Orbitz, the airline-owned online agency whose managed travel product this month is getting its first set of corporate clients, said it now can book domestic, non-interlining e-tickets in American Airlines' Sabre-hosted res system. By cutting out the Worldspan global distribution system, Orbitz said its supplier link technology would save AA $4 on Orbitz tickets and about $13 compared with a four-segment ticket booked by an agent in the GDS. Airlines for years have griped about rising GDS costs.
Worldspan owns part of Kinetics, the Lake Mary, Fla.-based company best known for self-service airline kiosks, which is developing with Orbitz a desktop application that allows customer service reps to view transaction records in multiple GDSs, said Orbitz chief Internet architect Leon Chism. The software accesses Orbitz's version of a GDS passenger name record, called the Orbitz Travel Plan, which resides on Orbitz's servers and takes in data from both the supplier-linked airline and the GDS PNR.
"This replaces all functions GDSs provide for agencies, including pricing, availability and customer service access," Chism said. "We reconfigured many of our systems, including accounting and customer service. We've been testing for four months and began booking tickets last week. We're in the midst of a 30-day ramp-up period, at the end of which we'll be selling 100 percent of eligible AA tickets through the supplier link."
AA is the first of about a dozen carriers Orbitz said will use the technology, which for AA is based on an application programming interface that is unique to the Sabre host system. Among the carriers Orbitz said would take advantage of the link, Alaska, US Airways, Hawaiian and Midwest Express also are hosted by Sabre. Other airlines mentioned include Worldspan-hosted Delta; United, which is on Galileo's Apollo; and America West, which uses EDS' Shares system. Orbitz expects US Airways to join the program later this year, as well as two other carriers it did not name. Sources said those are EDS-hosted Continental and Northwest, whose res system is run by Worldspan.
For corporate buyers considering using Orbitz, the development offers little in the way of direct cost savings or improved service. "Supplier link is not top of mind for the corporate customer," acknowledged Rick Weber, Orbitz vice president of business services.
However, the connection is noteworthy for its rarity and potential, if not its technological achievement. "It is a very small tip on a very big iceberg," said technology consultant and vendor Richard Eastman of The Eastman Group in Newport Beach, Calif. "It enables airlines to become more competitive and less influenced by the herd mentality that has prevailed when all fares posted on the GDSs were actually available to their major competitors before the fares were released to the public. With direct link connectivity, it will be possible to contract with single bulk buyers and effectively manage those purchases directly and interactively without every travel agent, consolidator or broker crying, 'me too.' "
"We see this as triggering other events, including a redefinition of GDS pricing for suppliers," said John Bray, who is vice president of technology in the travel and transportation industry group at Sapient, a business and technology consultancy in Cambridge, Mass. "Otherwise, it's largely a supplier lowering their own distribution costs. It's not really empowering airlines to seek new distribution channels other than Orbitz itself, and it's not necessarily that impactful, because Orbitz right now does not impact that many tickets in corporate travel."
Bray said the development would be more interesting technologically if it were using Extensible Markup Language, an Internet-based protocol that many see as a common business-to-business language. The latest enhancements to an ongoing industry effort to develop XML standards, through the OpenTravel Alliance, include a "comprehensive set of air messages for availability and booking incorporating airline flight detail information, pricing and fare rules and low-fare searches," OTA said last week.
That Orbitz did not use XML or the OTA specifications with American Airlines does not mean it cannot do so with other carriers, Chism said.
"The Sabre API afforded us a low level of implementation," according to Chism. "It brings all the work to Orbitz without much investment from American. OTA wasn't very far along in its specification when we started this work in the fall of 2000. If we had done XML, AA would have had to build an XML front door and more. Other carriers have different ideas."
As it completes the supplier link work with additional airlines, Orbitz also is seeking to improve on its access to availability information. "As part of these projects, we're moving to a scenario where, for example, AA availability data comes directly from AA, which should give us access to better quality and more accurate information," Chism said. To reduce the messaging burden on airline systems, Orbitz and other distribution players typically store availability data in batches, rather than access it in real time. It is a less than perfect method, however, that can leave some travelers unable to book itineraries they have priced.
Other companies that offer or have pursued direct connections with airline res systems include Amadeus' E-Travel, Sabre's GetThere and Navitaire, a unit of Accenture. An AA rep said the carrier takes non-GDS reservations only from Orbitz and Navitaire, whose primary user is its parent company (see story, page 3).