ATLANTA -- Robin Schleien, president of Carlson Wagonlit Travel
North America, believes his company's new reservations platform,
CWT Symphonie, brings harmony to the travel booking process.
CWT Symphonie, which the company introduced at the National
Business Travel Association convention and trade show in Atlanta,
contains a database that houses trip records for self-bookings and
telephone bookings.
Corporate travelers who make self-bookings on the CWT Symphonie
platform are not only creating a trip record in the CRS but are
automatically sending the record to a centralized database that can
be accessed by the travel counselor.
After a self-booking is made, the reservation is sent to an
agent to complete the ticketing process.
The problem with most third-party self-booking tools, he said,
is that the profiles and trip records (PNRs) stored in the
self-booking tool are separate from profiles and trip records
stored in the CRS at the agency.
So, said Schleien, when the traveler uses the self-booking tool,
then calls his travel agent for assistance from the airport when a
flight is canceled, there is no guarantee that the agent has a
record of the booking.
Schleien said the agent has to take a separate step to enter
self-booking information on the agent's side, a process called
synchronization.
Mistakes happen, Schleien said, as the agent might forget to do
the synchronization.
The mistake might not happen often, but Murphy's Law dictates
that the victim of the error is a high-level executive, quipped
Schleien.
"Without integrated technologies, you don't have something that
works," he said.
Travel agents servicing clients on the CWT Symphonie platform
aren't using the traditional CRS requiring them to enter codes.
Like the self-booking traveler, they are looking at a
graphical-user interface.
When the counselor answers a call, the traveler's profile and
his company's vital information (policy, preferred suppliers ) pop
up on the computer screen.
After the agent completes a telephone booking, CWT said the
traveler can go into the self-booking tool immediately, access the
trip record and make changes on his own.
CWT developed the platform during a two-year period, Schleien
said.
So far, about 20 clients are using CWT Symphonie, including
Arthur Andersen and E*Trade, said Schleien.
CWT was able to get Andersen and its thousands of travelers on
the system quickly by linking into Andersen's business management
system, which houses the names and locations of employees, plus
other crucial information such as corporate credit card
numbers.
That information prepopulated the centralized database in CWT
Symphonie.
Then Andersen employees were sent an e-mail with a Web link to
the self-booking tool and an invitation to complete their profiles,
said Schleien.
Clients who choose to conduct travel business on the CWT
Symphonie platform do not pay an implementation fee or monthly
maintenance fee, said Schleien.
The pricing model for CWT Symphonie varies, said Schleien, based
on the volume level of self-booking transactions.
"CWT Symphonie is less costly for us to operate, and it shows in
the pricing," said Schleien.
CWT said it can link other tools, besides a self-booking system
and the CRS, to its centralized database, such as mobile Web
applications and a customized reporting system.