eyefortravel - Travel Distribution India '06

Travel2Agent launches an array of new initiatives

ETW Staff

In an effort to spread its wings, Travel2Agent has charted out ambitious expansion plans. Having taken many new technological initiatives in the recent past, the company is all set to showcase its latest initiatives and products at World Travel Market in London in the second week of November. The company launched a new version of Beta called the 'Pro GBS' at the start of this month along with a Web-edition of the `Pro GBS.' The `Pro GBS' also comes with various added features like intra and inter organisation messaging. This is an organised messaging system and the look and feel is similar to email; however the functionality is industry specific.

The `Pro GBS' includes the all-new hotel GBS with more functionality than the Beta version, which was in circulation until last month. Commenting on the initiative, Gagan Chadha, director corporate tie-up, Travel2Agent.com said, "Now the agencies can view online brochures of the hotels and also email the same to their clients. They can also locate hotels in a specific locality of a city."

The company is also looking at introducing VISA GBS shortly wherein the travel agencies will be able to request processing of VISA's for about 10 countries. They will also be able to track the various stages of Visa processing on their system. On the cards is also car rental GBS. According to Chadha, "Through car rental GBS, budget to luxury cars can be booked for half day, full day, airport /railway station transfers or even outstation bookings. At this stage the software is ready and we are shortly going to start the process of inviting car rental companies to display their inventory. Car rental GBS will be of advantage not only to multi-city players, but also small and medium size rental companies. Price and service reliability will be the major factors that will enable rental companies in garnering more business from booking agencies."

In its bid to promote hotels in Thailand, the company is planning to introduce 'Thailand Hotels Packages.' Travel2Agent will enable booking of hotels and packages for Thailand from the first of next month. With many new initiatives under the belt Chadha is confident that agents will look at sourcing inventory from the GBS as Travel2agent is purely an inventory distribution company and works in the background. Travel2agent will also officially introduce the Airline GBS with at least three airlines including no frills and scheduled airlines. Explaining its features, Chadha mentioned," Non-authorised agents will be able to apply for airline authorisation of legacy carriers online through this initiative. The airline GBS has the 'Dynamic Fare Calculation' system (DFC), which picks up the fares automatically without the need of entering the fare code. This means that any booking created on the airline GBS will be Debit Note (ADM) free. To ensure an ADM free environment, the DFC has been designed to support extremely complex fares. The airline GBS is being designed to grow into an Airline Management System, which covers more surface area of airline functionality than an airline host software, which is only concerned with inventory management."