Partners Presents a Leisure-Travel Global Solution

 

Tourport with Completely Innovative Search and Booking Engine

 

• Tourport challenges old leisure-travel IBEs
• Multiple search for all offers within one window
• Targeted sales control for travel agencies and the Web

 

Partners Software is entering into a new market segment and is challenging the previous market leaders: Via Tourport, the Bremen-Germany-based IT company presents a new leisure-travel global solution. The new system’s core will be the ISBE, with integrated search and booking engine. Surrounding the ISBE, Partners is integrating and developing additional modules such as targeted sales control, flight booking via GDS or LOW.FARE Engine, Partners’ new mid-office, internet content and direct connection of suppliers. In short: Tourport will be an integrated operations platform for travel agencies and internet portals.

 

The new leisure-travel search and booking engine represents Tourport's heart. It is based on the newest internet technology and offers an up-until-now unknown multiple search about the entire content within one window, without the time-consuming loading of new pages within the booking process. “The answer from Partners to fuzzy logic is multiple search," declares Partners’ CEO, Wolfgang Brinker, on the occasion of presenting the Tourport global solution in Bremen, Germany.

 

Multiple Search

The name Tourport in the future stands for an integrated leisure-travel search and booking system with an up-until-now within the market unavailable, unique search systematic, which Partners itself has developed. “In the future, Internet Booking Engines (IBEs) are no longer discussed. That was yesterday. The new technology is called integrated search and booking engine (ISBE),” according to Mr. Brinker. His company has been working for 18 months until now on the new search systematic.

 

The result is an innovative “super selection" with all information at one glance. Instead of the classic search and booking routings in the Internet such as via Traveltainment (search – destination – hotel selection – travel date – booking) with a maximum of 15 offer pages, Tourport shows all steps and offers within one window limitlessly. Thereby it is irrelevant, whether a travel agent or consumer sits at the other end. Partners serves both markets with differing user interfaces, however, with the same search and booking technology.

 

And this is how Tourport’s new multiple search works: The user can freely select, thus start out with a country or a category such as "fitness” or “water slides”. Upon each new delimiter, the quantity of hits reduces itself within the existing window. Tourport means and end to tedious splitting of booking routings. The system thereby permits a need-oriented search according to individual criteria. The user can either start out with soft criteria such as tennis and disco or select hard, classic criteria such as travel date, region or accommodation.

 

Partners transfers the content suppliers’ data into its new, own database structure, which vis-à-vis previous ones has the advantage that it enable an unlimited amount of requests and search paths via a free-text search. In addition, professional customers such as travel-agency chains or tour operators extend the search catalogue according to one’s own quality criteria or products, e.g. quantity of stops for transfers, taxi transfers, flight times or rooms with an ocean view. No matter how many criteria the search catalogue contains: The Tourport system’s response times take less than one second in the final version, in accordance with Partners’ plans.

 

The Contents

Tourport accesses various sources for leisure-travel contents and integrates these in a self-developed database. Partners wishes to ensure the data of more than 150,000 tour-operator hotels via content suppliers such as Giata and Interactive CMS. To the content belong hotel information, location, travel weather, region, country and people, events, various pictures, flight offers of tour operators with early-booker discounts and a large field for tour operators' free text.

 

To this extent, tour operators’ package and last-minute travels, scheduled and low-cost flights as well as hotel and car rentals come from all GDSs. In a second phase city travels or vacation homes follow and the direct connection to individual suppliers follows according to the customers’ wishes. Thus, Partners plans the connection of local travel-agency chains partners via XML interfaces with prioritizing as well as a dynamic packaging tool in the B2B variation.

 

Due to the recently announced business partnership with CETS, Partners offers not only full content, rather also technically superior booking possibilities, which are also commercially attractive for customers.

 

Targeted Sales Control

A further feature of Tourport is targeted sales control. Both travel-agency chains (B2B) as well as Internet-portal providers (B2C) can decide on their own, which offers from which tour operators and service providers appear there and for how long. These offers will run context-based and are adjusted to the search. If either the travel agent or consumer clicks e.g. on “fitness” and “Andalusia”, thus only offers appear, which fulfill both criteria and are offered by the tour operator that should be promoted. The so-called “teaser offers” contents are determined by the company’s management.

 

The XML Interface

The XML interface offers Internet portals access to raw data from Partners and to the search systematicly without having to use the Tourport user interface. Portals can thus subtly distinguish themselves within the optical display from competitors. “Thus, the mess observable within current systematic belongs to the past,” reaffirms Mr. Brinker.

 

The Business Variation

Irrelevant, if travel-agency operation or Internet portal: Both pillars of Tourport use the identical search systematic. For professionals, Partners offers however an own, according to professional criteria developed search and booking user interface. It is more compactly described for travel agents, contains a more transparent list with the usual abbreviations for airports and accommodations, moreover possesses a comparison tool.

 

Within the offer list, travel agents can modify the sorting according to the criteria: airport, date, travel duration, price and amenities, without having to recreate the list or reload the page. All changes have above all one goal: Efficiency and time-saving for travel agents. In addition, travel professionals can with the help of two buttons located on the upper right directly compare the tour-operator offers and hotels page, moreover demonstrate this to their clients.

 

The Connection between On- and Offline

For the dialogue between client and travel agency, Tourport offers countless and partially not-yet-integrated options within the travel market. Thus travel agents can from the B2B variation in the upper left send e-mails or offers via fax regarding concrete possibilities to their clients, who can then look at them in the B2C variation at home and also book them.

 

Of course, the client can also contact a travel agent via the B2C variation or else the respective call center. This can either occur via e-mail or call-back button on the website. For travel agencies, the possibility additionally exists, to actively call one’s own clients, who have searched on the pages for offers. “We connect online and stationary operation into each technically possible method,” says Partners CEO Mr. Brinker.

 

In addition, to the leisure-travel global solution Tourport Partners’ counts a new mid-office solution, the time-tested multi-GDS-capable flight-booking modules, which the Low.Fare flight-booking engine and the free selection of the back-office with interfaces to more than 20 back-office specialists.

 

21 years after founding the Bremen, Germany-based company, Partners Software has advanced to one of the leading providers of technology within the travel and leisure-travel branches in Europe. More than 70 internal and external employees develop and market exclusively IT solutions for leisure travel. Partners Software’s range of clients includes 500 companies from all fields of the travel industry, among which CWT, Worldspan, Lufthansa City Centers, ebookers and Travi Austria.

 

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