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The New Travel Intermediaries

Speaker Transcripts

Ann Gilbert - Managing Director
Tim Cotterall - IT Manager
Gold Medal Travel Group

Well, this isn't my normal role in life I can assure you. I have a serious day job. Presentations are not my forte as you are going to discover. In fact for the last ten years I've tried to avoid these things.

You've heard some things about Gold Medal. We are a large company. As you can see, some of the relevant points are on the screen now. We employ over 170 staff throughout the various departments and we have established ourselves as the largest single Galileo site anywhere in Europe which really, I think, is pretty good. We are also the largest BSP single site company in the UK.

We do have a background of being a tour operator. However, recently we've become disenchanted with brochures and the wastage that really follows from that because brochure racking as well is just a nightmare.

So on the Farebank system, which is our main system we have over a million scheduled air fares listed, including all the relevant booking conditions and, yes, we do receive many faxes in a day. In fact, we have two faxes dedicated to incoming fares and working with 118 scheduled airlines, it's not easy. Basically, the information we get from those airlines is really quite different. Some carriers will give you it in great detail, with others it's just very basic. We've learnt over the years what they really mean isn't necessarily what they are saying.

We also feature 1,500 destinations around the world to the obvious places that I'm sure you can think of and we also feature economy, business class and first class. Our business class staff are actually increasing and I don't think people necessarily think of us for business class sales, just economy. But that shows the changes in the market place again.

We have always featured heavily regional airports. Being in Blackpool, obviously that's important to us. We've always featured every fare that an airline gives us and every destination. We don't believe in thinking, well, maybe Cardiff's not the biggest airport in the world and we won't bother to input the fares. We don't think that's right and we make a big policy of putting in everywhere, even places like Vilnius. When we first got the fares to Vilnius, I never thought they would sell. We were the first company to sell Austrian Airlines' tickets to Vilnius, much to my surprise.

So why did we do it? Well, we've achieved a turnover now of UKL100 million. We've grown rapidly in the last nine years as a company and it's not been easy. Our margin is low and that's the point really. Our cost of sale is everything. We have to make sure that our cost of sale is lower than our competitor. If it's not lower then we can't support the advertising and the investments in terms of technology and systems. We see systems as being a way of reducing our costs and we're very interested in any new and evolving technology. We are particularly interested in the Internet because we can see all sorts of advantages there in terms of costs savings but also in terms of how we actually market our own products.

We sell mainly upmarket tours, airline seats and hotels. Those products are just ideal for an interactive Internet site.

So why did we develop an Internet site? We are probably the only operator in the UK with a serious Internet system because there isn't the consumer base at the moment. Very few travel agents actually have Internet access and we recognise that. We also realise that looking at the Internet, there is a lot of highly inappropriate information on there that really we wouldn't want our staff in travel agents to be accessing. We then realise that obviously if people remember what happened in the old days with viewdata, the Intranet systems were really limiting access to predetermined business areas. It also provides consumer protection. Nobody's mentioned consumer protection today and I think that is a very serious issue. I think the Internet is due for some very bad press because, basically, it's a wordwide system, there are no limits on what people can do and as time goes by people will be ripped off. I think that's very unfortunate.

So, these Intranet providers, we realised, would need operators like ourselves so we thought we'd get an Internet system. We'll be very attractive to an Intranet provider which has proved to be the case. We're in business discussion with a number of companies at the moment and we're examining various business opportunities. We are quick to act. If we see an opportunity and maybe, as with the Internet system, the amount of business is not there, we have had up to four bookings in a day which is not a large number but I think eventually the system will be so much better than what we currently have, it's worth the investment now.

What sort of Internet system do we have? Basically, it's the same product as our viewdata system in that the agent's password works exactly the same and the unique commission grid can be used. All airlines which are bookable on the Internet system are bookable on viewdata so it's the same system. The potential of adding more information though is huge and we're already asking airlines to give us access to pertinent information in their own Web site, pictures of the aircrafts' seats, the aircrafts' interior, the entertainment systems, the choice of films - if there is a choice, the whole thing really. And that's the point. It's just so much better than viewdata.

