Low-Cost Booking Software

<H1>Low-Cost Booking Software</H1><H3>By Cheryl Rosen</H3><I>Dallas </I>- Even as the mega-agencies and computer reservations systems prepare for rollouts of large-scale automated booking systems, a relatively new software company has hit the market with a low-cost system that allows travelers to book their reservations in real time-and only in compliance with corporate policy.

Xtra On-Line Corp., which was set up four years ago specifically to develop this product, has signed up 30 agencies to use its software, which also is called Xtra On-Line, and to serve as distributor to the corporate market. Participating agencies pay $1,500 for a license, plus $50 per branch and 15 cents per minute connect time (after the first hour, which is free). Corporate clients pay $9 per "concurrent user"-the estimated number of users who will be accessing the system simultaneously. Xtra On-Line president Rick Kumpf estimated that a corporation with 100 travelers will have nine or 10 concurrent users.

Kumpf said that in addition to the currently available dial-up access, the company will offer an Internet connection by the end of this month. Agencies using the Internet to access the system will be charged a flat fee of about $1 per transaction rather than connect time.

For agencies with customers interested in automated booking systems but no product or expertise of their own, Xtra On-Line offers an opportunity to easily install a system that comes customized to the agency's requirements, with its pseudo-city codes and preferred properties preset, Kumpf said.

For corporate travel managers, the system offers an opportunity to test interest in, and usage of, automated booking systems without a major outlay of cash up front. And Xtra On-Line can be set up to include corporate policy, negotiated rates and traveler preferences. "A detailed seat map will come up, but travelers will only be able to select seats in coach, for example, if that's what their corporate policy mandates," Kumpf said.

After the user makes a reservation, the system automatically performs a series of quality-control and file-finishing tasks, and queues the reservation directly to the travel agency.

"Xtra On-Line's strategy is to make use of the travel-agency distribution system instead of bypassing it," said travel technology consultant Rock Blanco of Medfield, Mass., who helped install the system at Aquarius Travel in Burlington, Mass. "Its process in terms of the software is easy and concise. On both the desktop application and the Internet connection, the connect time is one or two seconds. I've seen people who have never used the software before make a complete booking in a minute."

Acknowledging that Xtra On-Line is not the answer for a major corporation looking for the kind of complete booking and expense reporting solution the agencies and CRSs are planning, Blanco said the product nonetheless has a place in the rapidly growing spectrum of technological solutions.

"It's inexpensive, and you can make a booking on it in 30 seconds," he said. "I think that's good enough for a lot of customers."

Another early adopter, Tom McIntyre, chairman of Passageways Travel in Traverse City, Mich., is eager to see if that's true.

"We're just getting started, so it's too early to tell how well it will work," he said. "But we'll be beta testing the system with about 10 corporate customers, and we will have a lot better information in about a month.