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Article by our Sales Director, Chris Gilliland, which appeared in the December
2003 issue of
International Tours and Tourism News.
Learning a New Language
XML (Extensible
Markup Language) is the ‘Lingua Franca’ of the Computer Industry. It is designed
to improve the functionality of the Web by providing more flexible and adaptable
information identification, allowing different types of computer systems to communicate
in a simple and robust way.
It is because
of its simplicity and elegance that all major ‘computer applications’ will employ
some form of external communications using XML within the next four years. From
that time forward, XML will be the standard way of communicating digital information
and it therefore follows that it will be the standard way for communicating digital
Travel information i.e. Bookings; availability requests; images; sound and movies.
If we say
that within the next 5-10 years all the major booking systems will utilise some
form of XML bookability, we can deduce that the next few years are going to be a
very busy XML time. Astratis is a
company completely immersed in the XML revolution.
Distribution Channels
It is a reasonable assumption that the major Travel booking portals i.e.
Last Minute, Opodo and Expedia, will have already undertaken XML development.
Astratis is currently enabling its Enterprise
Travel Reservation System ‘Taurus’ to have XML bookability and XML availability
distribution. The Travel Industry is starting to catch up with other industries
by identifying the potential offered by these new technologies and like Astratis, both Travel Agency and Tour Operator
system suppliers need to continue to invest time and money in resources and technology,
if the industry is to benefit and realize this potential.
Another
indication of XML green-shoots is XReservations Ltd. Astratis
work with XReservations whom provide a conduit to front-end technologies e.g. on-line
booking portals (Lastminute.com) and also the suppliers of Travel Agent systems,
Tarsc, Ramesys, Traveltec, Voyager, Comtec and Multicom.
XReservations
provide the XML links to the Astratis
Reservation system Taurus, allowing for fully interactive communications, bookability
and product distribution for the Astratis
user base. This is a completely new channel of distribution for the Tour Operators
concerned, providing an incremental revenue stream with incredible growth potential
at very little cost. In fact, Astratis
are currently talking to a number of additional Flight only and Package Tour Operators
about replacing current systems that, unfortunately, don’t provide the flexibility,
through either commercial or technological restraints, to enable the development
in line with these new technologies.
Bookability
Tour Operator, dynamic and bookable Web sites are indeed a massive growth
area and obviously a significant advantage lies with the major Tour Operators with
strong brand awareness.
Therefore, considerable thought needs to be given to the public and professional
awareness of the lesser-known brands of the smaller Operators and Consolidators.
Assistance can be provided by the on-line search engines i.e. Google, however, without
considerable investment in traditional advertising mediums, there will still be
no guarantee that a particular Web site will be found.
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This is an area that XReservations has addressed. By endeavouring to offer the XML
data links and as required, a searchable database, for all Operators, XReservations
provides real-time consolidated results to the powerfully branded on-line Travel
Agents and also the retail Agency sector. Consequently, all participating Tour Operators
will gain the maximum product distribution and exposure.
With all
the excitement concerning the development and future growth of the XML channel,
it’s still important to allow consideration to the more conventional distribution
channels. I believe that it’s generally accepted that the Viewdata protocol is dated
and will over time become obsolete, but it is still widely used in the Agencies
and with the enhancements of the Agent booking systems, allowing for multiple operator
searches and consolidation of results, I think it will remain a preferred Agent
tool for a while yet. However, there is no reason why the tremendous costs associated
with Viewdata should prevail.
These costs
are incurred at both the Operator and Agent level and are deemed unavoidable due
to the necessity of communicating via the existing private X25 networks.
Astratis does provide an alternative, sophisticated
booking system which allows direct IP connectivity between an Agent and a Tour Operator
using a unique Java applet. This technology is available for integration with any
current agency booking or distribution system.
Brochures
One of the greatest cost reducing elements of advancing technologies has
to be the provision of electronic brochures. I believe there may always be a demand
for some traditional brochures within agencies, however, the ability to amend holiday
details within a brochure and immediately distribute the changes nationally or internationally,
without the cost and time constraints currently associated, will be soon viewed
as a necessity not an extravagance.
E-brochures
can be distributed on a piece-meal basis - on demand or down loaded in batches,
either way Operator holiday or flight information will be instantly available and
representative of the current product status.
The Future
To allow Astratis to provide
integrated Web services, on-line bookability, dynamic availability distribution
and the provision of e-brochures, we are committed to redesign all of our systems
and applications to adopt a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). SOA promises availability
and content distribution to any third party application, by addressing the issues
of system availability, reliability and scalability. The services within SOA use
XML to create a robust connection to many systems on many platforms.
Astratis is an IBM business partner and openly
invites and encourages working relationships with IT companies within the Travel
Industry. We are currently involved in development projects to provide the industry
with all the applications and tools mentioned in this article.
In conclusion,
this is without a doubt a very exciting time for technology and the Travel Industry
and I am confident that any technological advancement, which will ease the current
pressures on the Industry as a whole, will be received with real enthusiasm and
support.
Chris Gilliland
Sales Director
Astratis Limited
1 December 2003
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