GDS-airline battle benefits the ‘new entrants’
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line and every small agency that used
the system simply wasn’t feasible. “It
takes too much time,” Lee said, “so we
do it on [the airlines’] behalf.”
For the largest agencies, “the economics are handled between the buy-er and the supplier,” Lee said. “The
airline’s got the seat and the corporate
buyer’s got the butt.”
Carlson Wagonlit Travel and Price-
line.com fall into that category. Price-
line signed an agreement with G2 in
June. Carlson has been a customer
since last year. But Lee could not say
how Carlson uses G2. “I get bookings from them,” she said. “But the
terms and conditions were negotiated directly with the airlines. I don’t
know if they use us for one type of
booking or another.”
International airlines, a glaring
lack in the G2 system, “probably”
will be added in 2007.
“None are ready at this point,”
Lee said, “although we are working
with the Star Alliance.” The alliance
tapped G2, along with ITA Software
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and a joint project by Lufthansa Sys-
tems and Farelogix, as “alternative
content access platforms.”
Meanwhile, ITA Software has put
the development and marketing of
its distribution system on the back
burner as it tackles the building of a
host system for Air Canada.
It’s an opportunity “that comes
along once in a lifetime,” Derek Le-
witton, ITA’s vice president of sales,
said. “You thank God and hop on it.”
Lewitton said ITA, which revolutionized air fare shopping, is “a much
smaller company than
our impact would suggest. We don’t have the
bandwidth to do everything we’re asked to do.”
But he emphasized
that the GDS project is
by no means dead. That,
he said, would be like
saying the Dallas Cowboys had abandoned
their running game if
they throw a few passes.
“The GDS opportunity is a great one, and we
fully expect that in due
time it will move back
to the front burner,” he
said. “But when an airline asks you to revolutionize how airlines are
run, you can’t refuse.”
Lewitton, who was
one of the early promoters of GNEs when
he was United’s director
of distribution strategy,
said ITA’s absence from
the lists of airlines’ “
preferred booking channels” was its own choice.
Inclusion would have
meant that “thousands
of folks” would call with
inquiries, and “given that
we’ve scaled back on the
distribution product, commensurate
with our efforts on the host system
project, we’re not in the mode of
‘operators are standing by,’ ” he said.
“When we’re ready, we’ll go out with
the right publicity.”
Meanwhile, Lewitton said ITA is
“engaged in some agencies” and is
“quietly beavering away” on the dis-
tribution product.
Bringing Unique Hotels and
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worldhotels.com
Derek Lewitton, vice
president of sales, I TA
Software.
Jim Davidson, president
of Farelogix.
Farelogix is sometimes described
as a GNE, sometimes as a “content
aggregator.” It currently has seven or
eight agency customers, including
one small, online customer, according
to President Jim Davidson.
Farelogix’ FLX Platform doesn’t
make bookings, and no one ever
“sees” it, Davidson said. “It sits under
the corporate booking tools, and it’s
all set up based on a travel management company’s relationships.”
A travel management company can
write an “infinite” number of sourcing
and business rules, based on its and its
clients’ needs. For example, the rules
might direct that Airline A is booked
through one GDS, while Airline B
is booked in another, and a third is
booked on the airline’s Web site.
Even G2 SwitchWorks is “consid-
ered a data source,” Davidson said.
He said it’s easy for agency managers to rewrite business rules to keep
up with the rapidly changing landscape of GDS and airline programs
that penalize or reward agencies for
booking through various channels.
It requires no retraining for the
frontline agent: The business rules determine where the booking is made,
and the agent is never even aware of
any changes.
