Travel Suppliers Should Be Held To Data Standards

<B>Travel Suppliers Should Be Held To Data Standards</B>

There are several important issues that corporate travel managers should consider in order to enhance the quality of their data:

Benihana travel management: Corporations more frequently are using electronic booking products, quasi-integrated products and direct airline portals. As the value stream is fractured with new entrants and products, it is essential that information be the "glue" to wed systems. Travel managers will be pushed to fragment their booking and business processes, so it is essential they require their suppliers to provide a reliable and comprehensive data handoff.

GDS handoff: The GDSs generally have improved data handoff in 2000, with Galileo making a substantial investment. Amadeus outside North America uses validated air transaction data and has no plans to change that policy. This is unlike other GDSs, which provide segment value handoff. Because that feed is provided to Amadeus agencies, those agencies cannot provide reliable carrier and market numbers to their corporate customers. Amadeus' ability to hand off reliable segment information would do much to improve European data.

Mega agencies: Data from a mega varies greatly between countries. This is because of agency acquisitions, differences in business practices, back-office systems and GDS feeds. Missing data elements are not obvious when consolidated. Travel buyers should be aware that different countries provide different levels of data quality.

Data nirvana: Difficulties continue in the quest for the "perfect world of data," encompassing pre-ticketing through expense reporting data. Much work is required to normalize and optimize data within the travel lifecycle. The data specification alone for a GDS is more than 100 pages in length. Consequently, a travel manager will spend enormous time sorting endless data streams and normalizing countless elements, with marginal impact, potentially drowning in data with no time for analysis. The fact remains that the business purpose of each step in the travel lifecycle is very different, and keys to link data are fraught with errors.

Aggregation: Incomplete numbers and the averaging of numbers continue to dilute travel managers in effective negotiation. For travel managers to be successful, they must be able to report and manage contracted terms, not just market averages. This includes the ability to manage cabins (F, C and Y), markets (by origin and destination), and journey (connection to offline or alliance carriers).

No Perfect Solution: The "Best of Class" companies have done what is currently best for them, and it continues to evolve. Each of these companies will have a very different strategy and use of information in the next few years.

There are foundational steps for travel managers. First, recognizing that the "ball" is air negotiations, which comprise nearly half of T&E spend.

Information sharing is a business requirement; travel data consolidation should:

1. Specify a data standard, such as the Prism Xport, as a bid requirement for data handoff. This can be provided to GDSs, e-booking, agency and expense management products.

2. Require e-booking products and airline booking portals to provide data handoff.

3. Require agencies outside the United States to provide segment value air data, not validated carrier data.

Travel managers have done much to improve the quality of their data. Holding suppliers to a data standard helps to ensure the success of their travel management program.


<I>Les Baker is vice president of Albuquerque, N.M.-based Prism Group Inc., which provides a data export standard, Prism Xport, as a public service to the travel industry.