There is hardly a travel expert remaining who would manage to overlook the exciting developments in e-travel, the electronic processing of transactions. There is an ever increasing number of powerful tools available to supply an abundance of information. Time-consuming catalogue browsing is a thing of the past. Daily-updated prices are becoming more and more commonplace. Amadeus Austria, the Austrian subsidiary of the worldwide leading provider of technology and marketing and sales solutions, organised a tour operators’ round table. Managing director of Amadeus Austria Wilfried Kropp could count representatives from most tour operators amongst his guests. The current developments were presented by three companies, which are shaping this area: TravelTainment, the leader in electronic advice and booking systems, GIATA, provider of comprehensive information data bases, and Vtours, a “virtual” tour operator. TRAVEL EXPRESS© summarises.
TravelTainment
The company, which recently became a subsidiary of Amadeus, offers, via an Internet booking engine, travel agencies, or Internet portal operators as the case may be, access to the offers of all tour operators and airlines. Details about the travel destination, date, type of accommodation, area, price etc. can be entered on an initial screen. The system then lists all offers which correspond (or come closest to) the search submitted, according to price. Thus, a direct price performance comparison is provided. In addition, comprehensive information relating to the travel destination, including photos, panoramic images of hotels, beaches, sight-seeing attractions and leisure activities are available. The TravelTainment-Portal is intergrated with the Internet portals of travel agencies so that there is no recognisable difference to customers. The travel agency can “steer” the content and certain providers can be excluded. TravelTainment charges the portal operator commission of between 1 and 1.2 percent on profits from sale. The product BistroPortal from Amadeus builds on the same data material and put to direct use in the travel agency to advise customers in person. This enables the agent to competently provide information and put together a holiday. The booking takes place, as is the case when the customer books online, using the Amadeus booking tool TOMA. Joachim Schreiber of TravelTainment: “We offer travel agencies process optimisation and an improvement in the quality of their advice. Travel agencies also value the portal because through continuous data maintenance the prices are always up to date and offers which are no longer available are removed”
GIATA
The company is the worldwide leading content provider for the tourism industry. In the database written texts about hotels, as well as images and information about the target destination and areas are collected. These can be recalled according to various criteria. For the Internet-Hotel guide around 600 catalogues from 180 different tour operators are analysed. Using a full text search engine even unusual enquiries can be answered without delay. The catalogues are also saved so that it is possible to “leaf through them”, albeit virtually, and to enlarge parts or print off pages. Managing director of GIATA, Remzi Aru explains, “When it comes to advising travel agency customers this offers many possibilities. The operators make available the content, the catalogue data, before going to press. The user pays a monthly fee of 5.10 Euro to access this search engine.
Vtours
The maxim is package holidays at current prices. “Vtours is a real tour operator with full responsibility” explains Achim Schneider, managing director of this “virtual operator”, which puts together its own package holidays rather than solely using databases. With no need for printed catalogues, the deals on offer are sent to the sales partner in PDF form. They then sell the deals under their own name and receive a commission of 10 percent, at minimum. The price is only calculated following an enquiry by a customer, in which case the flight is the exchangeable element. The most affordable one available on the booking date is selected and the updated price is then calculated. Vtours counts Germany’s largest travel portals among its partners in Germany and is already introducing its products to the Austrian market.
