RightRez Tackles Complexities of Energy and Marine Travel

In an age when children can book an airline trip on an iPad, it may seem strange to hear that “the art of air booking is very complicated.”

But Maria Regester, vice president of business development at RightRez, a technology firm in Bloomington, Ind., is not dishing out hyperbole when she describes the complexity of booking air travel.

RightRez, which provides its technology to major companies and to their travel management companies, serves one of the most complex areas of air travel: the energy, marine and crew sector, which involves moving large groups of people from many far-flung points, often with limited air options, to faraway destinations that may have their own limitations.

And the people responsible for moving those travelers must wade through – and abide by – equally complicated immigration rules and airline business rules.

A world of complexity
Just finding itineraries isn’t easy, according to Regester.

“We’ll get a request for a crew to fly from Manila to Barcelona to join a ship,” she said. “There are so many rules that the GDS availability tools are just not robust enough. We’ve actually revised our algorithms to get raw data to build itineraries segment by segment.”

A lot of challenges arise from international relations between countries and the major transit restrictions that governments place on certain nationalities, she said.

“Workers from Philippines, Indonesia and India, for example, are restricted in where they can connect or how often,” Regester said.

A global challenge
Citizens of most countries of the world, including the countries that supply many of the workers on ships,  must obtain a transit visa simply to make a connection in a country within the Schengen Zone, which includes the European Union (except the U.K. and Ireland) plus Norway and Switzerland.

A further complication is time requirements, Regester said. “Crew members report by a specific time, and getting them there on time can be a challenge,” she said. “Where they can, they’ll try to arrive a day or two ahead” to allow for delays.

RightRez also serves tour operators and cruise lines, “but our main area of growth is energy and marine,” she said. The field “drastically needs automation. It’s relatively untapped.”