ITT Industries corporate travel department manager Jennifer Steinke said her company is considering using such startups as G2 SwitchWorks because the "old language" and "old technology" of global distribution systems are challenging to new agents. However, Steinke said during the Res-Expo conference in March, experienced travel counselors tend to be uncomfortable with newer, mouse-based interfaces, creating what amounts to one of the "biggest challenges on the operations side."
Steinke wants to "take it to a more user-friendly environment [but] trying to transform them from that 'green screen' is really difficult. It would be ideal to be able to take my online booking tool, and the policies built into it, down to the agents and the back office. That's travel heaven: One place to go where they all can communicate."
It's a problem many have faced and few have solved. For a variety of reasons, lots of travel agents are committed to using the cryptic command formats on which they were trained and with which they feel they can be most productive.
"We had lengthy discussions about developing a better graphical user interface (GUI)," said Tzell Travel Group business development manager David Holyoke. "But a lot of agents are not that savvy in the point-and-click environment. It's all perception, but in many agents' minds, it's more of a hassle to move a mouse or tab through boxes [than use cryptic commands]. We decided it wasn't worth the investment."
According to Steinke, "All the GDSs need to take the next step and make that interface user-friendly."
Yet, GDS company executives say they they have done just that, but continue to find that changing agent behavior is harder than they expected. Two years ago, Amadeus was planning by 2007 to drop its cryptic formats. "It won't happen quite that quickly," said Amadeus North America senior vice president of products and support Robert Lowry. The company estimates that 70 percent of agents continue to favor old-language formats, particularly because that's the mode in which agents prefer to book air travel. About 90 percent of Amadeus terminals are equipped with its GUI, known as Amadeus Selling Platform.
Officials with both Amadeus and Sabre said agents are more quickly adopting GUIs for car and hotel bookings than for air.
Sabre Travel Network has been developing graphical interfaces for ten years, and its latest iteration is available in half of Sabre locations. "It's probably less than half of the booking volume, and that's partly reflective of the fact that smaller agencies have been the earlier adopters of mySabre," said Sabre Travel Network North America senior vice president Chris Kroeger. "It's now starting to get into bigger agencies; Amex is using it in the United Kingdom. Increasingly, even heavy format users will start seeing the benefits of the GUI, [but] there is tremendous productivity and speed linked to formats, so they will be part of the platform as far out as we can see."
Referring to her company's Go interface, Worldspan CIO Sue Powers said, "We have struggled with the adoption of such products among highly trained agents. Professional agents don't want to use point-and-click tools, but we're constantly monitoring it."
TRX Inc. is aiming to bring its Selex agent interface product to market on the strength of its GDS independence and unique integration for users of its Resx booking tool. "Two or three" agencies are pilot testing Selex, according to vice president of solutions management and application development Helen Porter. "They all understand they need a tool like this and everyone has their heads around becoming less reliant on the cryptic GDS desktop, but they are taking a measured approach." TRX intends to share between Selex and Resx such information as traveler profiles and managed-program policies, potentially allowing travel managers to make tweaks and bias agent interfaces as they traditionally have with traveler tools.
This and other kinds of integration could create momentum against what some consider the agents' interface stubbornness. A new agent interface at Travelocity Business streamlines the application of upgrades, flight status information and loyalty programs, among other functions. Expedia Corporate Travel has long trumpeted the similarities between what its agents use and the travelers' interface.
"We're definitely focused on enhancing the agent interface, but I think reducing training time on formats is really just the tip of the iceberg," said Ultramar Travel Management president Peter Klebanow. "The real iceberg is front-end processing that does a lot of the quality control up front, incorporating certain things that are profile- or preferred vendor-driven. The whole process of sending passenger name record data to a third-party quality-control system is not very revolutionary, but that processing should be done at the point of entry in a dynamic way to help the counselor through the booking."