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The New Travel Intermediaries

Speaker Transcripts

Simon Powell, Director, Comtec Europe

I work for two companies for my sins - Holiday Express and Comtec. Comtec was set up as an off-shoot from Holiday Express and trades as a totally separate company and we develop communications solutions for the industry.

I'm going to recap first of all over our Internet site. We were actually one of the first developers of the interactive Internet site for the actual client to use and book.

Holiday Express now has 22 branches throughout South Wales and the South-West and we actually own the domain names of holiday.co.uk, flight.co.uk and travel.co.uk. As you can see, we must have registered those names quite early on and we could see that there was potential for the Internet and what the potential could actually be. Our site has been live now for just over 12 months and I would like to briefly recap on what our site has done for us in that time.

Without looking at the statistics of it too much, we have between 75 and 100 enquiries per day. We've had to cut that amount of enquiries down and we are just in the process at the moment of actually rewriting the form that the client fills in to make their enquiry with us. The form takes the information that the client has searched and found from our late sales database which consists of about 75,000 different departures in, what I will term, the bucket and spade and flight only market. This information is taken from one of these late sales databases of which Comtec owned one and then put onto the Internet for the client to search themselves. The search of that late sales database has been, up until now, very basic but from the first of next month, we are launching a much more interactive search which will allow the client to narrow down the criteria a lot more and, also, that search is actually passed directly across to the Viewdata host in question for the query to be analysed by a clerk without any re-keying. A simple example of that is if they found a holiday with Thomsons, that information is stored in a list for a travel clerk to pick up, click on it, go off to the host to see if it's still available, then go back to the client and confirm that reservation if they still want it.

The most important information is do we do bookings and the answer is yes. Every week we average between 5 and 10 bookings. The week before last we had approximately 10, last week we had an exceptional week and did about 12 or 13. Not huge numbers but if I can put that into context where one of the leading retail groups actually stated that they have done two million retail bookings and only one over the Internet, I think that says something about their Internet quality and not the fact that the Internet doesn't work. The investment in the Internet doesn't have to be huge to make it work but you have to make the Internet work for you instead of against you.

It is also very important that we don't get the Internet confused between what we talk about in the trade as an Internet for the trade or Intranet and actually the client end. We have to differentiate very carefully that the client end is the Internet, the world wide web. The Internet is only the transport layer for it. It's the world wide web. But as an industry using the Internet technology and the technology that the Internet has brought about, we need a closed user Intranet which is a managed network for the industry. We can't use the Internet, using the VTX gateway or whatever form of the Internet, and at 1.00 when America comes on line to take all their e-mail, say to the client at the other end of the desk: sorry you can't make the booking, the Americans have just woken up. It doesn't work, it can't work like that. We have to have a managed service end to end from the host back to the actual travel clerk on the counter.

The travel agency of the future. This is my idea of it and I'll just run through it. I'm trying to make the Internet work for us and the technology that it has brought around. The Internet, as I say, isn't the complete solution but the technology that's being brought around from the development of this Internet could be. And that actually is the browser. The browser front end which we've probably all seen enables us to use many different applications, many different servers on the word wide web and enter them through one medium - through the browser.

The browser will enable the industry to have a transparent network layer but we won't get into too much jargon. What I mean is, we don't have to worry about it. Everything will talk in the same language. For example, if you are a travel agent, you can have your late sales database, you can have your back-office system, you can have Viewdata, all accessible through the browser technology. So we don't have to go off into many different systems and worry about that fact that we've got five remote branches out there. Why can't they have access to everything the head office has. With an IP based network, all the different applications can be run from one central system. I've put down the bottom there, tour operator's knowledge base, on-line staff training, communications between the branches. Just a couple of examples of different bits and pieces that could be bolted together. From a personal note, I've just spent all weekend upgrading our own network to 10 of our branches to an IP network. It's not completed yet but three of the branches are on. I'm actually moving across to this technology in order to see that the benefits are actually there ourselves because I believe they are.

Just basically how this network will look. We've got our head office, we've got our branches. Branches can obviously communicate directly to the head office so that means if someone has booked in our Cwmbran(?) branch and wants to pay their balance in our Newport branch, because they are all talking on the same network through the same infrastructure, they can do. If they want to amend that booking in a different branch, if they want to do anything, they're able to do it because the whole network has become transparent, invisible. Also up there we could have remote operatives. They don't have to be any particular sort of remote operative but with an Internet connection, they'll have access back to everything the head office has. The web site, for example, we get all these enquiries but at the moment because of the web site being isolated from the rest of the network, we have to have dedicated members of staff to handle those enquiries. There shouldn't be a need for that. If the web site was linked into the whole of the network, then there wouldn't be a problem. Any clerk that wasn't busy at one time could take the next Internet enquiry that's in the queue and handle that. Touch point, video walls, just nice add-ons that are coming around with the late sales database. All these can be added on in remote locations in order for the agency in question to actually generate more revenue. Again, they can all be linked back across. This networking infrastructure has become totally transparent to everybody. What is the actual benefit? The actual benefit is we can connect to the host using the Internet protocol. We can have e-mail between the branches, voice mail and computer based training. Obviously training is a big aspect of retail agency and it's very difficult to fulfil but with on-line training, obviously that becomes a lot less of a problem. A new clerk can go into your on-line training mode and they can use the system to get some experience. Multimedia on-line brochures.

