WASHINGTON -- A Sabre official has this to say to Orbitz regarding
the claim that its technology far exceeds the capabilities of CRSs:
Prove it.
"Right now, the software is in large measure vaporware," said
Bruce Charendoff, Sabre's senior vice president of governmental
affairs in Washington, referring to the technology that the
airline-owned Orbitz is licensing from Cambridge, Mass.-based ITA
Software.
"You can go to the beta site and take it for a theoretical test
drive. But the proof is what it does when it becomes operational
and if consumers like it."
In an interview last week, Charendoff responded to claims made
by Orbitz chief executive officer Jeffrey Katz before the Senate
Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation that Orbitz/ITA
Software technology "will search through approximately 100,000
times more options than the CRS will" and that the CRSs are based
on outmoded technology.
The launch of the airlines' site has numerous implications for
the industry. What will be the commercial impact on agents who use
Sabre, Amadeus, Galileo and Worldspan? Will the technology that
Orbitz is licensing from ITA work as promised, and what will
consumers think of Orbitz's approach?
In testifying before the senators, Katz, who once headed Sabre,
painted Orbitz, which is owned by the five largest U.S. carriers,
as part of the competitive solution to "a very potent duopoly in
Internet travel," namely Sabre/Travelocity and
Microsoft/Expedia.
Sabre welcomes competition, Charendoff said, adding that
companies such as Expedia and Priceline.com push Sabre to improve.
"We're not trying to prevent Orbitz from coming into business,"
the governmental affairs specialist said. "The central problem is
when an entity comes into the marketplace with the backing of
suppliers and has control of information and inventory."
The Orbitz/ITA technology "will search absolutely every airline,
schedule and fare possibility -- all half a billion to a billion
possibilities- and we will do it in one second," Katz said.
The CRSs provide much more limited searches, Katz said, because
they screen out "99.99999%" of the options before analyzing prices
and times.
"Connecting flights over points not on the system's
predetermined list of connecting hubs?" Katz asked. "Doesn't even
consider them. Flights offered by an airline with very few
frequencies in that market? Doesn't even consider them.
"Most of the options it throws out are not good choices --
they're inefficient routings, inconvenient departure times and the
like.
"But buried in that pile of over half a billion possibilities
that the CRS throws out before it evaluates," he said, "are usually
some great options -- an alternative city to connect over, a
competing airline, a few fares that are lower," Katz said.
Consumers and agents can try ITA's beta site (atwww.itasoftware.com), but it isn't a precise
replication of the system that Orbitz plans to roll out in Chicago,
where the Web site headquarters is located.
Sabre's Charendoff said the ITA/Orbitz search methodology
provides abundant fare and flight options. But, he said, the
underlying philosophy of Sabre is different.
"Our philosophy is to provide the best travel options rather
than a virtual data dump."
Many options that the ITA/Orbitz technology pulls up are "kind
of wacky connections with long delays, sometimes with overnight
stays," Charendoff said.
And, regarding Orbitz's argument that the CRSs use yesterday's
technology, Sabre officials last week countered that its
mainframe-based system is state-of-the-art and has been tested
under peak business conditions.