Sabre becomes leading GDS in Greece

Greek travel specialist Marine Tours has contracted to use the Sabre® global distribution system (GDS) for travel bookings. The agency specialises in the shipping sector and is one of the largest air travel consolidators in Greece, accounting for over 35 percent of all travel sales there. Its conversion will make Sabre the leading GDS in Greece, with a market share of more than 40 percent.

The agency’s offices in Athens, Thessaloniki, Patras and Heraklion, Crete, have been migrated successfully from Worldspan and Galileo. The conversion involved full training on Sabre over a two-week period for more than 50 travel consultants.

Aghis Athanassiadis, Sabre’s general manager in Greece, said Sabre’s suite of marketing tools and online booking platforms had added real value to its bid for the Marine Tours business.

--We were able to provide customised solutions for Marine Tours’ specific requirements. Importantly, we were able to show how these products could contribute to Marine Tours’ strategic direction, and how we would be able to meet their needs several years from now”, Athanassiadis said.

Marine Tours’ move to Sabre follows five other recent and significant European agency account wins by the GDS. The conversion of French agencies Club Voyages, Jancarthier and Boomerang from Amadeus has increased Sabre’s French market share by nearly two percent. In the United Kingdom, Top Flight Travel’s move from Galileo gives the company a foot in the door of the Uniglobe consortium. And in Italy Sabre has secured the business of a large Italian corporate travel management organisation.

About Sabre

Sabre is the leading provider of technology, distribution and marketing services for the travel industry. Headquartered in Southlake, located in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, the company has approximately 5,500 employees in 45 countries. Sabre reported 2001 revenues of $2.1 billion. Sabre maintains an ownership interest of approximately 70 percent in Travelocity.com (NASDAQ: TVLY), the most popular travel site on the web; and it owns GetThere, the world’s leading provider of Web-based travel reservation systems for corporations and travel suppliers. Sabre is an S&P 500 company, traded on the New York Stock Exchange.

Sabre is the leading provider of technology, distribution and marketing services for the travel industry was named the leading GDS in Greece. Sabre has an ownership of 70% in Travelocity.com which is the most popular travel site on the web. They also own GetThere which is the world’s leading provider of Web-based travel reservation systems for travel suppliers. Marine Tours (Greek travel specialist) now has a contract to use Sabre systems for their travel bookings, the travel agent specialise in shipping and they account for just over 35% of all travel sales in Greece. This conversion makes Sabre the leading GDS in Greece having a market share of more than 40%. This is smart move by Marine Tours as Sabre are strong leader in GDS, their marketing tools and online booking platforms are certain to add value to Marine Tours business.

Amadeus Awarded Top Sector Ranking as European R&D Leader in Travel and Tourism

Amadeus has again maintained its top sector ranking as one of the leading companies in Europe for investment in Research & Development (R&D) according to the European Commission (EC). The 2012 EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard, an annual report published by the EC, examines the largest 1,000 European companies investing in R&D during 2011 and ranks them according to the total amount invested.

Amadeus invested €347.5 million during 2011, an increase of 6.7% on 2010, to research and develop technologies for use in the travel sector. This investment represented 12.7% of revenues and helped the company maintain it number one position in Europe by total R&D investment in the area of travel and tourism.

Hervé Couturier, Executive Vice President, R&D at Amadeus says: "Naturally we are very pleased to see that our investment in R&D has been highlighted again by this important European Commission study. Equally we are very proud to be ranked again as a leader in the travel and tourism area. This further emphasises our reputation for innovation, with many years of experience in pioneering travel industry products and initiatives such as Altéa and, more recently, Amadeus Featured Results. Nonetheless, our desire for innovation has not yet been satisfied and R&D will continue to inspire our evolution as a large-scale technology pioneer."

This news follows the European Investment Bank (EIB), the European Union's long-term financing institution, in May granting a €200 million loan to Amadeus to finance the research & development of a variety of projects in the area of IT for airlines, airports, hotels, and rail between 2012 and 2014.

Innovation is one of the drivers behind Amadeus' progress and growth, which has allowed the company's technology to achieve an outstandingly competitive position within the market. Total investment between the years 2004 and 2011 was more than €2 billion.

Amadeus has sixteen R&D centres around the world (Nice, London, Sydney, Antwerp, Aachen, Frankfurt, Boston, Miami, Toronto, Strasbourg, Tucso, Bangalore, Bogota, Warsaw, Istanbul and Bangkok), which currently house a team of over 4,500 people.

