The Role of Global Computer Reservation
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Tourism The Role of Global Computer Reservation Functionality of Global CRSs Using the global CRSs, travel agencies can Systems in the Travel Industry Today and in the make reservations directly from their ter- Future minal with any airline and on all conti- nents without having to go through a co- One of the few examples for the global realization of electronic market coordination are ordination process or contract negotia- the Computer Reservation System (CRS) or Global Distribution Systems (GDS) used in the tions. All global CRSs provide the basic functions for the reservation process such travel industry. Because of the ever increasing competition, new technologies and as product presentation, reservation, fare changed distribution channels, a discussion has started about the role of CRSs. quote & ticketing and additional services. by Dr. Axel Schulz, Lufthansa Systems GmbH ♦ Product Presentation: For a CRS, the most important source Before going into detail about current criti- changes in the marketplace, the best of information is the presentation of cism and the systems´ future role, we will known global CRSs are AMADEUS, GALI- the products and services offered by briefly describe what CRSs are all about: LEO, SABRE, and WORLDSPAN with providers in all areas related to the AMADEUS being the only one which is travel industry. Each group of service Ideally, CRSs are systems for purely (in- largely owned by European airlines. To- providers has individual screen catego- formation transfer) logistical functions. gether with GALILEO, it is the leading ries the contents of which particularly They store current information about all system in the European market. GALILEO, represent the complexity of their of- available service providers and have the however, also has a strong position in the ferings and specific features of their necessary infrastructure to transfer such US market after it merged with an Ameri- serivces. The product “flight” for ex- data. This means that the systems also can system. SABRE and WORLDSPAN ample does not require complex de- perform additional tasks related to serv- have been developed in the US. So far, scriptions since it is sufficient for a neu- ice distribution, which in the area of goods SABRE is the only CRS which is wholly tral product presentation to state the are typically carried out by freight for- owned by one single airline. departure and arrival times, the route, warders. They support the transport of goods (or the right to a service) by elimi- AMADEUS GALILEO SABRE WORLDSPAN nating the physical distance between the producer and the sales mediator or the USA/ Mexico/ U:7.839 U: 13.347 U:17.496 U: 9.200 consumer respectively. Therefore, CRSs can Canada T: 29.313 T: 59.980 T: 82.441 be characterized as supporting distribu- T: 41.106 tion process since the current systems do Europe/ Russia U: 21.729 U: 12.561 U: 4.028 in no way support negotiations between U: 5.474 T: 59.804 T: 39.487 T: 11.477 T: 10.208 the producer and the consumer. CRSs are a combination of infrastructure measures Latin America/ U: 4.631 U: 1.100 U: 1.985 offered to interested providers in the tour- U: 53 Caribbean T: 8.247 T: 1.918 T: 6.328 ist industry. Similar to an empty super- T: 268 market, the system provides a sales area Far East/ Australia U: 920 U: 3.686 U: 4.113 U: 0 in the form of memory and communica- T: 2.034 T: 12.871 T: 14.246 T: 0 tions media. The providers can then fill the empty shelves by providing their data Africa/ Middle U: 374 U: 1.632 U: 490 to the CRS. U: 600 East T: 768 T: 5.144 T: 1.452 T: 1.368 Today’s Competing CRSs Total: U: 35.493 U: 32.326 U: 28.112 U: 15.327 The development of such systems was al- T:100.166 T:119.400 T:117.914 ready started at the beginning of the six- T: 47.950 ties, the objective being at the time to Figure 1 automate seat reservations procedures of Comparison between the number of airlines. Today, the largest civil data users (U) and the number centers and the most powerful commu- of terminals (T) of global systems (as at the beginning of 1996) nications networks are being used exclu- sively for this purpose. After several 17 Vol.6 – No.2 – 1996 Tourism Travel Agencies received from the respective service provider. Typically, the print-out of any additional information material is not supported by most systems as it is not always necessary, like for example a print-out of a hotel or rental car reser- Product- presentation Airline-Systems vation. ♦ Reservation Additional Services: Because of the increasing competition Network Network in the market, system operators were Additional Services forced to offer not only the three es- sential components of an information Airline-Systems Fare