NEW YORK -- Is the search technology that Orbitz is licensing from
ITA Software the greatest thing since sliced bread and e-ticketing?
Travel Weekly interviewed officials from ITA Software, Sabre,
Orbitz and Expedia, and performed some comparative fare and flight
searches as a way to look at the CRSs in relation to the planned
Orbitz/ITA Software system.
The search technology
Jeremy Wertheimer, the head of Cambridge, Mass.-based ITA
Software, began building prototypes of what was to become the
company's low-fare search system as a computer science grad student
at MIT in the early 1990s.
The CRSs' "technical innovations were novel when they were
introduced in the 1970s, but for the 1990s they looked
old-fashioned," he said.
The ITA search engine to be used by the Orbitz site is based on
algorithms (mathematical formulas for solving particular problems)
that are new to the travel industry, he said.
This new computational method for analyzing flight, fare and
seat availability information enables the system to search for
virtually all of the pertinent data at once and then all
combinations of that data, the ITA executive said, adding that the
combinations might amount to "millions or even billions of
possibilities."
In recent Senate testimony, Orbitz chief executive officer
Jeffrey Katz argued that the CRSs provide much more limited
searches because they screen out most options before analyzing
prices and times.
Wertheimer backed off Katz's claim of one-second response times
for these complex searches.
He indicated that the company's internal tests show search
response times of two to five seconds. He said the response time
might be slower on a consumer's PC "that takes five or 10 seconds
to load the Yahoo! home page."
If you try ITA's beta site (www.itasoftware.com), a message tells users
that searches will take five to 60 seconds. But, the beta site
isn't a precise replication of the system that Orbitz plans to roll
out in Chicago, where the Web site headquarters is located.
Suzi LeVine, the marketing director of Expedia.com, noted that
the site's Build Your Own Trip feature goes beyond the limits of
its Worldspan reservations system, disclosing "150 to 1,200
results" for consumers with flexible travel options.
Both Sabre and Expedia officials agreed that the ITA/Orbitz
search engine spews abundant flights and fare options.
But, LeVine of Expedia contended that many of them can't be
booked. And, Bruce Charendoff, Sabre's senior vice president of
governmental affairs in Washington, termed some of the connections
"wacky," noting that consumers would suffer from data overload.
"It's too much information in an unconsummable way," agreed
LeVine of Expedia.
Sabre's Charendoff said the Fort Worth, Texas, company's search
philosophy is to provide the best fares rather than all
possibilities.
Trying the searches
When a Travel Weekly reporter queried the ITA beta site on July
25 for roundtrip options for two adults, leaving Newark, N.J., on
Sept. 1 and flying to Las Vegas, with a return on Sept. 5, the
search produced 330 options. The fares ranged from $448 to
$3,733.
The next step was entering (at www.travelocity.com) the same criteria on July 25 into
Sabre-powered Travelocity's 9 Best Itineraries, using a new feature
that allows the consumer to consider up to three connections.
Because it looks for the best fares rather than all of the options,
the search produced 13 options, with fares from $558 to $1,546.
The parameters of the two searches weren't identical. Both found
Northwest Airlines flights from Newark to Minneapolis/St. Paul, and
then to Las Vegas. But the $448 ITA option also included layovers
in Minneapolis/St. Paul and overnight flights.
Using the Best Trips feature on July 31 from Expedia (www.expedia.com), the
search produced more practical -- and more expensive -- National
Airlines and Continental roundtrips for Newark-Las Vegas-Newark.
Both of the options were nonstop and each cost $638 for two
adults.
With the Best Trips results from Expedia in hand, the site then
gives the additional option of using them to Build Your Own Trip.
This feature is very useful and provides more flexibility than the
initial search.
From the 24 possible Newark to Las Vegas departures that Expedia
presented for Sept. 1, the Travel Weekly reporter selected a
Continental departure at 12:30 p.m. Build Your Own Trip then offers
21 possible Las Vegas-Newark connections on Sept. 5.
One interesting feature of the ITA site is that your search
criteria can simultaneously check departures or arrivals from
airports up to 300 miles from your top choice.
Expedia.com already aggregates nearby airports "that consumers
want," according to Expedia's LeVine, but Expedia also is
developing technology that will provide greater airport
options.
Track records
Sabre officials argued that its CRS has proven its reliability
over decades while the ITA/Orbitz system has never booked a
fare.
Steve Morris, a Sabre senior technical instructor based in
Tulsa, Okla., said the Sabre CRS does searches on 751 airlines and
more than 1 million flights.
The technical instructor said response times on the roughly
750,000 standard Sabre sets attached to the CRS are about three
seconds.
Sabre averages about 300,000 to 350,000 messages per minute and,
in contrast to the ITA/Orbitz technology, its reliability has been
tested under real business conditions, Morris said.
Carol Jouzaitis, Orbitz vice president of corporate
communications, said that anyone who doubts the excellence of the
Orbitz/ITA system can go ahead and try the ITA beta site.
Initial usability studies of the Orbitz system have been under
way for weeks, she said, showing the ITA technology "works as
promised."
"Our challenge," she said, "will be integrating the interface
into our back end."
The site will be "more robust" than the ITA beta site because it
will be updated more often and will have access to many Web fares
that the ITA site currently does not feature.
Mainframes vs. PCs
Orbitz's Katz said the system that will be used on the airlines'
site will have the edge over the CRSs in computing power because it
will use parallel processing, a method of tying together groups of
PCs for optimum performance.
"By assembling modern server processors in parallel, instead of
using mainframes, Orbitz will have more than 1,000 times the
computing power of Sabre, the largest CRS, and at only a small
fraction of the cost," Katz contended.
And, ITA's Wertheimer stated that it has the edge because PCs
are scalable, meaning their numbers can be increased incrementally
-- in contrast to limited expansion inherent in mainframes.
In addition, the ITA chief executive said the ITA/Orbitz's
PC-based system will have an advantage over mainframe-based CRSs
because ITA uses various data compression technologies that allow
it to store much of the data in RAM (random access memory) rather
than on disks.
"It may be 1,000 times faster to keep data in RAM," Wertheimer
said. "You talk about RAM in terms of nanoseconds vs. disk access
times in milliseconds."
Morris at Sabre countered that mainframes are being erroneously
categorized as older technology. He claimed that mainframes are
"thousands of times more capable than any PC."
"In transaction-processing, mainframes are still king," he
contended.
Regarding the memory issue and access times, Morris said the
bulk of the data on Sabre are indeed stored in core memory.
Languages
The ITA/Orbitz system will be easier to maintain and customize
than the CRSs because the ITA system uses LISP (a high-level
programming language usually associated with artificial
intelligence applications), C++ (popular for graphical
applications) and Java (a general purpose language suitable for the
Web), according to Wertheimer of ITA.
He touted the superiority of these languages when compared with
Assembler, a language developed in the early days of programming
that's still commonly used on mainframes.
"A lot of the CRS is still in Assembler language," Wertheimer
said. "Compared to Assembler, everything is more modern."
Morris at Sabre conceded that LISP and C++ are high-level, newer
languages, but contended that Assembler can be faster and more
facile because it can more adeptly control how and where data are
used, speeding response.
The future
In the final analysis, the relative merits of the CRSs,
associated Web sites and the ITA/Orbitz system eventually will be
measured by consumers and the industry.
And, when will the Orbitz system be up and running?
"[It] will launch when the site is secure, scalable and stable
and has the necessary functionality to delight customers," the
company said.