Interestingly, we have now been asked to overbrand our Internet system. We have a number of Internet systems already and agents seem to see an Internet system as being something similar to a brochure that they can overbrand and look as if it's their own product and have it used for their own clients and that's fine with us.

The other thing that we've realised is that unless you're in an Intranet site or you're somewhere where people know where you are, nobody's going to look at your site. It's just too big. As to the future, we're anxious to beat any distribution costs and continue to develop our Internet system adding more products, such as our hotel bank product shortly and our other tour products. We've already added some pages from our Oriental Magic brochure and I'll hand you over to Tim now who's much better at presentations than I am and he'll give you a demonstration of the Farebank Internet system.

Tim Cotterall

I'm actually going to go on line. I'm being very courageous this morning, so if you could bear with me. We're actually using a standard modem here so it won't be quite as fast as it could be.

What we've got here is a standard ABTA number password log on so I can put in our password. This is a little demonstration travel agent called O'Grady's Travel. This was set up for the ARTAC World Choice Conference which we demonstrated at. As you can see, the background to the whole of the Internet page is ARTAC World Choice. We also have some other flavours but the engine itself is identical. The actual coding and the program behind it.

Let me go ahead and make a booking. This is actually on a live system. We're going onto the Farebank system. What we'll also do when we've gone through this sytem is gave you a flavour of some of the holiday brochures. We have a standard form and anyone who's used our viewdata system will see that it is very typical of our existing first page to our viewdata. Let's go to Boston. I'd like to go on 21 November, take all classes and I want to return as well. That's now looking at our fares database and coming up with all the fares that match that criteria. This is working on a live database. It's found 110 fares all in price order and there's a lot more detail than viewdata. We can actually see it's United Airlines, adult and child fare and the different departure points in the UK. It starts at the cheapest and goes through to first class at the end. A United fare from London Heathrow. Now what's happening is with our electronic datalink through to Galileo UK onto Denver, it's checking the availability and has come back with some details. We've put the remarks in bullet points so it's easy to read and understand. Any of these pages, at any time, can be printed out by the travel agency and given to the client.

One of the ideas we came up with was to put in the logo of the travel agency on one of the pages and that way it could be tailored to the travel agency when it's printed out. Branding is so important these days.

So that's two seats and we're going out on 21 and coming back on 29. And we've got some possible stopovers in Washington and New York but we'll just take the standard straight through and go again and again. It's going away to Galileo and it is very fast. We've got this time here which is flashing away and it's telling me that we're actually doing something. Then it comes back with all the flight details. Again, we can choose any one of these. The departure time, the arrival time, the aircraft type and any stops. There's the return. As I've said before, any of these pages can be printed out and given to the client. I'll submit that and it should ask me the names of the passengers. I get very few trips abroad so I'll send myself and I'll be very nice and take my wife with me. I've got the option there of any dietary requirements. There's a facility to take Gold Medal insurance or the opportunity for the agent to sell their own insurance. Car hire is not available with this booking but there's car hire available and there's the opportunity to decide on car hire as well.

I'll submit that. I've got all the details I need and there you've got a full booking quote. I've got the sectors that I booked at the top. I've got the passenger details. I've got the price in Sterling with insurance and all the premiums for insurance and I can either take an option or confirm the booking. I'll take an option because I don't actually really want to go. I don't want an invoice. That's gone and it will come back with a Galileo PNR and one of our invoice references.

So that's our Farebank system. Our viewdata system converted into an Internet site. Let me just give you a flavour of what we are looking at. If I return to the main menu, we started to have a look at our Australia brochure and I'm putting a few pages of that on and it gives a flavour of what can be done. These are the pages within our Australia brochure but all within the Internet. I'll return to the contents and look about Australia. It gives me a map. I can go into Queensland. I'm going to Cairns and Northern Beaches and that's the brochure page. There we have a room type. UKL42 for a single. The other great advantage of this is that every time a brochure is produced, the day it's produced, it's out of date because prices change and everything else. Our Internet can keep this figures up to date all the time just like we keep our fares up to date so there's great potential, not only with selling fares, but also looking at other products that Gold Medal can bring to the travel industry. We touched on car hire which is another Gold Medal product.

I hope that gives you a flavour of what can be achieved with a reasonable development team and to bring something that travel agents can use.

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