TRAVEL NEWS
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Travel News
| European Online Tools Add Rail, Other Features |
07.03.2006 |
| MARCH 06, 2006 -- Corporate booking tool providers last month introduced several features to improve European self-booking, including the inclusion of more rail content—generally a must-have in Europe. Other features include booking screens that display both air and rail options on the same route, consumer-site-style screens with options prioritized by price, one-way airfares and such tool administration enhancements as profile integration.
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The enhancements were featured at the Business Travel Show in London, where U.K.-based travel management company P&O Business issued a report on changes it has seen in booking tools, which it tracks through a product evaluation process it calls SBT Matrix. The matrix scores eight tools available in the United Kingdom, using up to 62 criteria. Analyzing changes to the scores achieved by each tool in the past year, P&O said there have been significant improvements, such as the ability to work in multiple languages and currencies and with multiple global distribution systems. Booking times also quickened and the tools are performing better at low-fare searches as they extend their sourcing beyond GDS inventory.
Still, said P&O, self-booking tools remain unsatisfactory in other respects. These include inability to recognize the finer points of travel policy and, most crucially, the failure to calculate reduced fares for anything more complicated than point-to-point journeys. The travel management company said its study shows that whereas trained consultants can bring down the price on a multi-leg itinerary through such techniques as split ticketing, self-booking tools simply aggregate the fares for each leg of the trip.
"We can see from improved scores in the SBT Matrix that SBT providers have worked hard to address many of their weaknesses," said P&O managing director Alan Coles. "However, our essential conclusion is that SBTs are now doing a very good job of handling simple trips but still struggle to deal with anything more complex."
Hannah Bodilly, senior manager for European purchasing for the Californian wine producer Ernest & Julio Gallo, is poised to select a self-booking tool after studying the market for 18 months. Bodilly said the majority of her travelers' journeys are point-to-point, but agreed she would be more likely to continue calling her TMC for more complex trips.
E&J Gallo has used a booking tool at its U.S. offices for more than two years. Bodilly said it is crucial for U.S.-based companies to conduct a separate request for proposals when selecting a tool for Europe, where needs are very different. "Things like train travel weren't an important factor for my colleagues in the U.S., which is why I have made my own investigations," said Bodilly.
Richard Lovell, Carlson Wagonlit Travel executive vice president for Europe, concurred. "I have considerable difficulty conveying to people in America the importance of rail to us in Europe," he said. "It accounts for 42 percent of our transactions in France."
Bodilly said more issues than differing content need to be considered for a booking tool request for proposals in Europe. Another is the ability of a self-booking tool to work in multiple currencies. "That is not a question they would have looked at in the United States," she said.
Bodilly said self-booking tools have achieved considerable success in adapting to European needs during the 18 months she has studied them. Among the improvements she cited are better rail content and a more attractive appearance that resembles the consumer Web sites to which travelers have become accustomed. Bodilly also commended travel management companies for changing their attitude towards self-booking tools.
"When I started looking 18 months ago, agents were very proscriptive," Bodilly said. "Now, they are saying they will work with whichever booking tool we want to use."
One of the most enthusiastic travel management company advocates of online booking has been American Express. It confirmed to BTN that it is offering some clients a single transaction fee, whether a booking is made online or offline, so confident is it that clients will achieve high online adoption rates.
Although booking tool providers and buyers all indicate growing self-booking tool activity in Europe, figures for penetration of the market remain fuzzy. GetThere said it is transacting 60,000 bookings per month, pointing to particularly strong growth in France and Germany, where airlines have eliminated agency commission in the past 18 months. KDS, with what is by its own admission an unscientific estimate, said around 20 percent of larger companies in Europe have some kind of booking tool and that online channels account for 5 percent to 10 percent of all corporate travel reservations.
One enhancement KDS demonstrated at the Business Travel Show was a lost savings feature. Aimed at intensifying so-called "visual guilt," a message flashes up on the screen if a traveler declines the lowest fare offered to them. It tells them how much they would have saved their company if they had chosen the cheaper option. The message also flows into the reporting tool and sends a warning to the system supervisor.
Among innovations in its content, KDS has started offering one-way fares, which are increasingly being marketed on short-haul routes by such airlines as British Airways and SAS as well as low-cost rivals. Travelers can buy two one-way tickets, either with the same airline or with different ones.
KDS also added Belgian rail to its inventory, joining rail content for France, Germany and the United Kingdom. The tool offers multi-modal selection, meaning travelers can compare rail and air options for the same journey on the same screen. Comparisons can be made by price or journey time and the figures can be manipulated to build in such factors as checkin requirements so that travelers can assess the entire trip time by both train and plane.
GetThere also started to offer multi-modal displays, but so far only for trips within France. The U.S. market leader has reviewed its presentation as well and now offers the option of price-based searches. Previously, searches have been based on schedule, working on the assumption that travelers will book negotiated corporate fares highlighted as compliant with policy. Brannon Winn, director of account management and strategic partnerships for GetThere, said the change reflects the experience travelers have become familiar with when booking travel on consumer Web sites. It also reflects the fact that for many European short-haul travelers, public fares on both low-cost and traditional airlines are often cheaper than negotiated fares.
GetThere has been stepping up its efforts to work with multiple GDSs. Among the latest improvements is that it now automatically absorbs all traveler profile information from Amadeus.
Amadeus has upgraded processes for its E-Travel booking tool too. These include improved profile integration, a single sign-on when travelers access their company intranet and a feature that prioritizes trips for approvers so they examine the most pressing departures first.
Amadeus has added the ability to book airline tickets from Finnair and Mälmo Aviation, joining similar ones for Air France and SAS. It also has introduced destination-specific alerts for bookers that can be used to communicate information on such issues as security or local ground arrangements.
Yet, innovations in rail integration continue to be the dominant content obsession for self-booking tools in Europe. One of the smaller players, Traveldoo, announced the ability to issue electronic tickets for journeys on French rail network SNCF, which travelers can collect from self-service machines at railway stations.
U.K. online rail provider Thetrainline.com has operated a similar system for British rail journeys for a couple of years. It said 80 percent of its corporate tickets are collected from its Fast Ticket machines at stations and in rail offices. Thetrainline claimed substantial corporate growth in 2005, with new clients including BT, Norwich Union, IBM, Centrica and the Home Office.
There is one essential piece of rail content not yet available on any booking tool. Owing to internal wrangles between its owners, journeys on cross-channel service Eurostar only can be booked if the ticket is fulfilled by a travel management company based in France. U.K.-based agents cannot fulfill the tickets. "This is set to change in the very near future, as Eurostar UK has signed a contract with SNCF to help link the SBTs to our U.K. inventory," said Eurostar director of communications Paul Charles. "We are in the final stages of planningand integratingthis process, which will initially result in trials with some of Eurostar's U.K. clients." |
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