In recent years Amadeus' R&D efforts have been particularly focused on:

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   Extremely high performance transaction processing under stringent system availability and dependability requirements;

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             Information mining from very large data-bases;

      Super-responsive travel search engines;  

      Multi-channel customer servicing applications (agent desktop, web, kiosk, mobile, tablets);

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      Pioneering the use of open systems.

Examples of the impact this has had on innovation in Amadeus products and services in recent years include:

- At the PhoCusWright Travel Innovation Summit in Arizona in November this year, Amadeus previewed its patent-pending Amadeus Featured Results solution, which is a search solution which revolutionises the way that flight options are presented. Vayama, a leading online travel agency uniquely focused on international travel, is the first pilot customer to implement the solution in beta form on its website, including 100 origin and destination combinations. Full global market availability for Featured Results is scheduled for early 2013.

- In September this year Amadeus published 'Open for business', which was authored by leading technology expert Professor Jim Norton. The report makes the case for the travel industry to embrace open source software in order to benefit from greater innovation, respond faster to industry change and reduce costs, whilst freeing the industry from its reliance on proprietary software to provide greater competitive advantage. Amadeus has pioneered the use of open systems within its business, at the operating system level Amadeus is successfully transitioning from proprietary systems to Linux to run its leading Altéa suite for airlines.

Leading innovations online, including Amadeus e-Retail, Amadeus Dynamic Website Manager and Amadeus Extreme Search have been built with extensive use of open source components in a way that would not be possible using legacy components. Amadeus ARIA(tm) Templates -- the framework upon which Amadeus IT Group's web solutions are based -- has recently been made open source, allowing third party developers to use it without charge.

- Continued development of the Amadeus Altéa Suite, a community-based airline IT platform that consists of three solutions covering reservation, inventory management and departure control. The Altéa portfolio has marked a technological and functional breakthrough in the airline industry -- with 122 airlines already contracted to use both Altéa Reservation and Inventory. Based upon these contracts, Amadeus estimates that by 2014 the number of Passengers Boarded (PB)[1] will be more than 760 million.

- Creation of Amadeus Total Rail, which enables railways to manage operations and sell seats across multiple sales channels, by allowing travel sellers access to book rail and air services side-by-side within the same solution. The offering includes Amadeus Global Rail Sales Platform, which is the first rail GDS on offer, and Amadeus Rail Operations Engine, which allows railway companies to manage schedules, inventory, fares and pricing. Amadeus Rail works with over 100 railway companies around the world and employs over 200 rail experts.

- Development of the Amadeus Hotel Platform, a solution for hotel chains which combines central reservation, property management and global distribution systems into one fully integrated platform. This recently-launched platform is designed to support hotels in the current age of globalisation and expansion, enabling them to respond to changing traveller demands.

- Development of ancillary services solutions as part of our commitment to helping airlines adapt and evolve their ancillary services strategy so that customers can move their focus from pure revenue to delivering profitability. Amadeus Airline Ancillary Services is an end-to-end solution which enables airlines to distribute (display, book, price and pay) services across all channels in full compliance with industry standards. 

Amadeus has developed a unique interactive catalogue which clearly displays the range of additional airline services available allowing travel agencies to view, book and up-sell ancillary services quickly and efficiently. At the end of September this year, 46 airlines had signed up for Amadeus Ancillary Services for the direct and/or indirect channel, 21 of which had signed up to sell ancillary services using the Amadeus solution in the indirect channel. Ancillary services are being sold through travel agencies in 16 countries for nine of these airlines, including airberlin, Air Caraïbes, Air France, Corsair, Finnair, Iberia, KLM, NIKI and Qantas.

Amadeus has maintained its top sector ranking as one of the leading companies in Europe for investment in research and development beating off strong competitors such as Navitaire and Worldspan. In 2011 Amadeus invested €347.5 million in research and development in technology for use in the travel industry which represented 12.7% of revenues helping the company to maintain its position at number 1. The European Investment Bank granted a loan of €200 million  to Amadeus to finance its research and development in IT for airlines, airports,hotels and rail. Amadeus currently have 16 Research and Development centres around the world including London, Frankfurt, Miami, Boston and more.

For the last few years Amadeus has played an important role in the travel and tourism industry as they have been focusing their research and development on, information mining, travel search engines, multi-channel servicing applications (Websites, mobile and tablet apps, Kiosk), use of open systems and transactions. With more and more big money being invested into their research and development, I have no doubt that Amadeus will stay at the top as leader of computer reservation systems for many years strengthening their position.

Agents hit by new GDS fees

UK agents have been hit by news that American Airlines is to start charging them for bookings through Galileo and Worldspan from next month.

