NuTravel Introduces Online Fare Display Functionality
NuTravel Technology Solutions, which earlier this year rolled out its online booking product, Corporate Travel Solution, to agencies including Tzell Travel Group/CNG, TQ3 Canada and Advance Travel, recently announced the release of a first-to-market display functionality called Leg Fares.
With the booking tool enhancement, said NuTravel president and CEO Carmine Carpanzano, travelers can search for a multi-leg trip and see the cost of each segment. "A traveler can see that a 9 a.m. flight is $200 and an 8 a.m. flight is $100. For them, being able to see the price of each leg could, potentially, save the company 50 percent on a fare."
Carpanzano said that the development of Leg Fares was purely customer-driven and came at the behest of TQ3 Canada. As a result, the product also features functionality specific to the Canadian air travel market and allows travelers to view, in addition to segment cost, the class of service—Tango, Tango Plus, Latitude, Latitude Plus and Executive—for any given leg of travel.
"It's a very difficult kind of technology to produce since there are a lot of different scenarios that could potentially happen. Even the folks at Sabre told us that it was a hard endeavor," Carpanzano said. "There are still certain bugs that need to be fixed and we're working those out. One of the issues that comes up in certain cases is that, if you're running a search and pick a certain class of service for a particular leg that happens to not be available, the tool may come back with a higher price. We've been able to work through that issue and clarify that, when a specific leg is not available, here's the next tier up."
Some industry experts questioned the real value of having such fare-display functionality available to business travelers. "How many trips are not simple one ways or roundtrips? I would venture a guess that 90 percent or higher are simple round-trips. This functionality does not really have too much of an impact on the greatest percentage of transactions," said Bob Lichtman, partner at The Corporate Solutions Group, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based consulting firm.
Still, Lichtman said, "Information is power. The more info you can provide to the user, the better the purchasing decision. Whenever anyone is using the online booking tool, you're taking the purchasing decision out of the hands of a professional and putting it in the hands of the consumer. Giving them more info in a positive, useful manner is always a good thing."
Other booking tool providers said that corporate customers have not expressed significant interest in breaking down fare pricing for the end user in such a way prior to purchase.
"It's interesting that nobody's really developed this until now," according to Lichtman. "Especially because the information is all available in the native system, in the global distribution system."