Franklin Quest Starts Intranet Booking On Worldspan

<I>Salt Lake City</I> - Five months after gaining ARC approval to form its own full-fledged travel agency, Franklin Quest Co. went online this month, connecting its company intranet into the Worldspan system used by its agents. By June, the company plans to begin offering the option of booking over the intranet to all employees-and to offer a similar service on its public Internet site, which it will promote to the 5 million users of the Franklin Quest Day Planner.

Going public is a commitment Franklin Quest made in October, when it secured ARC plates in its own name and became its own travel agency (BTN, Oct. 28, 1996). For Franklin Quest corporate travel manager Barbara DeBry, going through the ARC process and setting up Franklin Quest Travel as a separate subsidiary already has proven personally rewarding; her mission now is to see that it delivers on the promise of financial rewards for the company as a whole.

Focusing on airline negotiations first, DeBry has seen some measure of success from tightening her relationship with Delta Airlines and consolidating all bookings through Worldspan, Delta's CRS. Previously, Franklin Quest bookings were split between Worldspan and Sabre. In her new role as "a corporate client, an agency client and a technology client" of Delta's, DeBry has negotiated a "discounted net-net rate," she said, although she declined to share numbers, citing confidentiality agreements.

For now, the savings from the Delta agreement are being offset by the cost of new staffers; the on-site travel department has added one reservations agent and one operations manager to the two agents and one internal meeting planner already on staff. But the company also has acquired corporate training company Covey Leadership, in a move that will "jump our travel business up substantially," DeBry said. As the technology rolls out, the travel department will attempt to absorb the additional business without further staff increases.

"My goal is to get my staff off the phone in 1997," DeBry said. "I know there will always be that need to personalize the travel process, but if we can funnel people through an automated system, we can better utilize the staffers we have to accomplish that."

Using TRAMS' Report Generator, DeBry also is tracking and regularly reporting on such measures as average ticket prices, agent productivity, policy compliance and savings, and benchmarks cost centers against each other.