The airline is imposing fees of up to £6.24 per sector on bookings through Travelport"s GDSs outside of its home market from December 20.

The decision comes amid a row between American and Travelport over distribution in the US.

Travelport is taking legal action against American Airlines after the airline decided to prevent Travelport"s sister company, Orbtiz, from selling its flights. Travelport confirmed it was taking a number of actions to defend travel agents and consumers commensurate with AA's anti-consumer and anti-competitive actions.

Anne Godfrey, chief executive of the Guild of Management Travel Companies, said American"s decision would penalize loyal agents and could be seen as an attack on the distribution model.

"It is imperative that this issue is resolved without causing further damage to those who have remained loyal to both airline and GDS over a number of years," she said.

"The GTMC calls upon both parties to resolve the situation before any long-term damage is done to relationships within the industry."

Over half of GTMC members use Galileo or Worldspan. The only way to avoid the fees is to book directly with the airline. A spokesman for American Airlines defended the decision and explained:  "Unfortunately, Travelport very recently notified American of dramatic booking fee increases for bookings made in markets outside the US using the GDSs owned and operated by Travelport - these being  Apollo/Galileo and Worldspan.

"These GDSs have become significantly more expensive to American than all other booking platforms in the affected international markets. To the extent that agencies particularly value the service of one of these GDSs, American has asked them to absorb their cost premium to American, known as the Booking Source Premium, to the degree necessary to bring the net cost of such GDSs reasonably in line with the cost to American of other GDSs."

Travel agents in the UK are being told by American Airlines that they will start charging them for bookings being made through WorldSpan and Galileo. AA is imposing fees up to £6.24 per sector on bookings through Travelport’s GDS outside of its home market causing an argument between AA and Travelport over distribution in the US. AA is preventing Travelport’s company Orbitz from selling its flight resulting in Travelport taking legal action. Travelport is taking actions to defend travel agents and customers. I think AA decision to start charging for these bookings are wrong as their loyal agents will not be happy about this causing an attack on the distribution model. I think this issue should be resolved quickly without causing more damage to the relationship between loyal airlines and GDS. 

Airline defends policy to charge passengers by weight

Samoa Air has defended its new policy to charge passengers according to their weight.

The national carrier of Samoa, which serves Samoa and the Cook Islands, has introduced a 'pay for what you weigh' system.

On the website, it says: "Booking a flight with us is as easy as inputting your approximate weight into our online booking engine (don't worry, we will weigh you again at the airport) - you then can prepay your 'guesstimate', guaranteeing you that much weight is allocated to you for that flight.

It adds: "We at Samoa Air are keeping airfares fair, by charging our passengers only for what they weigh. Your weight plus your baggage items, is what you pay for. Simple."

Samoa Air boss, Chris Langton, told Australia's ABC Radio that it was 'the fairest way of travelling'.

Rather than pay for a seat, passengers pay a fixed price per kilogram, which varies depending on the route length, for the combined weight of themselves and their baggage.

"Airlines don't run on seats, they run on weight, and particularly the smaller the aircraft you are in the less variance you can accept in terms of the difference in weight between passengers," Mr Langton told ABC radio.

"Anyone who travels at times has felt they have been paying for half of the passenger next to them."

Under the new model, Mr Langton described how some families with children were now paying cheaper fares.

"There are no extra fees in terms of excess baggage or anything - it is just a kilo is a kilo is a kilo," he said.

Mr Langton said he believed that charging by weight was 'the concept of the future'.

"People generally are bigger, wider and taller than they were 50 years ago," he said. "The industry will start looking at this."

Ryanair suggested the idea of a 'fat tax' on passengers in 2009 following a poll saying a third of passengers supported it. 

But the idea was dropped as the no frills airline said there was 'no way to collect it without disrupting its 25 minute turnarounds and its online check-in process'.

A few weeks ago I posted a blog on obese passenger should pay extra tax, I mentioned that only the people who are overweight should pay extra as they are making it uncomfortable to the people next to them which I've experienced myself before. Though Samoa Air has introduced a 'pay what you weigh system' where you book a light online adding your approximate weight and you then get weighed at the airport to make sure its accurate.They believe this is a more fair way of travelling as airlines run on weight not seats. This would also make it cheaper for families with children. After reading this article it makes a great point but I think checking peoples weight is too personal. I still think they should charge people extra who are overweight, instead of a pay as you weigh. I'm also wondering how this would work with return flights because people who go on holiday usually put on a bit more weight so they are more heavier on the way back. What do you guys think of this?

SAA app opens up a world of information

South African Airways (SAA) has launched two new mobile applications giving customers access to comprehensive travel and airline information. 

