GDSs, Third Parties Offer Agency Solutions

<B>GDSs, Third Parties Offer Agency Solutions</B>

By Sarah Welt

Agencies of all sizes during this commission cut era have struggled merely to stay afloat and as such could ill-afford to expend the money and manpower needed to develop technology in-house. Stepping in to fill their needs, the global distribution systems and third-party software developers have made it a high priority to help the agency community service customers better, building new and improved Internet-enabled systems and enhancing existing offerings. Those systems include online booking, mid-office quality control, point-of-sale and Internet faring engines.

These systems' developers realized the importance of automating the non-revenue generating tasks completed by the agency, and therefore have made that a primary focus in 2000. The less an agent has to do manually, the more time that counselor can spend on the phone helping clients and providing stellar customer service, an intangible and yet vital commodity in today's marketplace.

Galileo International, for example, has been pilot testing a new Web initiative in conjunction with several of its travel agency and airline partners. The site, www.galileo.com, will give users the option of booking direct with the airlines or accessing what Galileo is calling a "travel agency mall." The logos of the different agencies will be on the site and will give users access to their negotiated rates. "Travel agents will eventually be able to put their own goods and services and special prices on the Web to attract even more customers," said Galileo vice president of marketing and sales programs Terry Rolecek. "This gives consumers the choice of dealing direct or with the comfort, security and value of a travel agency."

At this time, the site does not build in parameters for corporate travel customers, but it is ideal for "lightly managed or unmanaged travelers," Rolecek said. "It will aggregate a great deal of leisure travel in addition to traditional leisure customers." So far, six travel agencies are participating and Galileo expects 500 airlines and 50 car rental companies to join as well.

The company is testing what it calls Project Falcon, essentially a tool box for developers within agencies to take structured data and integrate it into their sales processes. It should be available for all customers in the second quarter.

The GDS also has improved its GUI agent booking tool Viewpoint, adding two new features to its 1.2 release, which was launched after the first of the year. Viewpoint 1.2 offers a low-fare shopping tool that allows agents to price an itinerary before booking. It also features Calendar Shop, which enables agents to shop across different dates for a specific destination and select the lowest fare across those dates.

"Those two features will enhance the levels of customer service and lead to productivity increases. It is critically important in the travel agency community because it frees up time for them to focus on value-added services," said Rolecek.

Additionally, agents can log on to the Internet through a portal that can be accessed via a Web button on Viewpoint. The button connects users to a gateway of travel-related data, such as destination information, weather reports, health concerns and travel advisories. "We wanted to bring more travel content to the desktop of the travel agent, providing them with information relevant to their business," Rolecek said. "We found it critical to an agency's success to give them quick access."

As part of the latest release of Viewpoint, users gain access through the Web button to Intellitrip Pro (<I>BTN</I>, Nov. 1, 1999), which allows agents to search for Web specials and book them by calling the airlines directly. The next release of Viewpoint will include the ability to customize the GUI interface to better fit their business processes. Rolecek said that should be market-ready by sometime in the second quarter.

Worldspan, meanwhile, has been busy with a number of initiatives for the travel agency community. It has been enhancing its Trip Manager product since buying the source code from Travel Technologies Group last year. In the 5.2 version it plans to release next month, travelers will be able to see their ticket number on the itinerary screen.

A rail booking capability will be incorporated into Trip Manager 6.0, which is slated for a second-quarter launch. "We've been testing the product in Europe, which has prompted us to go forward with rail development," said Vela McCalam-Mitchell, staff vice president of e-commerce, corporate and consumer markets. It also is enabling Trip Manager with multi-language capabilities; by the second quarter it will be available in French and German.

Worldspan also is rewriting the hotel feature to improve ease of use, based on feedback from its customer advisory board. In the previous release, a user's preferred hotels were highlighted, but to access them required scrolling down. The new version, due out the second quarter, will show preferred hotels first.

Also in the 6.0 release, Worldspan is adding new airlines to its Power Shopper low-fare search engine and launching a multi-passenger PNR. In addition, customers will be able to access seat maps at the availability screen.

Worldspan and Traxxer, the KLM Royal Dutch Airlines business unit for corporate services, in January announced they will implement an online booking product designed for small and midsize corporate customers called E-Traxxer, based on Worldspan Trip Manager. It is scheduled for a rollout in the Netherlands later this year.

Worldspan agency sales and marketing director Cheryl Weldon said the company is positioning Worldspan Go! as its business-to-business portal for travel agencies. The portal, tentatively titled Go! Home Page, will enable agents to do their ordering and training, as well as view management reports and access Help Desk. This year Worldspan is introducing distance learning, all done in an automated fashion through the CRT.

Mid-year, the company plans to launch Go! Multi (another working title), allowing several users in the same office to make reservations at the same time using one system. Additionally, Worldspan is giving agencies the option to own their own hardware. "Quite a lot of agencies are using the full system--a dedicated communications line with us, and with equipment from us. The whole thing is leased from us. This will allow them to step back and say, 'Okay, we are interested in owning our own hardware and not interested in getting it from Worldspan,' " Weldon said. "The cost of providing the product is much less and therefore we can pass the cost of savings onto them."

