GDSs, Third-Party Vendors Shift Agencies To One-Stop Shops
<B> GDSs, Third-Party Vendors Shift Agencies To One-Stop Shops</B>
By Sarah Welt
The latest round of commission reductions only further hammers home the point that for agencies to continue to retain business and win new accounts, they increasingly must become one-stop-shop solution providers for clients and offer the best customer service, while keeping prices down. Enter third-party software developers and the global distribution systems.
Both groups can offer these technology solutions to those companies lacking the financial resources or manpower to build systems themselves, or simply for those that have chosen not to re-invent the wheel. They have continued to work diligently this year to enhance existing product offerings to the agency and buyer community and roll out new systems and platforms for 2000. Those systems include online booking, pre-and post-trip reporting, point-of-sale systems, mid-office quality control and Internet faring engines.
The biggest difference is that this year marks the first time that many of those systems are Web-enabled. Additionally, more systems are being offered on a service bureau basis. The Chicago-based Travel Technologies Group, for example, is launching a point-of-sale front-end graphical user interface for agents in the first quarter of 2000. Code-named Spice, the tool will "replace the terminal emulators agents are currently using for their GDS connection," said senior vice president of sales and marketing Wade Warren. Spice will be compatible with all the GDSs.
The company also last month rolled out EnCoRRe, its Web-enabled mid-office quality control system that differs from CoRRe in that it is offered for agencies and corporations on a service bureau basis. The system works with all the GDSs and is geared to agencies that "don't want to do it themselves," said Warren. "Uniglobe had CoRRe installed and is now using the service bureau because the company wanted to let someone else do all the work for them. It is a trend and I think people wanted it for a long time." However, it wasn't until now that the infrastructure was ready to make that option viable. Going through TTG's Dallas service bureau enables agencies to eliminate standard overhead expenses normally incurred by sites that purchase and install mid-office software.
In addition to the Dallas service bureau, TTG launched TTG Europe this year as part of its relationship with technology reseller Independent Computer Co. of Manchester, England, where it also has a service bureau. TTG also is establishing a bureau in Australia for 1Q00 to support global implementations of EnCoRRe.
On the online booking side, meanwhile, TTG in the fourth quarter of this year will launch ResAssist 6.0, a new application with the ability to work with all the GDSs.
TTG's Southwest Direct product also has gotten a facelift. Last month, it launched the capability of integrating the tool with the latest version of CRS Screen Highlighter--4.5 Plus. The new Highlighter application allows agents to launch the Southwest Direct application if they are working with Apollo or Worldspan. "When an agent does availability between Southwest city pairs, Highlighter automatically launches the Southwest application," Warren said. It now can be downloaded from www.ttgsoftware.com and is free for 30 days. Then it's $99 per workstation annually.
Beginning in 1Q00, TTG will offer a new CRS Screen Highlighter with a remote control capability. "It will allow a central office to create these actions and distribute it to all outlying locations with the click of a button," Warren said. That process currently involves having someone from headquarters administer it, save it on a disk and send it around. "This makes it real easy to create highlights on the fly," he noted.
A hot topic for 2000 is access to the often lower-priced Internet fares. TTG plans to debut its Internet Fares Module by year-end. It is designed to link to any TTG application or can be sold separately. "You can plug in the airlines you want Internet fares for and it will get them and let you know," Warren said. The tool can be customized to show policy-compliant options or those fares that are closest to the desired time of travel.
Meanwhile, Insight Data Corp. of New York, a technology subsidiary of Stevens Travel Management Inc., is being forced for the first time to open its doors to the outside agency community, partly as a result of the latest commission reduction. "We are going to start selling it now. We didn't want to start selling before. We have a whole suite of products that made us unique," said president Harold Stevens. "But as commissions go down, the ability to have excess resources is diminished."
One of the first products Insight plans to begin offering is its Web site, which it plans to "clone" for agencies that don't have the resources to do it themselves. Stevens said the site, launching this month for sale to outside companies, will offer online booking as well as proprietary information on topics such as immunizations, passports and visas. "This is not hyperlinked, this is our stuff that we keep current," he noted. The site also will contain a reservation request form enabling travelers to send requests via the Internet to the agency, which completes the booking.
While online, travelers will be able to review their company's travel policy, preferred vendors and negotiated rates, access and update their traveler profile, request flight information and complete air, car and hotel bookings via Worldspan's Trip Manager, as well as run pre- and post-travel reports and review newsletters.
Insight also is packaging into the www.stevenstravel.com site an imaging system--a database that contains copies of invoices, tickets and itineraries that can be sent interactively. The site includes Internet and e-mail access, as well as site hosting services. The system will cost users less than $100 a month.
"We are going to offer to brand it for agencies and give them the whole thing or customize it with their name and logo. We can do the same thing for a corporation, so it will be ABC corporate travel site," said vice president of marketing and communications Sabina Terrades.
The company is building a faring engine that should be available in about six months. "We will have the ability to take the fares and rules out of the GDS and put it in our own database and create fares ourselves, which reduces hits on the GDS and gets us unique fares very often," Stevens said. Additionally, the company has been working to improve agent productivity by giving them more information at the point of sale.
Within the next 60 to 90 days, Insight is planning to roll out its point-of-sale screen enhancer for agents, similar to TTG's CRS Screen Highlighter in that certain booking-related infomation, such as negotiated rates, will "flash on some part of the PNR," Stevens said.
Insight has created an off-host profile database, which should be available on the Web in the next couple of months. "All the reservations systems have profile content that is hard to use because it is not uniform, so we spent time and money to build a separate database that is off-host," Stevens said. The rationale was that frequent tinkering with profiles generates a lot of hits to the GDS, which "charges if you use it too much."