Using iOS or Android mobile phones and tablets, SAA passengers can see booking information, check-in for a flight, find the status of their checked-in luggage, and view information on lounges, flights and destinations from anywhere in the world with mobile coverage. 

Tim Clyde-Smith, SAA's country manager for Australasia, said the new service would appeal to both business and recreational travellers, particularly those often on-the-go. 

"With this new mobile functionality, information such as flight arrivals and departures is now available at passengers' fingertips. 

"Passengers can also search for information on special fares, view Voyager status and miles, use a currency converter, or get an updated 10-day forecast of the weather at any destination that SAA flies to." 

The mobile application for smartphones and tablets is available from the Apple App Store and Google play stores. 

This is another app that has been made for smart phones enabling South African Airways customers access important travel and airline information. This will allow their passengers to access their booking information such as status of their luggage and check-in for a flights. Travel and tourism companies making apps is another trend in the industry many companies are following. They are finding many new ways to provide a better customer experience and satisfaction making their journeys or bookings or food orders that much easier and quicker.I believe this trend will grow even bigger as companies will try to find more ways to make their experience better then its competitors. Although producing new apps is an easy way for competitors to copy.

OAG flight information now available in speech on smart phones and mobile devices

OAG, the global travel and transport information company, announced today its involvement as a key content provider to the new Speereo Mobile Travel Service, a key component of the new Speereo Voice Translator 3.0 mobile application designed for business and leisure travellers.

OAG’s flight schedule and flight status information will offer worldwide flight schedules and real-time information on flight departures and arrivals from smart phones and mobile devices.

The software will enable the user to search an online flight timetable for any destination in the world and will show all convenient direct and connecting flight options, including from Low Cost airlines. It will also offer alternative flight options at airports in the area.

Consumers using the Speereo Mobile Travel Service will be able to track the status of particular flights themselves, or opt in to an SMS flight status alert service.  The Flight Status content provided by OAG identifies a delay or cancellation and gives details about any terminal gate change and baggage information. Now travellers won’t need to worry about arriving too early at the airport or where to pick up their luggage.

The new Speereo Voice Translator is a phrase book covering 11 Asian and European languages, which includes about 4,000 most commonly used phrases including business, technical, medical and legal terms, colloquial phrases, idioms, and slang.

OAG is now involved as a key content provider to the new Speereo mobile travel service. A key component of the new Speereo Voice Translator 3.0 mobile application designed for business and leisure travellers. OAG flight schedule and flight status information will now be available in the app for smart phones. This clever app will let people search for flight timetables in any destination around the world also showing convenient direct and connecting flight options. It will also show alternative flight options at airports in the area. Consumers using the service can track status of particular flights showing if they will be delayed, canceled or if terminal gates have been changed. I think this is a fantastic smart app providing customers business or leisure with even more flight information making their journeys less stressful.

UK agent fined for misuse of marketing information

A UK travel agent has been fined £2,600 and ordered to pay £1,000 costs for breaching the Data Protection Act after using information taken from his previous employer’s marketing database when he set up his own business. Nottingham Crown Court last week found Mr Zbigniew Andrew Soltysik guilty for 13 offences of obtaining, and 13 offences of disclosing, personal information contrary to section 55 of the act. The agent also asked for a further 548 offences of unlawful obtaining and or disclosing of personal information to be taken into consideration. 

Mr Soltysik, from Mapperley, Nottinghamshire removed a database of customer details from his previous employer Quality Travel in Grantham. He then used the database to send marketing material to Quality Travel’s customers when he and his wife set up their own travel agents, New Style Travel. Quality Travel reported the case to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). 

Commenting on the case today the Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas, said: --I am pleased to see that this case was viewed so seriously that it was committed to the crown court for sentencing. Obtaining and disclosing personal information can have serious consequences and data protection laws protect an individual’s right to personal privacy.”He added: --The result of this prosecution by my office sends out the clear message to those engaged in similar activity that such sharp practice in handling personal information, involving invasion of people’s privacy, will not be tolerated by me, or by the Courts.”

This is a perfect example of the 'Data Protection Act' being broken. A UK travel agency was fined £2600 and ordered to pay £1000 for breach the Data Protection Act. A businessman set up his own travel agent after leaving from his previous employer Quality Travel, but used database of customers details from his previous employer to do direct marketing to Quality Travel's customers. Quality Travel reported the case to the ICO. This example clearly shows breaking this act is taken very seriously by the Information Commissioner's Office. Travel and tourism companies really need to obey the guidelines of the Data Protection Act as there could be big consequences getting caught if not.