I:FAO Upgrades Automated Policy Revisions On Cytric

I:FAO earlier this month updated its Cytric online booking tool with an air policy administration tool that enables travel managers and their travel agents to communicate air policies to travelers via a single interface.

The Air Policy Manager enables site administrators to reconfigure the online booking tool to make changes for six air policy criteria, including setting class restrictions between geographic locations, allowing flexibility for employee rank and location, and trip duration restrictions. The tool links to bookings made on the Sabre, Galileo, Amadeus and Abacus global distribution systems and through direct connection.

Later this year, I:FAO plans to complement the Air Policy Manager with the Airline Priority Manager, which would enable buyers to communicate airline-specific policies and booking class and route restrictions for multi-segment, multi-regional itineraries. For example, "If you are flying from the United States to Asia and you know which airline you should take, and then within Asia on another airline you want to have a specific booking class because you have corporate rates," Beres told BTN. "This combination will be defined as one policy."

Meanwhile, the company also has leveraged its travel manager and traveler dashboard system with the launch of the Support Agent Dashboard, which displays individual traveler history of offline and online bookings for both GDS and direct bookings. Before, agents could not change, cancel or make a new booking on Cytric. Agents now also have access to rail and hotel bookings made on the system.

Also in 2008, the Frankfurt-based company plans to continue to add direct connections with suppliers. It recently added Air Canada, undisclosed low-cost European carriers, a Chinese airline and European car rental operator CARO.