Odyssey System Makes Speed A National Pastime

<B> Odyssey System Makes Speed A National Pastime</B>

By Lynn Woods

National Car Rental has rolled out Global Odyssey, an entirely new reservation system designed to speed up the rental process, enable agents to provide customers with complete rate information at the time of reservation and prevent booking errors, among other improvements.

The network system, which replaces National's old mainframes, some dating back to the 1970s, represents an investment of $95 million, in addition to the costs of training, development and installation, said William Lobeck, president of the Automotive Rental Group at Republic Industries, National's parent company.

Odyssey has been tested since December in two cities, Charlotte, N.C., and Daytona Beach, Fla., and now is rolling out in the United States and Canada at the rate of 125 locations a week.

By the end of this year, Odyssey will have the ability to accept reservations on a global basis, though the counter technology and back-office components won't be live at European locations until the second quarter of 2000. By that time, said Lobeck, "Theoretically, you could rent a car in Manhattan and return it in London."

The point, Lobeck said, is to have customers provide their personal and preference information only once, and at their convenience, so that National can move travelers to their cars with "no more questions, questions, questions at the counter."

With the new system, National has the ability to compile a single driver profile, based on information captured at the time of the renter's first reservation. Once loaded into the system, the profile is available at every rental location and can be automatically called up during each subsequent reservation. Special preferences, such as make and color of car, can be tracked, so that renters don't have to make the same requests each time they travel. Personalized services for VIPs and other special customers also can be added to the profile.

For corporate accounts, the new system will provide "more data to the corporation and the ability to customize things and create reports that are unique to the account without hundreds of hours of programming," Lobeck said.

The company also can more easily identify if a corporate account's costs are increasing (for example, due to increases in liability rates), how these compare to other accounts, and how they impact the corporate rate at the negotiating table.

The system's real-time links with the global distribution systems will eliminate any lag in updating availability and price data, ensuring that the information available to travel agents and travelers using on-line booking systems is in real time.

The system also will enable reservationists to provide complete rate information to the customer, including the total cost of the rental and a breakdown of such itemized charges as taxes and airport fees, at the time the reservation is booked, so there will be no surprises at the time of pick up or billing.

International rates can be quoted in local currencies or converted into dollars or other currencies. And coupons or vouchers now can be validated at the time of reservation, rather than when the traveler shows up at the rental counter.

Because Odyssey is an open system, added Lobeck, it also offers the opportunity to integrate easily with new technologies coming down the pike. A newly mandated wiring bus in new cars from General Motors and Ford, for example, is designed to perform diagnostic tests--but one day, it could be used to automatically scan odometer and fuel levels in cars being returned to the lot and feed the data directly into Odyssey.

The new system also will handle reservations made over National's Web site, replacing the fulfillment services that until now have been handled by Microsoft's Expedia. Lobeck said Web bookings for Alamo Rent a Car, National's leisure-oriented sister company, have been increasing 150 to 200 percent month over month since last fall, and he expects this year to double the 1997 volume of slightly more than $25 million.

In anticipation of possible backups at National's Emerald Aisle lots, due to renters getting their cars much faster than in the past, agents in the lots are being equipped with handheld units to help expedite the process of getting out of the exit booths, said National president Robert Briggs.

A version of Odyssey also will be installed at Alamo by year-end, Lobeck added.

At National, implementation has been a formidable undertaking, involving the replacement of all "dumb terminals" with 6,500 PCs at 1,400 counters, 10,000 days worth of programming time, 7,500 days in testing, 200,000 hours in training, 7,000 employees and the loading of 22 million rates into the system.

In all, the company has spent about $95 million in capital costs on Odyssey and another $95 million in staff training and installation.

At the New York press conference highlighting the Odyssey rollout, a humorous video featured a Rodney Dangerfield-like customer expressing the frustration of many car rental buyers with what has been a slow and impersonal experience. "The only time I hear the word 'sir,' " he lamented, "is when it's attached to the word 'charge.