaches a critical mass. Continental, for example, only saves about five cents on tickets issued electronically, said Steve Cossette, staff vice president of distribution planning. But, he insisted, as the airline, distributors and customers explore new distribution models, such as direct settlement, "we will share the savings with you."

Continental already is driving "several hundred tickets" a week settled directly with Andersen Consulting in its pilot test of the Via World Network system. Continental's involvement began in August.

Seligman said he believes that the use of e-tickets will expand dramatically over the next 12 months, as boarding passes increasingly go out of vogue.

American Airlines certainly is attempting to expand it. The carrier this week will make e-ticketing available throughout its entire system--making AA the first major network carrier to do so (<I>BTN,</I> Oct. 5). Continental and United Airlines, the pioneers of major network carrier e-ticketing following the introduction of ticketless travel by ValuJet and Southwest, both expect their service to reach the more remote areas of their networks some time next year.

In July, one in every four tickets processed by ARC were electronic. Also, as of May, 59 percent of travel agents were encouraging their clients to use an electronic ticket when making reservations, according to the American Society of Travel Agents. However, 54 percent of the surveyed agencies reported issuing only between 1 and 10 percent of their tickets electronically. Forty-six percent reported encountering no agency problems resulting from e-ticketing, while 47 percent had problems between 1 and 10 percent of the time. Fifty-three percent were either "very satisfied" or "satisfied" with electronic ticketing transactions, while 32 percent felt neutral about the issue as a whole.