NY Agents Pool Tech Effort
<I>Franklin Lakes, N.J.</I> - If technology is an increasingly vital part of a travel agency's menu of services, how are smaller agencies with limited budgets to compete with the megas? Six agencies in the New York area think they have found the answer: They have pooled their resources to hire a technology developer.
The six members of the Tri-State Travel Association--Austin Travel, Melville, N.Y.; Fugazy International Travel and Sea Gate Travel of New York; Robustelli World Travel, Stamford, Conn.; Stratton Travel Management, Franklin Lakes, N.J.; and Worldtek in New Haven, Conn.--have hired New Media Solutions to help them choose, develop and deliver technology products that all the partners will share.
The Tri-State Travel Association was formed in September to pool purchasing and technology resources and to enhance service to mutual customers (BTN, Sept. 9, 1996). The regional agency group serves a combined client base of 4,500 corporate customers with an annual travel volume of $800 million.
The group's first project will be a "Web-based data warehouse" to which data from the six agencies will be downloaded. That will allow the group to pool its data for negotiating purposes--and will allow the agencies' individual customers to access the site and create their own ad hoc pre- and post-ticketing reports.
Next up will be a Web-based group travel program that will allow meeting planners to enter potential departure and destination cities, and retrieve a pricing grid outlining the cost of moving the group to each one. "These projects are a question of survival to many agencies," said Rock Blanco, president of Medfield, Mass.-based New Media Solutions. "They are things most agencies are still doing by hand that can be streamlined for greater efficiencies."
Stewart Austin, information technology vice president of Austin Travel, said the partnership will allow Tri-State members to build proprietary and unique software they all will share. "Anyone in the group could build these products on their own," he said, "but it's easier if we have everyone's input--and everyone's cash."
Blanco said his goal is to be "the Home Depot of travel technology," calling on "the Richard Eastmans and Seth Perelmans" of the industry to develop a warehouse of travel software components.
"I'm modeling what EDS has done on a much smaller scale, bringing on board agencies that want to outsource technology development and helping them determine what they want to do to position themselves in the market," he said. "I'm going to stock the shelves with travel applications that customers can download directly from the Web."
Each agency will draw up its own technology wish list, and the group will pick the projects most in demand by the greatest number of members. Blanco also has made his own recommendations to the group for technology projects for 1997.
Online booking systems are not a great priority, Austin said, because many of the agencies already are working with Xtra Online--with which Blanco also is affiliated--or with Sabre.