Automated Travel Systems Inc. of New York, meanwhile, also has been bringing new products to market. It plans to roll out an automated booking tool in 2000. The company is releasing the tool, code-named Project X, on a limited basis in the leisure market this month, though it will ultimately serve the corporate market. ATS believes that the ability to process all fares and fare rules directly with the Airline Tariff Publishing Co. sets its product apart from the competition. "The benefit is we are taking the more process-intensive and hit-intensive component out of the reservations process, driving it to our own fare and fare rule engine and doing it in a PC environment," said ATS vice president Paul Hoffman.
At present, the company has decided not to invest in developing technology that harnesses Internet discount fares after determining that "such a small percentage of business travelers could even take advantage of those," Hoffman said.
In turn, Aqua Software is getting its Aqua 2000 product line Web-ready for the second quarter of 2000. The suite has been available since October 1997, but was launched on a DOS platform. "What we are focusing on for 2000 is basically to make all our products Web-enabled to some extent," said vice president of sales and marketing Bridgette Christiansen. One of the enhancements to Aqua's product line is the Web-enabling of itineraries to replace faxes and e-mails. The Travel Advisor product also contains a schedule and faring option to give travelers several options. The itinerary component already launched but the schedule and fare part is being rolled out this month.
Aqua this month also is Web-enabling Pre-Travel Reporting, a tool that puts all the information from the booking into a Web-accessible database.
For those companies trying to gain access to lower Internet fares, Aqua has offered a product for the past year that "scrapes different Web sites" and puts that information into a database. When the fare module is evaluating the PNR booked by the agent, it takes into consideration those flights found on the Internet. Christiansen realizes that business travelers have restrictions, but "a lot of corporations are saying to the travel agencies, 'my travelers are going out and finding better fares,' and it is completely unqualified information. So it's an excellent tool for agencies faced with the challenge of changing the perception that there are better fares on the Internet."
<B>GDS Update</B>
The GDSs also have been busy creating new platforms for 2000 as well as enhancing existing technology.
Amadeus is rolling out a new e-business platform this month called @Amadeus, a line of Internet-based products and services which it has called the first and only integrated communications-based desktop package for agencies. It includes Reservations@Amadeus, where an agency can purchase Amadeus Vista, its new browser-based GUI or Amadeus Productivity Software, its Windows-based reservation tool. Connections@Amadeus allows travel agencies to integrate Internet access and e-mail with all components of @Amadeus. Resources@Amadeus gives agencies access to corporate and leisure Web information. Learning@Amadeus allows for online tutorials and certification programs. Additionally, Support@Amadeus is "taking the traditional ways we have supported the travel agency customer to a new level through the Internet. We will provide support online, and in future versions will have chat sessions with customer service agents," said Doug Fogwell, vice president of marketing and sales. The last component is Feedback@Amadeus, an online tool that allows for electronic feedback.
Amadeus in January plans to launch Amadeus Reporter, a Web-enabled pre-and post-trip mid-office reporting tool for travel agencies and their corporate clients--a functionality that previously was performed through the back office.
Additionally, Amadeus launched version 2.0 of its Corporate Traveller booking tool in Europe earlier this year and is rolling it out in the United States this month. The Web-based product is designed for companies with a lot of repeat trips, because it uses trip models. This version has "a value-pricer component off the host system that does a best-fare-finding option," Fogwell said.
Sabre, meanwhile, has been revamping its point-of-sale technology. In 1Q00 it plans to release Planet Sabre 2.0, which will have a new air module that uses a GUI "to allow an agent to work through his sell cycle in a more logical sequence. It is much more mapped to call flows so it allows you to look at pricing and availability at the same time," said senior vice president of national sales and services Tom Klein. In turn, Turbo Sabre is moving to a more flexible graphical architecture for 2000. The company early next year also plans to release an upgraded Sabre Net Platform--its lower-cost Internet POS tool that will "include an interface that is a mirror of Planet Sabre's interface today."
Galileo International launched its GUI agent booking tool Viewpoint in the second quarter of this year. The product allows agents to toggle between native Focalpoint and Viewpoint and was designed to be more user-friendly for those agents who want to book in a GUI environment. However, "They can easily toggle to native Apollo if that is the preferred booking method," said vice president of corporate sales and marketing John Hach.
Beginning in 1Q00, Viewpoint will have one integrated screen so agents can see booked flights along with the corresponding fare available. Today, "you must sell a specific flight to see if the corresponding fare is available for that particular segment, but with the new technology, agents will be able to see prior to booking what fare is available for a specific flight," said Hach.
Galileo also has an equity investment in Trip.com of Denver, giving it exclusive rights to integrate its schedule and availability screens with Internet fares. Together, the companies are working on a product called Intellitrip Pro that is scheduled to be released in the second quarter of next year. "As part of the investment with Trip.com, we are going to be the only GDS to integrate our screen so Web fares and regular fares will appear to the agent all on one screen," said Hach.
The company last month announced the availability of a new Internet self-help tool for agencies--Web Based Help. It is designed to be a cost-effective alternative to calling the customer support center help desk. It offers Apollo system users online assistance, providing real-time communication of hold times at the help desk, as well as access to online reference materials and frequently asked questions. It is offered at no extra charge to Galileo agents and is available for U.S. customers on Apollo. It will be available outside the United States at a later date.
Worldspan also is improving its offerings. It just released Go! Solo, a home-based version of Go!, its Web-based reservations product line. "All you need is an ISP and you can access the product from anywhere," said agency sales and marketing director Cheryl Weldon.
Agency reports that used to be mailed soon will be available online as part of Go! Like Amadeus, the company already is offering online tutorials, and an enhanced selection will be available in 4Q00.