Travel Agencies Integrating For The Millennium

<B> Travel Agencies Integrating For The Millennium</B>

By Sarah Welt

With the final 12-month homestretch to the year 2000 fast approaching, corporations are requesting with increasing urgency that their vendors put their compliance plans in writing. Travel agencies, for their part, are doing their best to comply without making promises they can't keep--namely predicting whether the vendors upon whom they rely will be ready.

Agencies have been running inventories of software and hardware; discovering which systems need to be upgraded; selecting the most critical systems to focus on first; hiring third-party consultants to help get them up to speed; asking vendors for Y2K status reports; testing their own products; and finally, coming up with contingency plans in case something--or everything--fails.

Travel managers, meanwhile, are not just waiting for D-Day. They want written guarantees that their employees' travel will not be interrupted, even if it means travel agencies will be writing tickets by hand.

At this point, said Management Alternatives' president Harold Seligman, "We automatically ask in RFPs if agencies are compliant, and if not, when they will be."

Indeed, Seligman said that his biggest concern with Y2K "is not with the travel agencies but with Federal Aviation Administration--that their computers are not going to be ready to control the skies on January 1, 2000." Like a number of insiders, he added, "I am not going to book travel for the first two weeks of January."

Tom Wilkinson, president of the Arlington, Va.-based Travel Management Group, said the travel agencies' main role is that of integrator, to make sure they interface with both clients and the airline systems and keeps tabs on Y2K progress.

"Several clients have policies asking all suppliers for Y2K compliance reports, but the travel agencies themselves are largely dependent on third parties," Wilkinson said. "There is little agencies can do except keep clients informed and try to avoid suppliers that don't look adequately prepared."

Keeping that in mind, most travel agencies are on track to be ready by early 1999. Carlson Wagonlit, for example, has targeted all "mission critical" systems to be ready by the end of this year, and has created a compliance lab that simulates a Y2K environment to test its systems. "We are already able to book there for Y2K and it's working. It actually operates in dates that range past 2000," said vice president of global systems development Loren Brown.

While BTN has reported that Carlson's European operations were lagging behind the United States (<I>BTN,</I> June 22), Brown said they have caught up rapidly in the last six months. Latin America and Asia also are in good shape, he added.

Sites in both the United States and Europe are being outfitted with new back-office systems. In the United States, the first wave of clients transitioned to its new MatrixPlus system in August, and the rest of Carlson's clients should be on it by year- end. In Europe, Carlson Wagonlit offices are being upgraded to a new Y2K version of its Wings system.

Navigant International, which has grown largely by acquisition, has the daunting task of making sure its diverse systems here in the United States are ready. Navigant's corporate controller, John Coffman, has been in charge of the process. Each company has teams of three to ensure that all Y2K issues are addressed and give frequent updates to the board, executive committee and president. Navigant is shooting for its major systems to be ready Feb. 1.

Navigant's first companywide initiative is consolidating its back-office systems onto Amadeus' Global Max platform, and that is rushing their timetable even more. "Because of a backlog of acquisitions we are seeing a lot of smaller travel agencies--the ones we are looking to acquire--not doing a lot with Y2K, and we're having to put them into our plan rather quickly," Coffman said. "We need to get Global Max in time or convert to something else in the meantime to meet the February goal."

Navigant's Associated Travel of Santa Ana, Calif., said it is well on the way to Y2K compliance. It has spent about $100,000 on Y2K upgrades for its agency business, and significantly more for its technology company, Aqua Software. "We plan to have everything ready by December and I'd say we are 98 percent there already," said president Tom Nulty.

Maritz Travel officials also said the systems over which it has control are on track for Y2K. It has been compiling a complete inventory of all software and hardware applications and then assigning a level of criticality to each tool. If a Maritz product is not compliant, the company will commit the resources to fix it, said director of research and development Victor Havens, though he noted that anything written in the last three years is Y2K compliant.

The company does not yet have confirmation on the Y2K compliance of its back-office system, Sabre's ADS product, however. Additionally, Havens said he is not satisfied with the Sabre terminal emulator that runs on a PC and connects to the Sabre host, which is Y2K ready. "Sabre has committed to getting these two things Y2K compliant and they are in our June 1999 time frame, but until it's proven to be compliant we are still keeping it on a list of things we're concerned about," Havens said.

In the event systems are not ready when it's time to book travel for 2000, Havens said Maritz can book outside the CRSs through its group desk. It already has booked space for groups past the 2000 deadline.

World Travel Partners plans to be ready by Feb. 4--the first day a trip can be booked in the CRS for Jan. 1, 2000. It scrapped a Y2K testing system it began building in June when it found free Internet software that did the same thing.

WTP has consulted with legal counsel to make sure it doesn't put anything in writing it cannot deliver. "We are doing the best we can, especially since we are so heavily dependent on third-party systems," said director of information technology services Jennifer Drew. Inundated with client questionnaires, she said, "we have chosen not to respond to the actual questions at this point and instead use the letters we've developed with our lawyers' assistance."

Rosenbluth International also has been active in keeping clients involved, sending out Y2K communications once a month. It is using computer consultants and plans to be ready by December 1998. "We are making good, steady progress," said CIO Neil Bibeau. "We have identified 80 different projects for Y2K. For any company, the scope of this is unprecedented.