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Letting the Genie Out of the Bottle
12 August 2002

Is history about to repeat itself? A couple of decades ago, Thomson Holidays revolutionised the travel industry by encouraging the wholesale adoption of viewdata, the then up to the minute b2b e-commerce system. It looks as though the tour operator is about to do it again. TUI UK has announced Genie, an Internet style system already installed in 46 Lunn Poly shops, allowing staff to book directly in TUI UK’s Tracs reservation system without any use of viewdata to retrieve or send data.

The intriguing part of the announcement about Genie is the statement that 90% of the company's retail sales could be booked via the system by the end of next year. Given that even TUI UK does not directional sell to this extent, this may mean that there are plans for other tour operators to join the system. If this is true, there will be such a good critical mass of product on the system that we might finally be able to consign viewdata to the obsolete technology bin.

This sounds like good news, particularly as the travel networks - Telewest, ntl and Call-Link - have been connecting agents to state of the art Internet style IP networks for sometime. We have only remained stuck in the world of viewdata because this is the only connection tour operators have been offering. Now it looks as though the whole industry is going to be able to move on, or is it?

The launch of Genie invites some questions. The technology is fundamentally different from viewdata. Whereas viewdata is simply a "window" into a tour operator's reservation system, Genie's connection to Tracs and any other tour operator’s system will rely on messages (probably XML) being passed between tour operator and travel agency systems. 

Outside of Lunn Poly, who will build these new travel agency systems? Will TUI UK and the tour operating partners it needs to hit that 90% target go it alone and leave the rest of the industry behind? Not a bad idea as far as they are concerned. This might give them a distinct competitive advantage over the rest of the market. Slicker systems mean faster sales.

Might TUI UK make Genie available to independent travel agents over the Web? Just about every travel agent has an Internet connection now. This could save TUI UK and its partners considerable viewdata network costs and yet maintain industry-wide distribution. This would hit the revenues of Telewest and ntl who might then withdraw from the travel sector and leave agents stranded; or are the profits they make from viewdata network charges so small it will make no difference?

If Telewest and ntl did withdraw from the market, viewdata might no longer be supported by any travel networks. How will tour operators outside of the Genie system sell via travel agents? Will they need to recruit staff and build-up their call centres? Will travel agents bother booking by phone or will they simply prefer to book those few operators who are available within Genie?

Plenty of questions come to mind. No doubt, the answers will become clear with time. 

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