by Isae Wada and David Jones
ST. LOUIS -- American Express and Microsoft officially unveiled
their long-anticipated self-booking product, called American
Express Interactive, or AXI.
AXI is designed to let corporate travelers book negotiated air,
hotel and rental car rates from their desktops. The system aims to
reduce costs by improving compliance with corporate travel policy
and reducing the steps necessary to process a transaction.
The product rollout was held at the 29th annual National
Business Travel Association conference here.
"This product initiates a new era in business travel
management," Ed Gilligan, president of American Express Corporate
Services, said. "The on-line revolution has arrived, and we want to
help corporations capitalize on technology that will deliver cost
savings and traveler convenience."
Employees of Microsoft, Monsanto Corp. and Allied Signal are
beta-testing the product, and companies such as Kmart had private
demonstrations here, officials said.
American Express said several other companies, which it declined
to name, had begun testing the system.
AXI, which generally drew rave reviews from managers, will be
available for general use this fall.
American Express also unveiled its new RoundTrip Services
module, with enhancements to several of its expense management
products.
Additionally, the company demonstrated a speech-recognition
system for travel reservations under the code name "Paris."
Continuing a theme that was launched at the 1996 NBTA
conference, this year's event was consumed almost entirely by the
latest in self-booking technology. Highlights follow:
* System One Amadeus announced a new version of its Corporate
TripSolution self-booking system that will access Amadeus, to be
introduced this fall.
Corporate TripSolution, which employs Internet Travel Network's
booking engine and technology, currently accesses System One. The
new version will be rolled out with the migration to Amadeus.
* Sabre unveiled several initiatives related to its automated
self-booking system, Sabre Business Travel Solutions.
The CRS introduced an upgrade, Sabre BTS version 1.1, which
incorporates a trip-search capability to assess the best flight
options. The version is also said to include access to negotiated
discount rates in a database.
In addition, Sabre said it plans by the end of the year to offer
travel-messaging services, with flight information via pagers and
speech-enabled booking.
* Worldspan launched a business-travel-oriented portion of its
Web site, called Worldspan for Business Travel, which offers
corporations and travel agency subscribers information on the
Worldspan Trip Manager automated self-booking product. The address
for the site is http://www.worldspan.com/tripmanager, or it can be
accessed through Worldspan's home page,
http://www.worldspan.com.
* Internet Travel Network upgraded its corporate self-booking
product, called Internet Travel Manager, with a number of
features.
New functionalities include a travel arranger component, which
enables planners to access and schedule travel by multiple profiles
and trips for any event or meeting.
The upgrade also includes new air and car capabilities, which
enable ravel managers to configure the system in real time to take
advantage of negotiated corporate discounts.
The latest version incorporates turn-by-turn driving directions
between airports and hotels and a new, Java-enabled
aircraft-seat-map feature.
In addition, ITN said it would offer World Travel Guide
destination information as part of the corporate travel system.
* E-Travel inked deals with two companies to enhance the
capabilities of its corporate self-booking system with automated
expense management and voice recognition technology. The vendor
signed an agreement with Automatic Data Processing to provide the
firm's e-XPENSE Services, a travel and entertainment expense
management solution that runs on a number of platforms.
* Travel Technologies Group, World Travel Partners' technology
unit, debuted a Web-based consolidation tool, MeetingAssist,
designed to help meeting planners capture data and measure spending
by division, business unit or expense category.
* Two vendors, Captura Software and Portable Software, said they
upgraded their expense management systems. Captura said its
enhancements include an administrative tool for easy updates to
corporate expense policy. The latest version of Portable's system,
called XMS/3, due out at the end of the year, will run in a
cross-platform environment on either Windows or a browser on a
company's intranet or both.
* TravelNet, one of the oldest self-booking systems in a
relatively young field, selected NBTA as the site to unveil a new
corporate logo, depicting a multicolor crisscross against a black
background. TravelNet, like Travel Weekly Crossroads, is part of
Reed Travel Group.