I don't want my travel clerk spending any more time with a client than they do at present or did in the past but with the extra information that could be gained, instead of having to go and look for an Airtours brochure because next year's are on sale now and we haven't got a copy of this year's in order to show the client, it could save us a lot of time and expense as well. Also, if the tour operators had knowledge bases, as I mentioned earlier, where a clerk could find out if there are 150 steps to the Hotel Plaza in Andorra without making a telephone call, obviously that cuts down on costs, cuts down on tour operator time and improves the service again that we can access and give to the client. With World Wide Web access, we don't want the travel clerks going off and looking at the Cosmopolitan page in work time. That's why the World Wide Web access has to be filtered through a travel Intranet. They would also be able to, as I mentioned earlier, respond to the late data Internet enquiries and everything else would work through the same medium of the Internet.

This is our Internet site. As you can see, another good point of the Internet is that it can be very quick to react. When Summer '98 went on sale, we were able, very quickly, to actually respond to that and get up what the client has to do, go in and get your Summer '98 brochure from any travel agency, give us a page, a title and the tour number, fill in a simple form which you click on there and we'll beat any price at the travel agent. We had that up there on the first day of brochure launch because it's very quick and easy to do. Another thing with the Internet is that you can react quickly.

This is a demonstration by the Internet of how we can cross connect to any tour operator on the system, on the AT & T network through the Internet. I'm actually live on the Internet at the moment. So if I went off for the AT & T late availability section, off it will go and in comes the banner. It puts my ABTA number and password in and takes me into the system. I am live on the Internet at the moment, not on Viewdata. I can connect to any host on the AT & T network without them making any host protocol changes whatsoever.

As I mentioned earlier, this is a concept page and nothing else. We've got some other AT & T different pieces on there but we can actually restrict the Internet access on here so that they can only have Internet access to either travel related pages or unrestricted or restricted, how ever you want to restrict them. If I go down a little bit lower just to show you that we are actually live on the Internet, I'll just pop off to the ABTA site because we want some information on some countries that have problems at the moment. Instantly the ABTA site comes in. I'd like to go back to the concept page again. If First Choice, for example, had an Internet page or an Intranet site housed on Internet service to allow access to it, we actually go through and find the information that we wanted on holidays etc. The major reason none of the tour operators have gone for the Internet in a big way at the moment is that how does the clerk at the end of the day then make the booking. They can't unless they've got this product because they can make a booking with First Choice, the system then says hang on a minute, you want to make a First Choice booking. First Choice is actually a Viewdata session. Off we'll go and we'll access the First Choice host. As you can see this is typical Viewdata and it's not slowed down at all by the Internet because the packet size of the Viewdata, because Internet is very, very small packet sized, you can have millions of these sessions going down a 64k line because the packets are very small. They are very small compared with the huge graphics that I pulled in earlier, for example, when I showed you the brochures. Those graphics are huge but these are very small packets. As you can see, it's 14.25 and we're on the system, a totally live demonstration. This system doesn't need to be actually used using a browser.

As you can see, it is very much aimed at the travel agent end but it doesn't take a lot to think of the next migration path. The next migration path being tour operators actually changing their Viewdata front end so instead of asking for an ABTA number and password from their Internet site, they'd ask for a credit card number and your name then take you off because you've already searched their Internet site to find the availability and make that booking directly over the Internet. Now we all know that all the hosts have huge knowledge on how VTX works and how to build VTX front ends, so obviously it's not very difficult for the next migration path to be moved forward and allow the actual host with their own client end VTX front end to actually make bookings directly with the home market.

On the tour operator's side, because of using the Internet as a transport layer, tour operators with remote locations, for example, their overseas office, could give access to their host systems for the cost of a local call as if dialling up to the Internet, or free if they had a leased line to the Internet. For example, if they were in a state where they got very cheap Internet access. So there's also a potential for tour operators to start using the system to gain access into their host systems for their own management. I know that overseas management has been a major problem for different tour operators to actually manage. How do they get communications back to the host. As we can see, with this and the Internet, it becomes a possibility.

So, is the high street travel agent a thing of the past - and remember, I've got 22 of them. The high street travel agents are definitely going to have to change and I just referred to this certain quote in the trade press last week where they sold two million holidays and only one over the Internet, these companies have massive investment in high street leases. They don't want to change the way distribution actually goes at the moment, in the short term, but technology is taking on from that and interactive TV, Internet enabled TV from the living room, where the booking of flight seats and package holidays and the easy booking material will become automated. It's not a question of if it's going to be, it's when and when, at the moment, is a little bit hard to put a direct number on. But with companies such as Microsoft put their resources into interactive travel, the question is not is it going to change but when.

The IT based network will revolutionise the way the travel industry works. Today, as I've just demonstrated, any tour operator with a Viewdata system can actually book today over the Internet.

To sum up, we have to divide the Internet into two different parts. That's the travel related Internet for the trade and the Internet for the client end and we have to make sure the industry end of it stays as a managed network. Tour operators have a great deal of experience in Viewdata systems so it won't be long before the host is able to adapt their current system to allow the clients to book directly.

On the travel side, we require a travel Intranet which is a managed network for the industry and over the next 18 months it's going to prove a very changeable time and a very worthwhile time in seeing how that actually changes for the better.

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