The company in June plans to launch Itinerary via the Web, which will enable customers to check their itineraries up to the last minute. In July or August, Worldspan is on track to roll out what it tentatively is calling Web Fare Search. "Currently, we have the best fares for city pairs. This will allow us to go to Web sites and bring back the lowest fare, contrast to whatever the mainframe system has and from that point choose and make a booking," Weldon said.

Worldspan in January launched local host printing capabilities for Go! Solo customers, its home-based version of the Go! Web reservations product line (<I>BTN</I>, Nov. 1, 1999).

In turn, Amadeus also has been active in development for the agency marketplace. It plans to roll out the second release of its @Amadeus e-business suite mid-year.

Amadeus Reporter, meanwhile, also is getting a facelift. The company is moving it to the latest database platform from Microsoft--SQL 7.0--giving it "even more robust data warehousing capabilities," said vice president of marketing and sales Doug Fogwell. The company in April plans to launch Travel Choice, a product that takes customer profiles and preferences out of the central system and puts them on a separate server so that corporations can manage their own profiles. If the corporate traveler or the corporation as a whole does not have preferences, the agency has the ability to select its own preferred vendors. This way, "the agency can also make sure its arrangements with certain suppliers are maximized," Fogwell said.

Sabre, meanwhile, in late January launched a specialty content booking capability for Sabre AgentExplorer, integrating Internet content into the PNR. Content acquisitions director Renee Alexander said the content available today is with its launch partner Viator, which is based in Sydney, Australia, and brings more than 600 properties and specialty tours to AgentExplorer.

While up to now the system has been leisure-oriented, Alexander said Sabre is in talks with vendors to add golf tee time reservations and theater events by mid-year, which also will come in handy for business travelers.

"We are releasing this to the agency market first, but are looking to expand to other distribution points, specifically BTS," said Alexander.

Sabre also offers a system called Virtually There (www.virtuallythere.com)--launched last October--which allows travelers to go to the site, put in their Sabre reservation code and pull up their itinerary in real-time. In addition, agencies can custom-brand the itineraries.

With the release of Virtually There 2.0 in April, the system will e-mail itineraries to users once they make a reservation, "so an agency doesn't have to have e-mail or a Web presence," said Andrea Spica, director of marketing and emerging businesses.

Also beginning in April, customers will be able to download their itineraries to their PDAs; access to Palm pilot and cell phones "will come later than April," Spica said. Virtually There now is offered in English, French and Spanish, with German, Italian, Dutch and Portuguese versions slated for April.

Third-party vendors also have been busy creating new technology and enhancing existing systems for agencies.

TRX Technology Services--formerly Travel Technologies Group--has been working on a better integration between the global distribution system and the Internet, providing a tool with which users can click on an icon and launch a search engine. The tool is scheduled for general release by the second quarter and can be wired into all TRX applications.

"We've got the engine built and the part we are working on now is the point-of-sale utility," said president Steve Reynolds. The product is for "travel agencies that have committed to their corporate accounts to do Internet fare searches, but GDSs will never do it because it bypasses their inventory," Reynolds said.

The product's cost is to be determined. "We are considering charging on a per-transaction basis, with so many pennies per Internet fare search, and we will make the POS free of charge," Reynolds said.

Meanwhile, the company is beta testing its ResAssist 6.0 and expects a full rollout in mid to late April. TRX has been working on retooling the hotel booking process. Reynolds said that currently the GDSs provide them with negotiated properties and "we found this was less than accurate," so it is going to import a database provided to them by each corporation of all its preferred hotels, and that is what the traveler will see.

On the meetings side, TRX is beta testing a new Web-based corporate meeting planning product called MeetingAssist (see story, page 25). "This is going to be offered more on a service bureau basis," Reynolds said. "It's a meeting planning, registration and fulfillment system."

On the down side, TRX has put on hold the development of a POS GUI agent application that was codenamed Spice. It originally was scheduled to be released this quarter, but customers were funding it and "decided to move their resources in other directions," said Reynolds.

<B>Expert Assistance</B>

Cornerstone Information Systems, in January launched Expert FP (Focal Point) for small to midsize Canadian Galileo agencies, and in mid-February made it available to its customers in the United States. Expert FP is a scaled-down version of its QC product, Expert Enterprise. Expert Enterprise is for large agencies that can afford its cost of more than $20,000. Also, after talking with clients, Cornerstone realized that smaller agencies didn't want all the modules offered in the Enterprise edition.

Vice president of marketing Alan Minton said that Routing Checker and Autoticketing were eliminated in the FP version, as well as what it calls DYOQC (do your own QC), where "you can make up your own rules on how to deal with the CRS." The product is available via CD ROM for 30 days free at a subscription fee of $995 a year.

Additionally, Cornerstone in December bought a company called New Media Solutions of Medfield, Mass., acquiring iBank Travel Management system, a Web-based reporting tool, in the deal. The system enables corporate customers to enter a password and run their own reports.

"Both FP and iBank automate non-revenue generating tasks," said Minton. "Agents need to spend more time doing revenue generating tasks. Producing management reports doesn't make you money, so if you can empower the customer they don't have to wait for you to see pre- and post-ticket information." With the release of iBank 2.0 on March 1, corporations now can customize reports online.

Minton added that Cornerstone also is beta testing a service bureau version of its Travel Slate product, which delivers itineraries to agents via fax and e-mail.