Inside Track - 1997-06-23

Amex To Track E-Tickets...

Among a series of American Express announcements at the NBTA conference in St. Louis next month will be the rollout of an e-mail product that tracks unused electronic tickets, said senior vice president of corporate services Jud Linville. While electronic ticketing usage is at an all-time high of 8 percent, the breakage--or percentage of tickets that are neither used nor refunded--is 30 times higher than that of paper tickets, Linville said. Historically, 0.2 percent of paper tickets go unused, but fully 6 percent of the purchasers of e-tickets are never heard from again.


...As Will Andersen

Andersen Consulting travelers are testing an updated version of the Via World Network system (BTN, Feb. 24) which, among other new features, provides electronic refund and reissue of e-tickets. In other Via news, Northwest Airlines last week joined US Airways as a "live" carrier in a 1,000-traveler beta test of the system. Via is working to add Continental Airlines; Worldspan will provide display of carriers and other suppliers that do not connect directly. Via plans a commercial launch in January.


Air Canada Also Bullish On E-Tickets

In a bolder-than-most prediction, Marc Rosenberg, Air Canada's vice president of sales and product distribution, said last week that he believes "paper tickets will be gone within 36 months."

Meanwhile, Rosenberg said he's been told the Department of Transportation will grant antitrust immunity to Air Canada's alliance with United "any day now, but I have heard that before." Referring to competition with the already immunized American-Canadian Airlines alliance, Rosenberg said, "I am disadvantaged when I walk into an account and they ask for a North American deal, because I can only give them Canada. But we're not aware of any accounts we've lost because of that."


Diners Picks Portable
Citicorp Diners Club and Portable Software Corp. will be announcing their first joint clients as a result of an alliance signed last week. Dumping plans to build its own expense reporting solution, Diners last fall went out to bid for a preferred provider of automated expense reporting solutions. "We sought customer input to define function areas critical to their expense management needs, then put suppliers to the test," said Diners' executive vice president of corporate sales Brenda Gaines. Gaines was careful to note that "our strategy is to work with any expense reporting solution chosen by our customers, but the alliance gives us the opportunity to make a recommendation for those customers seeking one."


Tech Suppliers Go Vertical

Calling travel "a growth market," Litton Computer Services formed a dedicated Travel/Hospitality Solutions Unit offering software development, system integration and consulting services for industry suppliers. "The industry has come out of its slump, and hotels are investing now in information systems and technology. We have good references and good skills, and we're going to go after that business," said vice president Peter Cremidas, who will head the unit. Headquartered in Woodland Hills, Calif., Litton already counts Hilton, HFS and Hawaiian Airlines as customers.

Meanwhile, as part of a company-wide effort to streamline segmented business units, EDS has merged its three separate travel-industry divisions into a single Travel and Transportation Logistics unit, headed by Dennis Stolkey. Where hotels and agencies previously were handled by a different unit than airlines, now EDS will look at travel as a single vertical market.


Global Deals Paying Off For United

United's global alliances already are paying off with increased passengers, revenues and a handful of global deals, prompting the airline to seek an additional partner in China, according to Chris Bowers, senior vice president-international. Just three weeks into a new code-share relationship with Air New Zealand, bookings for the next 11 months are up 31 percent to over 380,000 reservations, compared to the same period a year ago, Bowers said, and that "doesn't include anything with Varig, which starts in September, and Mexicana, which starts in July." In its annual report, United reported net annual passenger revenues of $100 million from alliances in 1996.

A working group ironing out the issues on global corporate deals has decided that the lead airline in forging such pacts will be the carrier with the greatest relationship with the corporation. To date, the "handful" of deals in place have involved only United and Lufthansa, but SAS is soon expected to join this effort.