<H1> Inside Trac</H1><H3>Buyers Build Their Own Systems</H3>Even as technology vendors up the ante of automated product offerings for the corporate market, some travel managers are determined to go it alone. <B>Sony Pictures</B> in Culver City, Calif., is building a fully automated booking and expense reporting system in-house. Accustomed to handling its own travel through an on-site rent-a-plate, the company has 18 on-site agents handling $15 million in air volume, and prides itself on being "totally autonomous" from its agency, <B>McGregor Travel</B>.
"Our travel obviously involves very big names, so we are very concerned about security, plus we have the advantage of having 8,000 production people on our own staff," said director of corporate travel services Jack Gonzalez. "Our plan is not to give travelers choice: They will enter the time they want to go and what time they want to arrive, and the system will choose the carrier."
Another corporation is going a step further: In effect, the company is building a mini-CRS of its own. Said an industry insider, "They are building a system that will go direct to the inventory of preferred vendors without a CRS or an agency being involved, via an intranet or by direct access through a network solution."
The anonymous company plans to begin talking prices and fees with travel vendors in about three months, the source said, and to have a fully functional system in operation by next spring.
<H3>Marriott Sets Up Web Firewalls</H3> How can corporate buyers book hotel rooms over the Internet without outsiders accessing their negotiated discounted rates? <B>Marriott</B> thinks it has come up with the answer: It is preparing to issue its corporate clients an authorization code, which they will simply type in when cued by a prompt during the online reservations process. If the code is correct, the special rate appears.
"I think we are going to run with this in the next two to three months," said Marriott marketing automation manager for Europe and the Middle East Peter Dennis. He acknowledged there is a potential security problem if a member of the public obtains the special code Marriott gives to a client. "But they would be silly to do that because on arrival, we may ask them for their ID," he said.
<H3>TravelWeb Tests Site Enhancements</H3><B>TravelWeb</B>, like <B>Marriott</B>, also is trying to make its Web reservations services more relevant to the corporate market. It is now beta testing a private site-effectively an intranet-with an unidentified travel agency, said TravelWeb president John F. Davis III. The site will enable the client to set up traveler profiles in the system and display the rates of preferred suppliers only.
The Web page also will be able to reconcile booking data with checkout data. "People who have booked through airline systems have never been able to track that data," Davis said.
TravelWeb currently offers direct online bookings for 8,000 hotels, and 280 airlines are expected to come online within the next month. Davis said TravelWeb is looking at ways of introducing room auctions and last-minute discounts for empty rooms, much along the lines of the seat auctions and Net SAAver<B> </B>fares piloted recently by<B> American Airlines</B> on the Internet.
<H3>Zone Fares At TWA?</H3>A <B>TWA</B> sales executive said the airline is considering implementing zone fares for meetings, although "it's not a big deal now." The carrier, which still pays full commissions to travel agents, is "not aggressive on net fares," the source said.
<H3>Another Leap For Smart Cards</H3>Smart card applications are expected to take off by 1998 as 17 banking entities on four continents, including<B> AT&T </B>and <B>Wells Fargo & Co.</B> in North America, have invested $115 million in <B>Mondex International Ltd.</B>, an electronic cash system introduced in Britian last year. The 17 stockholders will launch Mondex in Europe, North America, Asia, Australia and New Zealand and other banks are expected to join the project.
The card contains a computer chip that stores electronic cash and some transaction data. Customers will be able to use Mondex at retail outlets, over the Internet and to transfer electronic cash from their bank accounts using telephones or ATMs. In addition, customers will be able to send their electronic cash to other parties using Mondex-compatible phones.
In the United States, Wells Fargo expects to expand a pilot that involves 800 employees and 22 merchants in San Francisco. Although applications for travelers aren't yet known, AT&T and Wells Fargo see the benefits this could bring to the market.
Smart card development also received another boost as <B>Europay International, MasterCard International</B> and <B>Visa International </B>announced an updated version of joint standards for the cards.