Genisys Automates Limo Booking Through The CRSs

<B> Genisys Automates Limo Booking Through The CRSs</B>

By Lynn Woods

<I>Union, N.J.</I> - Genisys Reservation Systems has developed an automated system that enables corporate travel agents to book nationwide ground transportation--the last holdout from automation--through the Apollo or Sabre CRS.

First introduced three and a half years ago under the name Corporate Travel Link, the system originally was tied to a network of affiliate limousine companies. After finding that companies wanted to pick their own providers, however, the developers went back to the drawing board and in June unveiled Genisys.

More than ten ground transportation providers, most in the Northeast, are currently connected to Genisys, and president Larry Burke said the number is increasing daily, with two new vendors in the Midwest about to sign up.

To participate, a limousine company must have a personal computer, but does not need an Apollo or Sabre CRS terminal.

Although in some instances getting service providers to sign on is "an educational process," in the long term "there's more productivity, rather than costs, associated with our product," said Genisys director Mark Kenny.

Genisys recently formed a partnership with New York-based TranspoNet Companies. Under the agreement, TranspoNet will provide a link in the back office systems of service providers that will enable bookings made through the Genisys system to flow seamlessly into the dispatch system. The link will further speed up the process and eliminate the possibility of errors.

"What Genisys is doing is going to revolutionize the ground transportation booking process," said John Greene, president of CTS International, a limo and sedan company based in Braintree, Mass. Greene, who currently owns a fleet of 65 vehicles, is using Genisys with five corporate accounts. He expects that number to double in the next month.

"I believe we can increase our reservation volume over the next three months by 35 to 40 percent" using the system, he said.

Although in a few instances service providers are passing on the cost of the new technology to their corporate clients, in most cases the corporation pays nothing. Genisys installs the software on the company's local area network and provides free training to the travel agents who will use it. It also has a 24-hour help number.

By piggybacking on existing CRSs, the Genisys system links the limo reservation to the traveler's passenger name record. Genisys takes the coded CRS data and converts it into readable English, and then "scrapes" the PNR to eliminate extraneous information, such as number of flight segments. After authorizing the credit card number, Genisys transmits the data to the limo company through Windows.

Genisys takes care of all the billing, using the negotiated rate specified by the service provider for each corprate account.

Ths system offers several advantages over standard bookings that can be made through Sabre or Worldspan. For one thing, it's faster: Genisys allows the service provider to receive and process the reservation and assigns a confirmation number at the time of booking, instaneously. With the standard CRS booking, the service provider receives the entire PNR and must detach the ground transportation reservation, add a confirmation number, and work it into the back-office system before responding to the agent.

Genisys is also an economical option, as ground transportation companies listed in CRSs must pay to have a CRS terminal in their office, while with Genisys, all that is required at a personal computer. Genisys absorbs the cost of CRS fees.

For corporate travel departments, Genisys provides a handle on overall ground transportation costs by capturing data and providing pre-programmed monthly reports. Customized reports also are available at an additional fee.

For some companies, this reporting function has shed light on a segment of the corporate travel budget whose total cost often has remained undocumented. Kenny said that one large pharmaceutical company using the system was shocked to discover that its total ground transportation spend was $4 million a year--about four times the company's estimate.

One client of CTS that recently went online with Genisys is GenRad, a manufacturer of test equipment based in Westford, Mass.--about an hour from the nearest airport. About 250 of the 650 employees at GenRad's headquarters book sedans.

"Previously, there was a lot of calling back and forth, and also a great possibility of mistakes," said Jude Draper, GenRad's travel and corporate meetings manager.

The switch not only has sliced telephone time between GenRad's travelers and its agency--since travelers now must call in only if they need to change reservations within 24 hours of pick up--but also has resulted in "an electronic trail" for each transaction that Draper can follow to pinpoint where in the process errors that do occur took place. Having the booking wedded to the flight informationa also is helpful, Draper said.

Why not simply book sedans and limos through a national network that offers its own automated reservation system? Draper said that costs too much. In the past, GenRad had gotten proposals from other vendors, but rejected them because their rates were higher than CTS's--and the service no better than the current vendor's, which Draper termed "excellent."

At CTS, meanwhile, Green said he's also testing an intranet link developed by TranspoNet to allow travelers or travel arrangers to make agentless reservations. He also expects electronic billing to be available through the Internet next month.