Quote and and booking system but also additional Ticketing services. Today, the user has direct ac- cess to essential travel information and can find further information in all CRSs about trade shows, visa regulations, particular events etc. Furthermore, pro- grams and interfaces have been devel- Hotel- or Car-Systems oped which facilitate the internal ad- Figure 2 ministration for each travel agent. Also Principel structure of CRSs invoicing, accounting, customer and quota management increasingly de- availability of particular reservation ers who thus have the latest informa- pend on the respective CRS. User categories and possibly the fare. It may, tion about availability at any point in prompting has significantly improved however, be difficult to describe the time and can use it as a basis for a new so that even inexperienced users can products of other service providers ap- offer. In addition, the system can also easily learn how to work with the reser- propriately with only a limited amount store customer related information such vation procedure. Since more and more of information. Hotels, for example, as e.g. all services provided to a cer- PCs are being used in this area modern have so far only been able to provide tain customer, type of payment, serv- user interfaces have been introduced. information about the price, the size ice information etc. of the bed and its approximate loca- The Information Infrastructure tion which alone is not a meaningful ♦ Fare Quote & Ticketing: Apart from the four core functionalities, description for potential customers. For Just like the product presentation, the a high speed network is the second basis this reason, it is intended to link the fare quote, ticketing and voucher gen- of a CRS. It connects the system with the particular offers to visual multimedia erating process depend on the type and service providers on the one hand and technology to be able to provide more the complexity of the services offered. the travel agents on the other. In Europe, detailed information to the customer. For flights, multiple fares are being of- travel agents are mainly linked via inter- fered which differ according to the res- faces to the cooperating national systems ♦ Reservation: ervation category, the date of the jour- in which case the local network infra- The core function of reservation sys- ney, the day when the reservation was structure is being used. Travel agents us- tems and the main reason for develop- made, the route and the length of the ing the CRS AMADEUS are linked via ing them is the reservation of offered stay. That means that practically each various networks. In most cases, they are services in the travel industry. To this fare needs to be calculated individu- integrated in the national START network. end, a so called Passenger Name Record ally. In addition, fare quotes can change In other countries, they are linked either (PNR) or Guest Name Record (GNR) is daily. The prices of other service pro- via the SITA network or via Datex-P X.25. created for each passenger or each viders, however, are relatively fixed so The city and airport offices of airlines are group of passengers. These records con- that in most cases, they stay an un- mostly integrated in their respective in- tain all services-related customer in- changed part of the offer. For the ternal network. formation. At the same time, this in- ticketing, travel agencies receive a fixed formation is transferred to the internal number of ticket forms which may only The network of the global CRS AMADEUS inventory system of all service provid- be used after confirmation has been has additional 14 network nodes distrib- EM – Electronic Markets 18 Tourism uted throughout the whole world. They Another weak point in the CRSs have al- need for streamlining their organization are connected to each other by 13 lines ways been additional functions since such in order to stay competitive. In many sub- with 1.92 Mbyte/s and 11 lines with a functions would not increase the number areas, some optimization and efficiency lower transmission rate. These lines are of sold flight tickets. Only now modern measures have already been taken. Now utilized 60% at most. By automatically graphical user interfaces are being devel- the only costs which can still be changed establishing alternative links, an avail- oped in the various systems for the front and reduced are personnel and fuel costs ability of 99.7% is achieved since, in case office. Sufficient back office functions as well as costs for sales. Generally, sales of necessity, any message can be trans- have been offered only very rarely. costs within this industry amount to 20 - ferred via other nodes. 25% of the total revenue which is per- Apart from the criticism about the inter- ceived as far too high.