A new tool available from Galileo allows its global distribution system travel agency subscribers to integrate bookings from Swabiz, Southwest Airlines' corporate booking portal. Southwest, which has a long history of limiting access by distributors to its product, said it is studying the matter.
Dubbed Flight Integrator, the Galileo tool connects agents to either southwest.com or Swabiz, allows them to view fares and book flights on behalf of clients, pulls data from the Southwest booking and automatically creates a passive segment in the passenger name record, according to a Galileo newsletter posted on the company's Web site.
"As a non-participant carrier, Southwest bookings require extra labor to search and book flights, and even more effort to create passive PNR segments manually," Galileo said. "With only a couple of clicks, you can now make Southwest bookings and create all necessary accounting and reporting data." Galileo's newsletter said Flight Integrator is free for Apollo users but the company was not available for additional comment.
Southwest director of corporate sales Rob Brown last month said the airline is aware of the Galileo tool and "looking into it." Interestingly, Southwest three years ago partnered with Galileo to provide Swabiz users with access to preferred hotel suppliers
(BTN, May 7, 2001).
Southwest is legendary for its strict control of distribution. It does not participate in three of the four primary GDSs--its participation in Sabre only is at the most basic level--and it continues legal wrangling with Internet "screen scrapers" that pull Southwest information from the carrier's Web site without authorization. Southwest in mid-2001 stopped filing its fares with the Airline Tariff Publishing Co. in order to prevent Orbitz from using the information
(BTN, July 16, 2001).
Despite rumors circulating in some travel management circles, Brown said there were no plans to allow any corporate travel entities "to book Southwest in an automated way," other than Swabiz, which "remains a standalone solution." TRX, however, markets an agency dial-up solution for Southwest bookings called Southwest Direct that it describes as "the only third-party system aligned with the airline to provide such access."
Interest by other parties in aggregating at the point of sale Southwest information and direct bookings is driven by increasing corporate use of the Swabiz portal
(BTN, March 30).