Travelocity Business this month announced the overhauls of its front and back ends just as the company landed a small piece of a big account, Citigroup.
The nation's largest financial services firm for years has used Sabre corporate booking tools, but now will be processing some transactions through a TBiz call center in San Antonio that has been fitted with a number of new technologies and processes to handle corporate business. Meanwhile, Sabre also developed the second version of its Travelocity Business interface in an effort to combine the consumer site's ease of use with GetThere's management capabilities.
In the fulfillment center, new computer-integrated telephony and interactive voice response capabilities allow TBiz agents to view customer information in a new agent desktop tool before picking up the phone. Callers are identified by their incoming number if their companies have signed up to have dedicated agents or, alternatively, by a trip identification number provided by the caller. The agent desktop tools integrate the Sabre global distribution system display with the booking tool, allowing changes to apply to both. The system prevents the processing of manually entered changes that did not already pass through new proprietary quality control and midoffice tools.
TBiz also is offering globally consolidated reporting, including booking and billing information, generated from the new Sabre back-office system.
"The fulfillment center in concept is not new, although our ownership of it is," said Tom Wilkinson, senior director of global agency services for Travelocity Business. "Our customers in San Antonio for the past year have mostly been small and medium-size enterprises, using the same legacy technology you find in other fulfillment centers. Now, we've taken the past year and configured a service platform to support both Travelocity Business and the GetThere DirectCorporate tool."
GetThere had offered large-company fulfillment services through its partnership with Maritz Corporate Travel in St. Louis. Sabre is in talks with that center's new owner, Carlson Wagonlit Travel, about where the relationship will go from here. The GetThere DirectCorporate product remains the more customizable option for accounts with such needs as policy parameters down to the city pair level, integration with corporate ERP or HR systems, or GetThere's new online exchange capability
(see story), which initially will not be available in TBiz.
For less customized programs, Sabre has rebuilt its Travelocity Business user interface to accommodate simpler online enrollment that does not require human intervention, a policy display for travelers and other enhancements. In the company admin view, buyers now can load airline rewards program information and kick off the process of loading negotiated rates.
There are also new ways to add traveler users, including the capability to pick up their profiles from the consumer Travelocity.com site, while keeping personal and company information separate.
"We've had several accounts that had more than 25 percent of their user base already enrolled on the consumer site," said director of product marketing Andy Ross.
TBiz offers 25 standard Web-based reports, and its new interface offers travelers information on whether and why they are out of policy in the midst of their booking, rather than after it.
Other new features relate to the sorting of hotel displays and complete car rental pricing information. "There is a transition," Ross said. "We won't cut over existing customers until they are ready."
For Citigroup, only a portion of its business will be handled by TBiz, but that component is interesting in that it provides bilingual support in English and Spanish out of San Antonio.
Incumbent American Express will retain the vast majority of Citigroup, which ranked 12th on BTN's list of the largest corporate travel accounts in 2003 with an estimated U.S. booked air volume of $143 million. Citigroup was a client of both American Express and Rosenbluth International until the former bought the latter last year. Officials at Amex, TBiz and Citigroup refused to comment.
"The Citigroup people have always been very progressive," said Thom Nulty, a partner with the Corporate Solutions Group consulting firm. "This may be an example of one of the real advantages Sabre may have in that there are so many in the marketplace using the GetThere product. If this is an evolution of GetThere, that could make it an easy transition for a lot of people, which may make the TMCs, which have distributed GetThere, a little nervous."
Where and how GetThere is positioned within Sabre remains a point of confusion in the marketplace, said Travel Tech Consulting president Norm Rose. "GetThere itself has become a neutral issue in the marketplace," he said. "The secret of TBiz is what's in the call center."
In its latest realignment, Sabre moved GetThere, TBiz and other corporate offerings under the umbrella led by former TBiz president Ellen Keszler, who is now president of Sabre Holdings' Corporate Solutions. Former American Airlines exec and most recently a general manager at TravelWeb Scott Hyden this week will be named general manager of Travelocity Business. Bev Heinritz is general manager of GetThere.