Complex bookings in seconds

Press, 6 September 1983, Page 22

Complex bookings in seconds

Flights, hotels, tours and strip shows ...

By

SIMON COLLINS,

“N.Z. Herald”

New Zealand’s first computer terminals which both book and print air tickets have been installed in five Auckland travel agencies.

This is the latest move in a competitive scramble to provide computer and videotex services to what is fast becoming perhaps the country’s most computerised business.

Already 100 " ticket printers have been imported, ready for distribution to the 89 travel agents accredited to the International Air Transport Association (1.A.T.A.). This number is expected to be swollen by another 100 to 150 agents because of a law which came into effect on July 1 requiring all travel agents to charge only I.A.T.A. rates.

They will pay an extra $390 a month to rent the printers, on top of the existing annual rental of $6BBB for a basic airline booking computer terminal. The company behind the computerised ticket printers, Travel Communications, Ltd, looks tiny at first sight, with only five staff.

But it operates a $2.8 million computer network, and is majority-owned by Challenge Computers, a subsidiary of the New Zealand biggest company, Fletcher Challenge. Minority shareholders are Air New Zealand and Videocom, a British company which first introduced the computerised multi-airline booking system in Britain eight years ago. The New Zealand system now gives travel agents direct access to the complete computer systems of 14 airlines — Air New Zealand, Mount Cook Airlines, Air Pacific, Polynesian Airlines, Qantas, Ansett, T.A.A., Singapore Airlines, Pan-Am, Continental, T.W.A., British Airways, U.T.A. and, since this month, Lufthansa. Because some of these airlines have links with other airline computers, it is possible to book flights almost anywhere in the world.

To test this claim, I asked to be booked a flight from Auckland to Ethiopia. It came through in a few seconds — from Auckland to Los Angeles by Air New Zealand, to New York by Pan-Am, to Rome, by Alitalia, and finally to Addis Ababa by Ethiopian Airlines.

Furthermore, the computer will give you a list of hotels in each city on your route, with full details of room rates and facilities. It can book accommodation, sightseeing tours and even a seat at a theatre in the West End or a strip show in Las Vegas. It will tell you instantly what the temperature is at your destination, and whether all the airports en route are open. It is limited only by what each airline puts in its computers, and these days airlines are competing for business almost as much by the range of information they offer as by their fares. In New Zealand, another limitation is that so far, muiti-airline booking computers have been installed only in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and, this month, Hamilton.

A telephone link costs agents $8 a month for every kilometre they are distant from the nearest computer, which has effectively restricted the system to those four cities plus one agent in

Masterton and several in Dunedin, who shared a leased line to the Christchurch computer.

A similar shared line is being installed between Auckland and Whangarei next month, using a new Post Office rate for longdistance data transmission which Reduces the monthty rental On this route from $592 t 0 15391.

The reduction, which until now was available only between | the four main centres; is even more dramatic over long distances j — from $1125 to $569, for instance, between either Wellington and Gisborne or Christchurch and Invercargill. Meanwhile, the Maars system] has recently been installed in the New Zealand pffices of several overseas airlines, for whom it is cheaper than a direct link to] their own overseas computers. Air New Zealand offices do not use it because they have their own links to overseas airlines and, since July 25, all offices with “Carinp” domestic booking terminals have been able technically to make international bookings, too. Previously, these were made by telephone to the three main centres.

Computerisation is proving to be an enormous timesaver.

A complicated round-the-world ticket with many stopovers used to take up to three or five hours to write by hand. Now the computer can do it in a matter of seconds.

Computerised ticket printers have, in fact, been used for about two years by about eight major New Zealand agencies specialising in group tours, to save them having to type in the same information for perhaps 100 tickets, all identical apart from the travellers’ names. At Gulliver’s Travel in Auckland, for instance, this now takes one person an average of about three hours a day, whereas it once required the equivalent of 2% full-time staff.

As with the Maars system, the tickets are printed by a continous-feed process developed late last year by Mr lan Pope, technical manager of Moore Paragon, Ltd, of Mount Wellington, Auckland.

Until then, the tickets were manually stuck on to continuous-feed computer paper imported from Australia, which kept getting caught in the printer.

Mr Donald Brodie, Moore Paragon’s sales manager, said the new process had a big export potential, with inquiries already from several airlines in the Pacific and Asia.

However, the group tour operators print their air tickets on a $30,000 Cadet microcomputer which is not linked to the airlines directly.

Bookings are made by telephone, and the tickets still have to be sent out by mail or courier from, for instance, Gulliver’s office in Auckland to 25 agents as far away as Taumaraunui. The group operators expect to keep using this system, because they hold allocations of airline seats and have no need for direct access to the airline computers. Only the Maars system has that access so far. In the next few months, however, travel agents will have to decide whether they also want what will probably be a cheaper system of tourist information through the new technology of videotex.

Mr Ralph Green, general manager of Videotex Systems, a subsidiary of Computer Consultants, Ltd, has already earmarked travel agents as one of his top priorities for the French Teletel system.

He claims that some travel agents are leaving the Maars system because of its cost, and that he could provide them with an equivalent computerised booking and information system by videotex much more cheaply. The Australian Federation of Travel Agents has just announced plans for Australia’s biggest videotex network, using Teletel software, which is due to start with 800 terminals in October.

Its airline schedules, hotel and car rental information will be available on travel agents’ television . screens for a monthly rental of between $340 and $4BO. Country agents will pay the same as those in the city. Mr Brian Leggett, manager of Travel Communications, replied that the only travel agent to have left Maars was one in New Plymouth who could not afford the previous high communications rates to Auckland.

This agent was considering rejoining now that the Post Office had brought in its lower rates for data, Mr Leggett said. He also pointed out that

the Australian videotex system would not have direct access to airline computers, or provide actual bookings or tickets. In Britain, the Maars originator, Videcom, started a videotex service, using the British Prestel system, in January.

This service, called Skytrack, does make bookings, but it is cheaper because it covers only eight airlines instead of the 26 in the British Maars system.

Travel Communications

has already bought the New Zealand rights to it, and Mr Leggett was in Britain for talks recently. The Travel Agents’ Association of New Zealand has established an automation committee, and has invited the Post Office to brief its annual convention on videotex systems in Wellington in October. Its executive director, Mr Peter Lowry, said the association was still undecided between the rival British and French systems.