The computer reservations systems used in travel agencies had their
origins in the mid 1970s. Measured in Internet time, they're now
senior-citizen technology. But they remain the cornerstone of
transaction processing in the retail trade.
These systems were started by airlines primarily to allow travel
agents to access inventory and make transactions. They continue to
perform these functions adequately enough to handle millions of
bookings.
But the manner in which the information is presented and the
need to use a variety of codes to navigate through the systems have
become archaic.
Mark Tilden, the chief technology officer of Sight & Sound
Software, which builds the interface for travel Web sites including
American Airlines,
acknowledges that the way the traditional GDSs operate is great for
processing many transactions quickly but believes that the users
pay a price.
"The TPF [transaction processing facility] basis for these
systems is really optimized for thousands of transactions a second.
In fact, Sabre at its peak may do 7,000 transactions a second,"
Tilden notes.
"But these systems were built to do that at the expense of a
fairly difficult user interface and they assume quite a bit of
knowledge on the part of the user."
Tilden, whose Oregon-based firm recently merged with Ireland's
Datalex and will operate under that name in the future, says his
company's software, known as BookSmart, sits between what the user
sees and the database behind the screen. He says it presents a more
user-friendly interface and sharply reduces the training required
for new agents.
It is this type of presentation, used on a number of travel Web
sites, that Tilden sees as the wave of the future.
"It is absolutely unquestionable that skilled operators can use
the native machines [the legacy GDS equipment] faster if they have
500 city codes memorized and know all the arcane rules," Tilden
says.
"But folks who don't remember all the rules and haven't
memorized all the codes will benefit from the new Web-based
technology."
Tilden also sees a great benefit in terms of training time.
"If agencies have a harder time paying the wages that make it
easier to keep people, they need to be able to train new agents
quickly and use them efficiently. With the easier-to-use
interfaces, you get away from six weeks of training on the old
systems."
BookSmart also allows users to customize information to fit the
needs of particular agencies.
For example, he says, one agency might allow consumers to book
open-jaw routings and another might now.
"Our software is configurable so agency A can have its rules and
agency B can have a different set of rules," Tilden says.