eyefortravel - Travel Distribution India '06

‘Technology should be accessible’

Anuj Gupta CEO Final Quadrant Solutions

Anuj Gupta, CEO of Final Quadrant Solutions, tells Express TravelWorld about the kind of technologies that will enhance travel distribution in the future

What kinds of technologies are currently popular among travel service providers and online travel agents?

Technologies that are based on open architecture, which can handle multiple products and brands, connect to suppliers directly and bring multiple suppliers on single screen, can help organisations sell through multiple channels and reduce errors like ADMs. Technology should not only be centrally operated but should also be easily accessed from remote locations.

Which technology solutions according to you are most effective for marketing and distributing travel online in India?

India needs technology that enables operations from a single point and integrated with sales at the back-end as well as those that are able to source information from multiple databases including negotiated rates and inventory and reduce sales cycle times, allow for sales of last minute inventory and connect the interface to payment gateways GDS and many other suppliers. A system which has the capability to manage its customers, keeping a record and profiling them, should be user friendly. The technology should be able to automate real-time fare import into database and eliminate the need for manual entry of fares and connect to multiple sales channels, thereby increasing the sales manifold.

What kind of technology solutions are you currently developing at Final Quadrant for your travel and hospitality industry clients?

We are developing .Net-based solutions with open architect and scalable system. Our integrated product called SuiteCase contains multiple sales channels (customer website, sub-agent, call centres), multi-product booking engine (air, car, hotel, insurance), ready third-party connectivity to global distribution systems (Amadeus, Galileo, Sabre, Worldspan) payment gateways (EPDQ, clear commerce, HSBC, AMEX, Citibank India, Realex, etc), aggregators (Octopus, Tourico, Travco, etc) and other suppliers, integrated contract and fares management, a complete travel mid- and back-office suite, booking processing with automated quality check, auto-ticketing and vouchers with dispatch, staff control with access rights, business logic, multimode payment, comprehensive reporting, CRM, MIS and reporting, full multi-product automatic booking processing, supplier management, rules and rights management - all in one product, providing a solution to the complex problems of the travel industry.

How popular and effective do you think the Internet is in India at this point in time for travel service distribution?

The travel market in India is changing rapidly and Internet is playing an important role in making travel one of the most powerful contributors to the booming Indian economy. Internet has enabled customers to buy their travel through an ever-increasing number of new sources and channels. The changing dynamics within the travel sector is certainly forcing service providers to consider future strategies for growth towards the development of compelling value propositions.