Undoing Hitches In Booking Tool Switches

Increasing numbers of buyers are starting to switch online booking tool vendors, sometimes courting difficulty in transferring user profiles and ensuring the new tool is compatible with the customer's internal systems, according to buyers, travel management companies and vendors.

Profile transfer seems to be one of the biggest headaches involved in switching booking tools, depending on where profiles are stored and which precautions the buyer takes to make them accessible. The Copenhagen-based travel buying consortium Travelpool Europe is a serial changer of booking tools, having switched eight times since 1994, but managing director Søren Schødt said moving is easy because Travelpool stores duplicate profiles in its own data warehouse.

"The problem arises if you keep all the profiles in one place with your tool provider," he said. "It ties you down to them. If you don't have a data warehouse, be sure to specify in your contract with the tool vendor that it provides a backup of profiles, and make sure you do not use your booking tool's management information package as your main data package."

Carlson Wagonlit Travel said it gets around the problem by storing the profiles in its Portrait database. "If you don't have a global database like that, it can be a little tricky," said David Tibbles, global product development director for online booking and environment with Carlson Wagonlit. A U.S.-based travel manager whose company recently switched worldwide to GetThere endorsed what Tibbles said about Portrait. "It worked out far better than I expected," he said.

If corporate buyers wish to avoid being tied to a booking tool, they should also avoid choosing any owned by a TMC, claimed Tom DePasquale, vice president and general manager for travel technology for Concur Technologies, which owns the Cliqbook booking tool. "All booking tools operate in a software as a service environment that is not installed onsite, so if you are unhappy with your vendor, it is not that difficult to change unless the tool is agency-specific," he said. "Agency-specific tools are good for the agency but not for the customer."

DePasquale also warned buyers to watch out for uncooperative TMCs in Europe. "Two TMCs are really getting behind online booking, but in Europe there are still a lot which believe they can make more money offering full-service transactions, and therefore they do their best to slow things down," he said.

Both Concur and KDS said there has been increased buyer movement between tool vendors during the past 12 months. "The market is maturing and buyers now know what they want their tool to do," said KDS marketing director Stanislas Berteloot. "After two to three years, they are able to see the strengths and weaknesses and make more educated choices."

Berteloot said KDS has won clients from GetThere in Europe because its rail product is superior. However, GetThere sales director for Europe Annette Forbes-Marsden said all booking tools have their strengths and weaknesses, and added: "GetThere has made more than two dozen conversions worldwide over the past 18 months."

While GetThere maintains that it performs well with buyers looking to implement a single tool multinationally, Carlson Wagonlit's Tibbles said increasing numbers of clients are looking to consolidate their vendor selection across borders.

Occasionally, however, changing booking tools can go wrong if doing so upsets the crucial triangular relationship between client, vendor and TMC. Such was the experience of Karma Longtin, project coordinator for consultancy Haley & Aldrich. "The number-one thing I would say is look into the relationship between your agency and the booking tool vendor," said Longtin. "For us, the support just wasn't there."

For Longtin, the problem started when she switched from GetThere, which was drawing constant complaints from her travelers, to Cliqbook. Haley & Aldrich retains American Express as its TMC. The good news is that the system is working well now for her. "Everyone loves it, and I get a fraction of the calls of complaint I used to receive when we had GetThere," she said. However, getting to this stage cost her a great deal of aggravation, due to what appeared to be a lack of cooperation between Cliqbook and American Express, which has a strong commercial relationship with Rearden Commerce, one of Cliqbook's competitors. "I was very surprised by the childish interaction between Amex and Cliqbook. The client was totally lost in the shuffle," said Longtin.

Transferring profiles to the new booking tool proved difficult because of the communication breakdown, Longtin said, and only around half of the transfers were successful. According to Longtin, Amex could field only one technical person who knew Cliqbook in detail and he refused to speak to her on the telephone, insisting all correspondence be addressed through her account manager. "Then the Cliqbook person left or was promoted and there was no one left who knew the tool," she said.

Longtin felt she was getting little help from Cliqbook either. The tool developed a bug whereby it never displayed more than five flight options for any trip request, and Longtin said Cliqbook told Amex it would take two months to fix.

After several months of not getting very far, Longtin escalated her complaints to senior levels at both Amex and Cliqbook's owner Concur, and the problems were finally resolved. "Be sure to research the relationship between the tool and your agency and make sure that your agency can support the tool internally," Longtin said."I suggest meeting with the agency's technical support team before making the transition to be sure they have the level of understanding necessary."

Asked for its response to what happened at Haley & Aldrich, Concur acknowledged that its relationship with Amex is occasionally problematic, but added that it is committed to giving outstanding support to all its agency partners.

For its part, Amex said the vast majority of its booking tool implementations go according to plan and noted that Haley & Aldrich is now happy with its new booking tool. "American Express supports all the major booking engines," said a statement from the company. "In fact, in the first half of 2007, we implemented literally hundreds of new online platforms for our clients across all providers.During the same period, we also managed numerous conversions for current and new clients alike.We aim for perfection every time and are very thankful for client feedback, such as Haley & Aldrich's, which helps us immensely."

Certainly, not all Amex clients experience difficulties when changing tools. British Telecom recently switched from GetThere to Amadeus e-Travel Management and, said BT travel manager Jan Tucker-Jones, "the support from Amadeus and Amex was absolutely first-class." Tucker-Jones did have to delay launch of the new tool because of problems in achieving a single sign-on when accessing the BT intranet, but these were because of internal difficulties. There also were problems in transferring profiles from GetThere, but "none of it was a huge pain in the neck," she said.

Tibbles added that tools of North American origin, primarily GetThere and Cliqbook, are rapidly eliminating their product deficiencies in Europe. However, this was the reason that BT switched from GetThere to Amadeus.

"We had major challenges with booking low-cost carriers," said Tucker-Jones. "It is our policy to use budget carriers as our first option, but our travelers were pushing back, saying GetThere was not fit for this purpose." Since making the switch in February, adoption has climbed from 50 percent to 60 percent.

Conversely, the U.S. travel manager who switched from a vendor he declined to name to GetThere also had a good experience, with adoption rising from 70 percent to 90 percent. "The number of complaints I get compared with the old application is like night and day," he said. "The key is planning and ensuring everyone can agree a schedule for what can realistically be achieved."

Tibbles also stresses the importance of buyers doing their homework. He urged detailed research of the functionality in the incumbent tool that is used frequently by bookers and ensuring it is also available in any tool that replaces it. "A few changes, like not being able to book Amtrak, can really put people off," he said.