SABRE rolled out its Web services offering to
travel agency subscribers in North America and Latin America. Web
services, said Sabre, uses Open Travel Alliance standards to
connect applications [like a consumer booking site] to the GDS more
efficiently. In the past, said Sabre, agencies connected
applications to the GDS using multiple programming languages and
forms of connectivity, slowing down--and increasing the cost
of--the implementation process. Web services eliminate agencies'
prior need to work with proprietary codes and numerous programming
languages to create their own Web sites with booking capabilities,
said Sabre. There are 22 services available, encompassing the
ability to shop and book air, car and hotel, and to create and
manage passenger name records. Sabre is charging a licensing fee,
plus usage fees for the Web services selected. Galileo launched its
Web services offering a year ago; AAA was its first customer.
ORBITZ customers now can buy nine tickets in
one booking. Competitors Travelocity and Expedia allow consumers to
buy six tickets on the same flight. The change in booking
capability was part of an overall site redesign by Orbitz, which
added some new features. For example, the site introduced an option
to search secondary airports and simplified the booking process
[only three clicks to book air and four to book a rental car],
Orbitz said. Orbitz also made navigation improvements, enlarged the
typeface throughout the site and implemented "new eye-pleasing
color scheme of greens, blues and yellows." However, consumers
weren't seeing any pretty colors last Thursday, because the Orbitz
Web site crashed and was unavailable for hours. Orbitz's site was
down Thursday morning and into the early afternoon. An Orbitz
spokeswoman said, "Human error occurred during scheduled site
maintenance." One week earlier, Orbitz suffered a similar outage,
which it blamed on an Oracle database.
MILEPOINT, a privately held Minneapolis company
that specializes in technology for loyalty programs, introduced
M)Transfer with Northwest. With the new product, Northwest's
WorldPerks members can transfer their miles between accounts for a
fee. For example, mileage awards can be transferred to the frequent
flyer accounts of friends or family. Frequent flyers can transfer
5,000 to 10,000 miles to a maximum of three people in one
transaction. The cost is $0.01 per mile, plus a $25 processing fee
tacked on.
VACATION.COM cut a deal with technology firm
Revelex to provide consumer booking engines for member Web sites
within four months, a step that could move Vacation.com toward its
goal of launching a competitive consumer Web site of its own. The
Web technology will be available to the consortium's more than
8,000 agencies under a letter of intent from Boca Raton,
Fla.-headquartered Revelex, which already offers a set of Internet
distribution tools under the name Power Agent. Among other things,
the Revelex distribution system queries GDSs and other reservation
systems for pricing and availability, producing an integrated
travel itinerary.
PRICELINE.COM earned $7.7 million in
second-quarter 2003, a 22% increase from the corresponding quarter
last year, when Priceline earned $6.3 million. Revenue declined,
from $304.5 million in second-quarter 2002 to $239.6 million, but,
on the plus side, Priceline's gross margin grew from 15.8% a year
ago to 16.9%. Also contributing to increased profits was $1.1
million in "other income," most of which was earned from non-travel
business, Pricelinemortgage. The online company sold 1.5 million
hotel room nights in the second quarter, a quarterly increase of
38% and a record at Priceline, according to the company.