Tri-Pen Integrates FlightStats Carrier Performance Data

Tri-Pen TravelMaster Technologies has partnered with Conducive Technology Corp. to integrate the real-time and historical flight performance data from Conducive's FlightStats product with its TravelMaster travel management solution. Released in August 2004, Tri-Pen's TravelMaster platform consolidates real-time travel bookings and corporate card data and now incorporates FlightStats flight status and tracking data into its suite of reporting and event-messaging capabilities.

FlightStats last week also announced a partnership with Hi-Mark Software.

"What is truly unique about this alliance and about this product is that it takes the data that we are just releasing to the travel industry—global, real-time, historical information from 325 multi-sourced carriers—and brings it together into a single record," said Meara McLaughlin, director of marketing and business development for Conducive Technology Corp. "The great synergy between Tri-Pen and FlightStats is that they came to the project saying, 'If you can measure it, you can manage it, and if you can manage it, you can improve it.' " McLaughlin said, with access to constant, up-to-the-minute updates on carrier performance, travel managers can leverage their supplier relationships in innovative ways, negotiating service-level agreements based on accurate, real-time information.

"By having the data within an hour of that flight completing, it really is actionable intelligence. If your flight on a certain carrier was delayed, and that was the third delay in three days, your travel manager can contact the airline and say, 'You've been undeserving my travelers and here's the data to prove it,' " said McLaughlin. "TravelMaster will become a great tool for using flight histories and outcomes for bringing air carriers into RFPs and saying, 'You have lesser performance than somebody else' and 'I'll owe you this much market share so long as on the routes I care about, you maintain X-level of service.' "

Ashton Adams, co-founder and chief technology officer of Tri-Pen, said the technology will impact corporate travelers directly. "There's a large-scale, macro level, but there's also a micro level," said Adams. "It's not only putting control back into the hands of whoever's managing travel, but also providing real-time flight information to the traveler." Through an integrated event-messaging component, TravelMaster pushes real-time flight information to business travelers based on pre-assigned, customizable conditions. "The traveler can say, when they make the booking or in their preferences, 'For this flight, I want to receive a flight update 240 minutes before departure, or if it hasn't departed, within a certain number of minutes from scheduled departure time.' If it's cancelled or diverted, you can tell the system to send you notification to your pocket PC or e-mail," Adams said.

Corporate security directors also can gain access to event messaging and receive notification of specific flight events in specific countries or regions. By integrating FlightStats with interactive event messaging and daily credit card feeds, Adams said travel managers can obtain a more accurate, comprehensive understanding of traveler behaviors and whereabouts. "Part of the security director component allows you to pull up a traveler to see the last flight they were on and their last corporate card transaction. That's all available now," Adams said.

"The other aspect of having the event messaging coupled with TravelMaster and FlightStats is that it goes both ways. The pocket PC device will query the traveler as the flight time lapses and say, 'Did you take the trip or not?' and it's transmitting that data to TravelMaster instantly. With event messaging and the corporate card data, within 24 hours, I know whether they checked into another hotel."

Meanwhile, FlightStats said the partnership with Hi-Mark would allow Hi-Mark customers to use flight history data for negotiating leverage and strategic air service management.