GDSs Building Buzz Around New Multisource Systems

The three western GDS companies are pulling out the stops to create buzz around their next-generation travel agency desktops.

The three systems have several features in common, most notably graphical user interfaces and the ability to aggregate content from both GDS and non-GDS sources.

Sabre Travel Network began its general rollout of its entry into the field, the Sabre Red Workspace.

Sabre said more than 800 customers in 50 countries are using the Workspace. The remainder of Sabre’s customers are expected to upgrade to Red by the end of the year, and MySabre eventually will be phased out.

Among the early adopters of Sabre Red are Woburn, Mass.-based Travizon, a corporate agency; WRR Travel Partners, a New York-based corporate and leisure travel and entertainment company that is a subsidiary of Altour; Al Gosaibi Travel, a leisure agency in Bahrain; and Norad Travel Management, a corporate and leisure agency based in Liss, U.K.

“As advertised, the Sabre Red Workspace is quicker to start up and we experienced faster response times to data queries,” Brenda Morin, director of operations for Travizon, said.

Michael Retsina, a WRR partner, said, “Each time I open Sabre Red Workspace, the application remembers my settings, my agent location and identity, and it loads very quickly. I love the new layout. It really works well for me, and I like the design and the accessibility of all the features.”

Sabre Red remains a work in progress, with a number of new features planned for late this year or in 2011.

Among the new features is Sabre Red Business Intelligence, previewed at the NBTA conference in Houston, which is based on the reporting and data consolidation capabilities of TRX Inc.’s Traveltrax solution.

It incorporates industry benchmarking, using travel industry data from Sabre’s data warehouse; agency management tools that identify revenue opportunities and cost savings, and reports that agencies can provide to corporate clients on expenses, program management, policy compliance, supplier activity and other areas.

Amadeus said Travel Leaders Corporate started processing live travel bookings last week via the Amadeus One desktop.

David Holyoke, president of Travel Leaders Corporate, said he was pleased with the progress of the pilot and added that Amadeus One “will further enable our travel agents to leverage their experience and transform our clients’ needs into quality travel options that ensure maximum value.”

Vic Pynn, executive vice president for corporate travel IT for Amadeus in the Americas region, said the Amadeus One pilot will continue for a few months. As a result of the efforts to date, new features and enhancements already have been added to the next-generation desktop.

For example, more commands and functionality have been added to Cryptic Magic, the patent-pending “translation” feature that enables an agent to enter GDS cryptic commands at the point of sale and obtain the same rich policy-compliant results as an agent operating in a graphical environment.

Another patent-pending feature is Flexible Agent Air Flow, which provides the flexibility of cryptic air shopping and the power of the graphical user interface. Travelport chief, Jeff Clarke, said “significant progress” has been made on the development and delivery of the Travelport Universal Desktop.

He described it as “transformational” and said it has been delivered to a “leading client.” The rollout to other clients will continue throughout the year, he said.