“There Are Major Opportunites For Automating Travel Processes In India”

Janie Kaung, executive vice-president and managing director-Asia Pacific, Galileo International, in an exclusive with Raadia Mukadam, stresses upon the importance of India as a vital market and the strategies adopted to further strengthen its hold in the regionWith increasing competition especially in India, how does Galileo plan to retain existing market share and develop newer ones?

The key to our growth plan is the comprehensive solutions selling strategy. This addresses the business needs of our customer by focusing heavily on providing solutions, which help them improve operational efficiencies. The desired result is that, we help customers drive out costs and add value to their bottomline.

We call this approach a `360 degree thinking’. The concept is easy to understand as it is about offering comprehensive solutions - the full circle of solutions or a 360 degree. Galileo is now focusing aggressively on not just providing products, but joining product elements into a tailor made solution - a process akin to joining the dots in a circle. The breadth of our product and service capability supports this strategy.

Our solutions-selling recognises that different customers require different solution packages according to their challenges. Our strategy is to focus on the ‘pain points’ that agencies and suppliers face and help them better their business. For example, we are automating more of our customers’ business processes. We are providing them with even more content on the desktop such as low cost carrier fares and wider hotel and leisure inventory. We are making our technology more readily available so that it can be quickly, cheaply and effectively integrated with third-party applications and brought on-line.

Galileo `360 degree thinking' is already live. The new fares solutions Galileo rolled out in Asia Pacific in mid-2003 is called Galileo 360 degree fares, which is a comprehensive faring system that provides complete solutions.

Apart from solutions-selling, Galileo India can gain much simply from capitalising on existing Galileo strengths. For example, the Advantage Galileo programme - launched by Galileo India in 2003 really underlined how we could bring a distinct competitive edge to our customers. Advantage Galileo identified specific capabilities where we are ahead of our competitors in the Indian market. Take an internet solution such as ViewTrip.com, a website that allows agents to provide customers with up-to-the-minute itinerary information. Or ClientFile Plus stores vital customer and agency information so it can be accessed and transferred to build a complete booking file in less than 60 seconds.

How important is the Indian market to you? And how do you plan to grow this market?

We cannot ignore the potential of India, as the data on India's travel industry growth speaks for itself. Figures from the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) indicate that India will be hosting over five million tourists by 2010, nearly twice the current level of 2.6 million. Outbound tourists could rise from today’s estimated level of 10 million to 50 million. Everywhere you look in India, the travel industry data is on a long-term upward trend - and this ultimately provides fertile ground for a business such as ours. India holds strategic importance for us because it provides a platform for growth. There are major opportunities for automating travel processes within the Indian travel industry, and for bringing a range of online capabilities to agents and travellers. In short, there's a strategic balance between Galileo's proven solutions and the needs of India's travel sector.

What is the purpose of your visit to India?

My visit to India is a part of my visit to Asia Pacific. India is an important market as our existing India distributorship underlines that point. We have our presence 119 cities through 18 Galileo offices, 16 service centres and seven training centres. India is strategically important because it is the second largest global GDS market in Asia Pacific. Despite its size, it is not a saturated market; it provides growth potential to Galileo. India's current GDP growth, for example, is around seven per cent, second only to China. We firmly believe India's travel sector offers the prospect for expansion.

What new products are on offer in 2004?

We prefer to talk in terms of solutions as we are in the business of solving customer problems. Galileo India’s customers will benefit from the roll out of Phase 3 of Galileo 360 degrees Fares, which starts in early 2004. Following the launch of Agency Private Fares and Airline Private Fares in mid-2003 - representing Phases One and Two respectively. Airline Public Fares will mark Galileo's full automation of the fares process with airlines able to provide published fares via ATPCo and SITA into the Galileo database. Airline Public Fares will appear in Asia Pacific as three distinct components throughout 2004.

We covered the overall issue of private fares last summer, providing significantly enhanced capabilities for agencies to store and sell private fares or for airlines to distribute market net and private fares to agencies. Now with Airline Public Fares we are covering the published fares arena by applying the same high level of automation and making fares distribution faster and more accurate than ever. At the local level, Galileo India will continue to stay abreast of agents' changing needs, and provide appropriate local solutions. More enhancements are expected in the future.