TravelNet Service Bureau To Automate Corp. Bookings

<H1> TravelNet Service Bureau To Automate Corp. Bookings</H1>By Cheryl Rosen

<I>Santa Clara, Calif. </I>- In a travel technology market where many customers are ready to try an automated booking system-but fewer are ready to buy one-TravelNet Inc. is about to debut an interesting concept: a service bureau that will handle the installation and maintenance of its Voyager system on a fully outsourced basis.

When it begins signing up corporate and agency customers later this month, the TravelNet Voyager Service Center will be "the first fully integrated system, with full corporate travel management and full policy compliance, offered this way in the industry," said TravelNet marketing and sales vice president Jim McNellis.

The Service Center is offering three pricing models, depending on the level of service. The highest level-which includes automated bookings filtered through corporate policy, and accessing both agency and individual corporate negotiated rates, as well as "PNR finishing to the extent possible with current automated technology"-will cost $7.50 per complete PNR, including air, hotel and car.

Two less-expensive pricing options also are available: simple automated bookings without any corporate filters or negotiated rates will run $3.90 per PNR; and adding an agency's negotiated discounts but not customizing to an individual corporation will cost $5 per PNR.

Previously, Carlson Wagonlit announced rack rates of $9.95 per user per month for customers who buy the Voyager system from them. Sabre has said it will charge $4 to $7.50 per PNR for buyers of its booking system, Business Travel Solutions.

McNellis said the Voyager Service Center is designed to "answer our customers' growing demand for an easy, more cost-effective way to automate travel booking, policy compliance and contract management. It takes time to bring an automated booking system on site-and this offers a fast and simple way to set something up. All the travel managers we spoke with were interested in this as a way to implement an automated booking system as rapidly as they think they need to."

McNellis acknowledged that about half of TravelNet's customers are looking at the service bureau as a temporary solution in a turbulent time of travel technology development, and eventually plan to bring a system in-house. But that still leaves a sizable market of customers who will remain on a permanent basis.

Like the TravelNet Voyager booking system, the Service Center will allow travelers to book air, hotel and car reservations from their personal computer or workstation. To book a trip, travelers will click on the TravelNet icon on their computer screens and enter a password to access a list of flights and fares. Common "what if" scenarios like "What will it cost if I stay over Saturday night?" also can be explored.

After the traveler makes a selection from the list, the reservation will be sent to the Service Center in Santa Clara, Calif., which will book the trip and forward the request to the agency for ticketing.

TravelNet offers bookings on Sabre or Apollo. McNellis declined comment on whether Sabre's recently announced $3 online booking fee (<I>BTN</I>, Oct. 7) will apply to Service Center customers, noting that the Sabre fee is charged to agencies, not to technology vendors. He added that TravelNet offers volume discounts, but they are industrywide and not negotiable. "We want to have a level playing field for all our customers," he said.

The system will be available in TravelNet's original client-server form, and in Internet or intranet versions. McNellis said that TravelNet could hook up a new customer up within one to three weeks of signing a contract, but he expects an initial backlog of customers to push that to four or five weeks in the center's first few months of operation.

Initial response from travel managers was overwhelmingly positive. "I want to put an online booking product on our intranet that interfaces with the agency for quality control, ticketing and accounting-and a lot of them are not on line with all CRSs, or need some interface work," said Cyndi Perper, corporate travel services director at Colgate-Palmolive Co. in New York. "This sounds good: Pay for what you use-a scenario that allows flexibility in a changing techno world without up-front investment. But we will have to see how it actually works when it is rolled out."

Another travel manager who is testing automated systems said, "This is the type of setup we prefer. With all the changes that are constantly taking place, it's easier to make changes when everything is at the supplier's location. If we have a system in-house and have to maintain it, I'm not sure we could keep up with the pace of development."

While McNellis expects corporate customers to be a big market for the service bureau, he also sees the product as one that regional and midsized agencies could contract for and offer customers, as a way to cut their own internal costs.