Panel: Booking workers based abroad

LOS ANGELES -- Rolling out an on-line booking system to employees outside of the U.S. is fraught with many of the same complex challenges that travel managers must overcome when attempting to unify other elements of a travel program under one global umbrella, according to a panel of travel managers.

Language and cultural differences, as well as employee resistance to corporate mandates and general apprehensions about change, continue to be vexing issues, said participants in the Integrating Self-Booking Into Your Global Program workshop at the National Business Travel Association conference.

Some of the issues addressed by the three panelists included:

It also helps to not implement any system too quickly, rather working first with small groups to demonstrate its benefits and using those successes as examples to others.

For the most part, on-line booking systems, just like travel agents, rely on access to a global distribution system for schedule, fare and booking information.

Since negotiated rates are usually loaded into the CRSs, on-line systems have access to them as well as published fares.

Richard Herbert, BP Amoco's travel manager, noted that it took three months for BP Amoco's special air fares to be loaded into the system, in large part because of the large number and complexity of its negotiated rates.

Tickets from consolidators, on the other hand, are generally not in the CRSs and it becomes much more difficult to obtain them through on-line booking systems, participants added.

The issue of displaying negotiated rates and consolidator tickets could become complicated if suppliers -- eager to avoid CRS fees -- accelerate the fledgling efforts on the part of some to move their inventory off of the CRSs and on to Internet-based inventory systems, participants noted.

To work around this issue, on-line bookers must make a request for rail travel in a "notes" mode. This, in turn, is queued to an agent who can make a booking either through the rail line's internal reservations system or via the telephone.

The same is true for several European airlines that do not participate in a CRS, notably EasyJet, said Melissa Lopez, a Texas Instruments travel manager.

The problem with booking European rail travel is expected to be solved within the next year or so as the major rail systems adopt Internet-based reservations systems, noted audience members familiar with European rail issues.

BP Amoco's Herbert said he works around this issue by allowing travelers to book only those properties listed in the CRSs.

Vendors are working to ease that confusion so that travelers are not confronted with a lot of acronyms and obscure terms.

Even though the on-line booking systems continue to become sophisticated, participants said, complicated itineraries might continue to be best put together by live agents.

Based on comments from panelists and some audience members, little attention appears to be paid to the subject in the rest of Europe, Asia and Latin America.

Parts of Asia -- notably Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan -- and multinational companies with aggressive global travel programs not represented in the NBTA discussion might be adopting on-line booking systems, but speakers and audience members seemed to have little knowledge of such developments.

A look at firms' on-line programs

LOS ANGELES -- Each travel manager at the Integrating Self-Booking Into Your Global Program workshop at the National Business Travel Association conference offered a brief glimpse into their global on-line booking programs.

The company books about 5,000 trips a month for its North America-based travelers, and 86% of those are on-line bookings.

Stewart noted that the fares of tickets issued on line are generally about 12% to 15% less costly than those issued by reservationists, which she attributed to the mechanical, somewhat coercive nature of booking engines as opposed to reservationists who can sometimes be sympathetic to a traveler's pleas to violate policy.

Interestingly, tickets for Latin America-based employees are issued in Dallas, either as e-tickets or printed and delivered via overnight mail.

Because all Sabre employees are required to be fluent in spoken and written English, the systems are not translated into local languages. Fares, however, are listed in local currencies.

U.K.-based travelers take between 100 and 130 trips each month, manager Melissa Lopez said. As many as 90% of those trips were being booked on-line soon after implementation, but that figure has fallen back to about 50% because of a change in travel agencies, she noted.

She said she hopes that about 75% of all U.K.-based trips will be booked on-line by year's end.

Texas Instruments expects to implement an on-line booking system for its Germany-based travelers later this year and its France-based travelers next year.

Those systems will be in the local language. In all cases, fares are shown in the local currency. The firm is using the GetThere booking system.

"You can never do enough selling," he said.

The company selected KDS, a French firm, to supply its on-line booking system.

The system is in the local language, and fares are shown in the local currency.

The least-expensive option is when all elements of a trip are completed by the traveler with no other human intervention. This option represents 86% of Dell's travel bookings.

The second option is when the booking is electronically queued to the agency, but there is no telephone communication between the traveler and a reservationist. The firm pays a higher fee for this type of transaction.

The third, and most costly, option is when the traveler and a reservationist have a phone discussion, in effect a full-service process.