For GDSs, 330 Days & Counting

<B> For GDSs, 330 Days & Counting</B>

By Mary Ann McNulty

Breathing a huge sigh of relief as their systems flawlessly passed the major Year 2000 hurdles earlier this year, the global distribution segment of the travel industry is feeling pretty confident as it faces the final challenge: Jan. 1, 2000.

Getting almost a year head start on the rest of the world, the travel industry had to have all programming completed by Feb. 4, 330 days in advance of Jan. 1. A few airlines released inventory for booking in January of this year, but the majority allow agents to begin booking seats only 330 days out.

By all accounts, the hurdle was a non-event, as no problems were reported with any bookings or systems. The flawless performance didn't surprise anyone in an industry that expects to spend about $160 million on Y2K remedies. The Sabre Group estimates its Y2K spend at $85 to $90 million, with Worldspan at $25 million, Galileo at $24.9 million and Amadeus at $23 million. Last year alone, Sabre spent $55 million, in addition to the $15 to 20 million spent in 1997. Sabre executives explain that their expenses are nearly triple their competitors' because their business is much broader, involving not only electronic distribution, but consulting services and hosting.

In case problems do crop up, hundreds of people around the globe are focused on preparing contingency plans for every possible worst-case scenario. Already, the core computers running the world's four major GDSs are well protected, with some buried in bedrock deep below the earth. All were built to withstand virtually anything short of nuclear war, and have their own generators and back-up supplies.

Beyond their cores, though, the GDSs have to ensure that subscribers located around the country and world can connect to the systems to book reservations. That's where the extensive contingency plans and strategically located SWAT teams they have at the ready come into play.

"As a company, what we're trying to do is communicate what we've been doing, our testing and business planning, to further accelerate and help others look at things," said Scott McMahon, agency Y2K coordinator for Worldspan in Atlanta.

To help with their contingency planning, vendors are simulating the future. Sabre has been trying to simulate a normal day of business with various vendors to perform true "end-to-end testing," according to Mark Meader, vice president for product marketing with The Sabre Group in Fort Worth.

Galileo International has been using its "Time Machine" to conduct end-to-end testing with various airlines, multinational travel management companies, hotels and other suppliers.

"It's been very useful in finding problems on their back-end systems," said Ronnie Hauptman, Galileo's Year 2000 global project manager. "Then, they've scheduled time to retest. We needed to provide it for peace of mind more than anything else."

Although it doesn't have a catchy name, Amadeus Y2K project manager Jean-Christophe Robert said that CRS too has a simulation available against which providers and travel agencies can test their programming.

Programming has been completed on all the GDS host system computers since last year. Vendors report that they also have upgraded the software and hardware at all travel agency locations, with the last agencies readied earlier this year.

Most vendors report that upgrading has allowed them to phase out older DOS or Windows-based products to ease their support of products. All four GDSs have eliminated at least one of their back-office accounting programs, and instead are offering their own newer versions or third-party offerings.

Galileo also had to fix its FocalPoint product, Hauptman said, when it found the month view didn't handle dates properly.

Y2K remediation has been two-pronged: fixes to the core or host computers and all operating software, and then at the local level. In the case of Amadeus and Galileo, which have national marketing or distribution companies around the globe, it is up to each of those companies to ensure that end-user systems and any localized software is brought up to speed.

Ensuring that end-user software and hardware is Y2K compliant can be a complicated effort, since agencies have the option of leasing equipment from the GDS or buying their own. To help those who opted for the latter, or want to ensure that all their own systems are compliant, Sabre last fall announced an alliance with Comp-USA that provides consulting and remediation expertise.

"Needless to say, third-party products are the responsibility of those manufacturers," Meader said. "Because we have a very open platform, there are a lot of third-party products."

Working with Sabre's Integration Technology unit, a sister company to Sabre Travel Information Network, CompUSA has trained employees on the unique needs of the travel industry. The intent, Meader said, is to provide agencies with a one-stop shopping resource for hardware and software needs when it comes to Y2K concerns.

Other GDSs have been providing travel agencies with data on Y2K to help them prepare. Galileo and Worldspan feature special Y2K pages on their Web sites, with Galileo listing sites of all major hardware and software vendors that agencies might need to contact and Worldspan detailing the Y2K compliance status of all its major offerings.

Third-party vendors also have been testing and remedying their own products. Travel Technology Group, for example, found a few problems in testing its quality control software against the GDS simulations, said Steve Reynolds, president of the Dallas-based unit of WorldTravel Partners-BTI Americas.

"We've run as many things as we can, but we won't know for certain until Jan. 1," he said.

Highly skeptical that the travel technology world will ring in the new year without incident, Reynolds noted that most of the major systems were built in the 1970s. "I think we'll start to see problems when people start to do live bookings," he said.

Although the GDS segment is well ahead of most industries in planning and completing its Year 2000 remediation, outsiders surprisingly have not capitalized on the lessons they have learned with in-depth "best practice" visits, GDS executives said. However, all have touted the various conferences, work groups and other informal exchanges they've participated in to learn of other experiences and share their own stories.

A year ago, some GDS executives were most concerned about the hotel segment's advance Y2K planning. Today, those concerns appear to have disappeared as GDS executives report that the tests to date have revealed few problems.

Amadeus's Robert noted that "a lot of hotels do not provide year 2000 inventory yet, so it's difficult to say whether they're ready."

Furthermore, Robert said, some airline flights could very well be canceled during the second half of this year, after the carriers "decide where they'll fly."

In preparation for such an eventuality, it is crucial that travelers ensure their GDS profiles contain their current phone numbers, so the travel agency or airline can contact them if the flight upon which they are booked is one that is canceled.

Lack of inventory is indeed one of the great unknowns today. For the most part, GDS executives contend they don't know if vendors have listed all their inventory in the system, unless they get complaints from users.

They do know that there are hundreds of thousands of people who have booked reservations for the new year.

"There are more than 50,000 net bookings for January 1 in Amadeus, so not everybody is afraid of flying then," noted Robert.

As of March 1, Amadeus had more than 1.5 million net bookings for the new year, while Worldspan had more than 65,000, which involved more than 120,000 segments.

Between Feb. 4 and March 9, Sabre booked more than 729,000 airline reservations for year 2000 travel, more than triple the 272,000 reservations booked during the same time span in 1998 for 1999 travel.

Seems there are a lot more people who know where they want to be next year.