OAG To Launch Reservation Service With FCm

Flight information provider Official Airline Guide is launching an online reservation service for the first time through a strategic alliance with FCm Travel Solutions. OAG Travel Planner Pro will offer a rebranded version of FCm's corporate booking tool, itself a customized combination of Concur Cliqbook and AgentWare, which specializes in non-global distribution system content. FCm also will perform fulfilment, along with, if required, travel management services such as account management.

OAG Travel Solutions managing director David Rosen said Travel Planner Pro, which combines reservations with OAG's sophisticated itinerary searching capabilities, will be available in mid-March. Although aimed largely at the unmanaged business travel market, Rosen expects it to win larger managed clients too. "We have existing clients for our travel planning tool who have been asking us to provide reservations," he said. "Many are medium-sized businesses and some of them are large ones, but we are not going after the BPs and Hewlett-Packards of this world."

Rosen claimed that one of the chief benefits of Travel Planner Pro is that, unlike any other online reservations service, it will list every available flight on a route, even if the tool cannot book it. "Even if the flight was not available through our booking solution," he said, "you would know it was out there and could go and book it elsewhere."