Galileo Taps MIDT Experts
<B> Galileo Taps MIDT Experts</B>
By Mary Ann McNulty
Galileo International last month purchased S.D. Shepherd Systems Inc., a 15-year-old software consulting and development firm that analyzes monthly marketing information data tapes for 15 of the top 25 airlines in the world.
Crunching the millions of reservations made, airlines can better plan their routes, pricing, booking patterns and even analyze the effectiveness of specific advertising campaigns, said Andrew Winterton, recently named vice president of airline vendor account management for Galileo International, based in Swindon, England.
As with most of its competitors, Galileo has experienced tremendous demand from smaller airlines for customized data tapes, which include airline codes, origin and destination cities, passenger counts, flight number, class of service, booking date, departure date, agency address, ARC/IATA number, pseudo-city code and cancellation indicator.
Currently, 30 airlines purchase raw data from Galileo, which they either process themselves or forward to one of a handful of third-party companies that compete with Shepherd.
In February, the computer reservations system began offering these carriers "selective MIDT" that allows them to analyze a specific market or world region. However, to take its offering further, Galileo executives decided to acquire Shepherd. Galileo intends to run Shepherd as a wholly owned subsidiary, leaving the staff and operations in Bradenton, Fla.
Amadeus is testing its first run at customized data with five airlines with which the Madrid-based CRS has been working for the past year. Amadeus expects to begin offering customized information packages for airlines early next year, said Hans Joregensen, vice president of partner strategy.
Unlike Galileo, Amadeus decided to build the software to analyze CRS records for its airline customers. It currently charges airlines a little less than $1 for each travel agency location making bookings. So, for bookings made by 43,000 travel agencies, an airline would pay an estimated $41,000 a month for the tape or data transfer.
The Sabre Technology Solutions unit has long provided a service to analyze MIDT for airlines, and it too has stepped up its offering in the past two years.