According to Penzance Technology, it will make finding fares easier and quicker for travel agents and travellers, and has a global market opportunity.
Dubbed Arnold, -it's the second generation of travel reservation systems," according to Bruce Boundy, managing director of Penzance.
The difference with this technology is that it is in real-time, according to the company. It consolidates flight information from private discounted fares databases with published fares databases and checks this information with flight and seat availability in the global Customer Reservations Systems (CRS).
This cross-referencing is normally done manually by a travel agent who must look up each database separately for fares and availabilityââ,¬"a time-consuming and tricky task.
The Australian travel market -is the most complex in the world," said Richard Noon, general manager of Smartravel solutions. There are over 200 fares to London alone, he said, and many trips involve multiple airlines.
Smartravel Solutions is the technology division of Concorde International Travel, a strategic partner in Arnold.
Concorde provides fare, content, ticketing services and technology to travel agents. Half owned by British Airways, Concorde has taken the first license to use in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
The companies are currently in negotiations with travel chain Traveland and American Express. These agents would run the system on their Web sites for passengers to book their own tickets. Other potential markets are Web portals and the airlines themselves, according to Penzance.
A key benefit of the system is that it has been created with the end-user in mind. -We wanted a product for people with no travel or IT knowledge to use," Boundy said.
Once the flight and availability information is received, the user can book and pay for the ticket in real time, in a few minutes.
Future developments may include an online facility for car hire and accommodation.
A more complex module to incorporate stopovers, different arrival and departure cities and the use of frequent flyer points is to come.
-We have a series of product developments planned such as WAP," Boundy said, -and version two will enable booking from ports outside Australia". For Arnold, it seems the sky is the limit.
